Managing copyright permissions online
Jinfo Blog

20th October 2008

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It is the rare information manager, who willingly and knowingly abuses copyright restrictions. Most defaults are as a result of process lapses, rather than out and out malfeasance. Early in the life of the most recent copyright legislation, there were few tools that could be employed with any certainty, particularly for electronic journals. The role of the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) http://www.copyright.com in the US seemed to be one of ‘find the criminal’, rather than ‘help prevent the crime’. That has all changed with the development of CCC’s Rightslink online content licensing service. This lets users obtain copyright permissions to share and distribute published material directly from online content. Such is the confidence in the Rightslink product, that Cambridge University Press (CUP) http://www.cambridge.org has chosen it to manage its permissions requests. CUP’s Rights and Permissions team hope that they will save time by automating many of their standard processes, allowing staff to spend more time on those requests that need human intervention. Subscribers to CUP’s journals will be able to access Rightslink via Cambridge Journals Online http://www.journals.cambridge.org, its publishing and delivery platform, and order their permissions on the site. It is intended that most licences will be processed and granted immediately. But it’s not just about improving service to CUP subscribers. Simon Ross, Director, Cambridge Journals, admits that by automating the standard requests and focussing on the more complex, staff will be ‘expediting the higher revenue requests. Of course, we are anticipating increased permissions revenues’, continues Ross. CUP is the latest in a number of publishers to use Rightslink for online permissions. Others include the University of Chicago Press, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Nature Publishing Group, Springer and Taylor & Francis. Customers recognise that the introduction of a tool such as Rightslink will increase revenue for the publishers. On the other hand, as Bob Weiner, Senior Vice-President of Licensing at CCC, points out, ‘content users also are very drawn to the service as it dramatically simplifies the permission and reprint process.’ There are few other products that manage copyright permissions: Sirsi Resolver http://www.sirsidynix.com/Resources/Pdfs/Solutions/Products/Resolver.pdf is also linked to CCC and its Docutek Eres http://www.sirsidynix.com/Newsevents/Releases/2005/20051213docutek.php system allows library staff to obtain copyright permissions from within Eres itself.

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