Move towards cross-border licensing for e-resources

A couple of interesting items came my way today via the JISC Collections Weekly Update. Firstly, the announcement that Knowledge Exchange – an umbrella organisation of four national ICT bodies – has begun a multinational tender process to explore with publishers the possibility of cross-border licensing arrangements. JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) reports that:

"with national licensing agreements for online resources well established in the four countries – the UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands – the aim of the initiative is to explore whether further economies of scale can be secured and new and innovative business models developed through an international approach."

You can find further information here.

Secondly, JISC are running a licensing workshop on Copyright in the Digital Age on 30 March in London. The workshop will focus on digital copying and issues relating to sharing between collaborative institutions. Understanding copyright is a key issue in digital curation, as when people are unsure of their legal rights and responsibilities they are sometimes reluctant to act and afraid to use resources.

You can find more details and register on the JISC Collections website.

Communication from the Commission - Scientific Publishing in the Digital Age

The Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic Committee on Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation (a bit of a mouthful) was brought to my attention today. Thanks to Neil Beagrie at the British Library for that.

It's a reasonably short document that is well worth a look because, as well as its coverage of digital preservation, it gives attention to some of the relevant legal issues in this area. It discusses the practice of assigning copyright in journal articles and, more interestingly, the differences when you are dealing with research data, where the Database Directive becomes relevant and (arguably) a cause for concern. The Communication also highlights legal deposit as a central issue for the preservation of digital scientific information.

SCRIPT-ed online journal

Wondering what I should write about in my first post to this Blog (or should I say Blawg?) Well, I’m just back from a meeting of the editorial board of the SCRIPT-ed journal so I think I’ll write about that.

SCRIPT-ed describes it self as “an online, international, interdisciplinary and multi-lingual forum for articles, reports, commentaries, analysis, case and legislation critiques, and book reviews pertaining to law and technologies in the broadest sense.”

SCRIPT-ed is the online journal of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law based in the School of Law at the University Edinburgh. The AHRC Research Centre…(it’s a very long name) is a friend of the DCC and provides legal input on digital curation issues.

The journal covers a lot of interesting topics. The current issue is December 2006 and there will be new one out on the 15th of March. Check it out!