From the FAQ used to inform discussions before adoption of the policy

Is the university taking the rights to my writing?

No. The Open Access Policy grants a limited nonexclusive license to Duke. You still retain ownership and complete control of the copyright in your writings, subject only to this prior license. You can exercise your copyrights in any way you see fit, including transferring them to a publisher if you so desire. (However, if you do so, Duke would still retain its limited license to archive and distribute the article from its repository. Also, if your article arises, in whole or in part, from NIH-funded research and was accepted for publication after April 7, 2008, you must retain sufficient rights to comply with NIH's Public Access Policy.)

What will Duke do with the articles it has license to?

Duke has set up a repository called DukeSpace to make available the scholarly articles provided by its faculty members. This repository has the institution of Duke University standing behind it to ensure its availability, longevity, and functionality, to the extent technologically feasible. The repository will be backed up, mirrored, and made open to harvesting by search services such as OAIster (now part of WorldCat) and Google Scholar.

Through the transferability provision, Duke may further allow others to distribute the content, provided that the articles are not sold. For instance, faculty at other institutions could be given permission to make copies for free distribution directly to their students. However, Duke does not have—and cannot grant to others—the right to sell the articles or to sell a book containing the articles.

So who owns the copyright in articles I write?

You, as the author of the article, own copyright in it until and unless you sign that copyright over to a publisher. The license to Duke is not an “assignment” or transfer of copyright. It is just permission from you, as the copyright holder, to Duke to make a certain specified use of your work. This license arises immediately for all scholarly articles written while a faculty member at Duke after the effective date of the policy; if you do sign your copyright over to a publisher, the limited license granted prior to that “assignment” remains with Duke.

What does it mean to say this is a non-exclusive licenses?

“Non-exclusive” means that the permission you give Duke to put you work into DukeSpace does not prevent you from giving permissions to others, including publishers, to also exercise some or all of the rights you hold as the copyright holder. What you do with your work, or allow others to do with it, remains your decision.

Can others distribute my work, for instance, placing it in a course pack?

Only a party with appropriate rights can license an article for use in a course pack. This policy grants Duke the right to license such uses, so long as the course pack was not sold, so that others (and yourself if you otherwise transfer copyright) could get permission from Duke for free use of your articles in course packs. Alternatively, others (and you) could continue to get permissions from the publisher, typically by paying royalties to the publisher, if desired. To take another example, Duke also could authorize others to make your articles available online (for example, in another repository), provided that they were not sold. Of course, no one would be able to sell your articles without getting permission from the appropriate rights holder, whether that is you or a publisher to whom you have assigned such rights.

Can my articles be used to provide search or other services by companies such as Google or disciplinary repositories?

Yes, consistent with the goals of open access and ensuring wide visibility and availability of scholarly articles, the license allows Duke to enable both commercial and nonprofit entities to use the articles to provide search or other services, so long as the articles are not being sold. For instance, the license allows Duke to enable the articles to be harvested and indexed by search services, such as Google Scholar, so that they can more readily be found, and to be used to provide other value-added services that don't involve charging for access to the articles themselves. Duke also could authorize use of the articles in a commercial service that provides information extracted from the articles (but not the full text itself), such as bibliographic data or citation lists.

Will Duke be able to take advantage of future changes in technology to provide open access to the articles?

Yes, if new technological means of distributing or making the articles available evolve during the lengthy term of copyright, the license is intended to give Duke the flexibility to use those means to advance the purposes of the policy, provided always that the articles are not sold.

What kinds of writings does this apply to?

Only scholarly articles. Using terms from the Budapest Open Access Initiative, faculty's scholarly articles are articles that describe the fruits of their research and that they give to the world for the sake of inquiry and knowledge without expectation of payment. Such articles are typically presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conference proceedings. Many of the written products of faculty effort are not encompassed under this notion of scholarly article: books, popular articles, commissioned articles, fiction and poetry, encyclopedia entries, ephemeral writings, lecture notes, lecture videos, or other copyrighted works. This is not to denigrate such writings. Rather, they are generated as part of separate publishing or distribution mechanisms that function in different ways and whose shortcomings, if any, the present policy does not and is not meant to address.

Does the policy apply to articles I wrote before the policy was adopted?

No, it doesn't require that you deposit any articles that were completed before the policy was adopted, nor any articles for which you entered into an incompatible publishing agreement before the policy was adopted. If you wish to deposit articles written prior to the adoption of the policy, you are welcome to do so, provided that you retained the right to make your articles available in this fashion when you signed any publication agreements regarding them. Of course, the policy also does not apply to any articles you write after leaving Duke.

Does the policy apply to co-authored papers?

Yes. Each joint author of an article holds copyright in the article and, individually, has the authority to grant Duke a non-exclusive license. Joint authors are those who participate in the preparation of the article with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of the whole. If coauthors disagree about making the article available for open access via Duke’s repository, the opportunity to waive the license (opt out) is available.

Will this policy harm the journal publishers?

There is no reason that it should. The policy allows each author to decide where to publish his or her work and how to accommodate the requirements of a chosen publisher. Many publishers already permit authors to archive the final author’s manuscript in an institutional repository like DukeSpace. A sample publication contract that permits this, used by a Duke University Press journal, can be found at http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/dukepubk.pdf. If a publisher wants the release of an open access copy of the author’s final manuscript delayed for 6 month or a year so as not to undermine subscription sales, this policy can accommodate that embargo. Finally, if a publisher absolutely objects to the license granted to Duke, the license will be waived upon request of the faculty author.

What if a journal publisher refuses to publish my article because of this prior license?

This should be an uncommon problem; according to a 2008 survey, between 70 and 80% of journal publishers already allow authors to deposit articles they publish in an institutional repository.¹ If your publisher objects, however, you have a number of options. One is to obtain a waiver of the license under the policy. Alternatively, you can work to persuade the publisher that it should accept Duke’s non-exclusive license in order to be able to publish your article, or seek a different publisher. You can consult with Duke’s Office for Scholarly Communication for help in the process of working with publishers and addressing their specific concerns.

How does the waiver process work?

This will depend on the method by which your article is submitted to the DukeSpace repository. If you (or someone you designate) submits your article, you will have the option at the time of submission to specify whether you are opting out of the open access provisions of the license (in which case a copy of your work will be archived by Duke, but access will not be provided to the public from Duke) or by placing a temporary embargo (delay of release) on open access. If article citations and full text are being collected by other means (automated processes based on your faculty database profile or online bibliographic sources, or as a service by librarians, for example) you will be asked whether any of your articles require a waiver or embargo. In many cases, the Library’s Scholarly Communications Office or automated processes should be able to advise you on the default policies of your publishers using databases of publisher copyright and self- archiving policies (such as SHERPA/RoMEO²). See below for more information on the submission process.

Can I delay access to my article in DukeSpace?

Yes, you can also instruct that your article not be accessible for some period of time after publication (an embargo). Doing this may make some publishers more comfortable with this policy, without requiring a complete waiver. In this case, your article will not become available in DukeSpace until after the period of time you designate has elapsed.

How will this license affect the peer-review of my article and the promotion and tenure process?

Since this policy does not affect your ability to submit your article for publication to any journal you wish, the peer-review will be determined by the practices of the journal you choose and will not be affected by the prior license to Duke. After you make any changes to your article in response to the review process, you should submit the revised version so that the DukeSpace repository will contain the final author’s version of your article. As with peer-review, this license will have no impact on the promotion and tenure review process because you will still be free to publish in whatever journal you wish that will accept your work.

My publication contract allows me to put the “final author’s version” of my article in an institutional repository, but not the “publisher’s version.” What are these different versions?

These discussions generally distinguish three versions of an article. The “pre-print” is the version you submit initially to a publisher and which is sent out for peer-review. The final author’s version (sometimes called a post-print) is the revised version that you create after the peer-review process and in response to comments from reviewers. This is the version that will usually be deposited in DukeSpace under this policy (and many publishers already allow this under their existing publication contracts). The publisher’s version is the article as it appears in the journal, after it is copyedited and formatted by the publisher. Publishers are inconsistent about whether they allow deposit of the publisher’s version in an institutional repository; some allow and even encourage it while others forbid it. In any case, there should be little substantive difference between the published version and the final author’s versions that will be available in DukeSpace. DukeSpace will accept the latest version possible under the publisher’s contract, and will wherever possible provide a link to and citation information for the published version, to make clear that the published version is the preferred version and that the Duke copy is a secondary copy for archival purposes and to provide access to readers who do not have access to the published version.

My publisher offers open access to articles it publishes for a fee. How does this relate to the policy?

Because this license allows Duke to provide open access to your article in DukeSpace, it is not necessary for you to pay a separate fee to the publisher for the same level of access. If you wish to do so, of course, you are free to make that decision, and some grant funders who support research allow grant money to be used in that way.

¹ The study, by The Publishing Research Consortium, an industry “think tank" can be found at: http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/JournalAuthorsRights.pdf

² http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/