The author
The author is the central figure in the process of publishing a scientific/scholarly work. It is, after all, the author who creates the work, which is then a building block for further scientific or scholarly development and communication. SURF therefore considers the scientific/scholarly author to be the copyright holder.
For the author, the ongoing march of digitisation has brought with it changes in the process of scientific/scholarly communication and publication. This opens up new opportunities for the author, but it also raises a number of new questions.
New opportunities for scientific/scholarly authors:
- Wider access and distribution of scientific/scholarly material, thus raising the profile of his work and increasing the number of citations and impact.
- More rapid distribution than in the era of “paper” publication, when it sometimes took one or two years before an article appeared in a periodical.
- Simpler reuse in new publications and research projects.
- Simpler use in education, for example.
In the era of “paper” publication, the copyright was frequently transferred, either entirely or partly, by contract. It is not always clear to the author just what the scope of the transfer actually is and whether he can still store a work elsewhere, for example on his own website. Many scientists and scholars have therefore rallied round the banner of Open Access, i.e. the principle that the results of publicly financed research should also be publicly accessible.
The question that then confronts the author is how he can make optimum use of the various new opportunities.
The answer is: by making better use of his copyright. Copyright is not a monolithic entity: it in fact consists of an assemblage of different rights. Proper management of those rights allows a more even balance between the interests of the various parties involved in the process of scientific/scholarly publication, including the author.
The most important parties with which a scientific/scholarly author is involved when he wishes to publish a work are:
- The institution where he works, if he produces a scientific/scholarly work on behalf of that institution and/or if he wishes to store it in the institution’s repository;
- The publisher, if he wants to publish a scientific/scholarly work in a periodical;
- The user (colleagues, students, etc.), who wants to read or cite the scientific/scholarly work.
What information does this website provide for authors?