Background and Purpose
The foundational principles behind developing the Academic Commons exist to promote open access and thereby enrich public use and discourse of research and scholarship. Further:
- Publications should be free to read, share, and reuse while they are still relevant.
- Authors should retain the right to use their publications in collaborative research, teaching, and to share individually with the community without fear of infringing on their own work.
- Publications should not fall into a copyright "black hole" as a result of a journal going out of print or failing to stay current with technology to make its content available and easily discoverable.
- Authors should retain some discretion on how best to promote the widest accessibility and fairest terms for their publications, but should not be encouraged to use that as leverage against authors with different preferences.
- Publishers of academic publications should be recognized for their contributions, but should seek only the rights minimally necessary to provide their services.
The Academic Commons Model
Academic Commons Licenses are built around an open content license (OCL), typified by the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0/4.0 license, but this specific license is not essential so long as it does not interfere with the rights and restrictions of the publication agreements. CC-BY or similar derivatives and counterparts that preserve the right to reproduce and to distribute with minimal restrictions are compatible with a wide array of open access philosophies and perspectives. Many or all of these publication licenses maintain compatibility with common OA definitions. The Academic Commons license types are organized along a continuum of most-OA toward the more traditional exclusive license/assignment model.
AC0: No publication agreement or a minimal agreement memorializing an OCL without modification.
AC-CR (Citation Right): Similarly lightweight like the AC0, AC-CR extends an OCL to include an exclusive right to claim original citation/first publication rights. No other rights, responsibilities, or modifications
AC-PA (Publication Agreement): the "big" Academic Commons license, wrapping an OCL in a complete, but compact, publication agreement that provides citation rights and some warranty and indemnification language designed to add value for both the author and the publisher. The "vanilla" AC-PA can be extended with a few special restrictions, depending on the interests of the parties.
-EM (Embargoed): adds a time delay before the OCL version of the article is released, giving the journal a limited window of exclusivity to capitalize on first publication benefits. Embargoes longer than six months greatly diminish the value of open access and would be considered AC-L instead.
-EJ (Exclusive Journal): instead of delaying the open access version, this clause restricts the author from entering into a formal publication arrangement with any other journal for a certain period of time. Remember, however, that open access rights still include the right to republish and permission is not required.
-NC (No Charge): a variation on the Creative Commons "non-commercial" restriction, that more clearly defines the restriction as "no reader paywall". The article may be redistributed by a non-profit journal, for-profit journal, or any other entity so long as the reader is not required to pay for access (but does not prohibit optional subscription services or the "freemium" model).
-NJ (No Journals): permits free redistribution and reuse except in other citable journals. Exactly what constitutes a "journal" is a moving target and may create some interesting edge cases, but the main criterion would be whether you would cite the resource as an authority in the literature rather than simply as a quote or document source. Basically, we're talking about a citation right on steroids. It is recommended that if selecting this option, the related OCL should not be CC-BY, but CC-BY-NC or a customized license that carves out this exception to prevent a journal from simply using the work without an agreement.
AC-L (Limited commons): As a further method of getting publishers to embrace these new models, Academic Commons also recognizes those journals with more traditional copyright license/assignment contracts, but that carve out some open access rights, either through preprints or special distribution channels of the finals. These agreements may contain a partial assignment of rights to the publisher.
AC0: No publication agreement or a minimal agreement memorializing an OCL without modification.
AC-CR (Citation Right): Similarly lightweight like the AC0, AC-CR extends an OCL to include an exclusive right to claim original citation/first publication rights. No other rights, responsibilities, or modifications
AC-PA (Publication Agreement): the "big" Academic Commons license, wrapping an OCL in a complete, but compact, publication agreement that provides citation rights and some warranty and indemnification language designed to add value for both the author and the publisher. The "vanilla" AC-PA can be extended with a few special restrictions, depending on the interests of the parties.
-EM (Embargoed): adds a time delay before the OCL version of the article is released, giving the journal a limited window of exclusivity to capitalize on first publication benefits. Embargoes longer than six months greatly diminish the value of open access and would be considered AC-L instead.
-EJ (Exclusive Journal): instead of delaying the open access version, this clause restricts the author from entering into a formal publication arrangement with any other journal for a certain period of time. Remember, however, that open access rights still include the right to republish and permission is not required.
-NC (No Charge): a variation on the Creative Commons "non-commercial" restriction, that more clearly defines the restriction as "no reader paywall". The article may be redistributed by a non-profit journal, for-profit journal, or any other entity so long as the reader is not required to pay for access (but does not prohibit optional subscription services or the "freemium" model).
-NJ (No Journals): permits free redistribution and reuse except in other citable journals. Exactly what constitutes a "journal" is a moving target and may create some interesting edge cases, but the main criterion would be whether you would cite the resource as an authority in the literature rather than simply as a quote or document source. Basically, we're talking about a citation right on steroids. It is recommended that if selecting this option, the related OCL should not be CC-BY, but CC-BY-NC or a customized license that carves out this exception to prevent a journal from simply using the work without an agreement.
AC-L (Limited commons): As a further method of getting publishers to embrace these new models, Academic Commons also recognizes those journals with more traditional copyright license/assignment contracts, but that carve out some open access rights, either through preprints or special distribution channels of the finals. These agreements may contain a partial assignment of rights to the publisher.
Academic Commons Licenses
- AC0 1.0
- AC-CR 1.0
- AC-PA 1.0
