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Who owns public-funded research?

Who owns public-funded research?
Photo by Firmbee.com / Unsplash

ResearchGate, a social networking site now in trouble for scientists which is held responsible without collateral damages in a ruling by a regional court in Munich (Germany) for papers uploaded by its users for Copyright infringement with Two publishing giants who are members of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, American Chemical Society (ACS) and Elsevier. Both the party is expected to apple this judgement wherein ResearchGate's second lawsuit against Elsevier and ACS is still pending in USA court. Despite these lawsuit, the other publishers, Springer Nature and Wiley-Blackwell have been reaching syndication agreements to allow content to be uploaded through ResearchGate as the social networking site for scientists.

The chair of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing and the president of ACS Publications - James Milne, in an email to ChemistryWorld.com in response to judgement said that ‘ResearchGate is required to change its behaviour and the structure of its site to comply with the verdict and to reduce the risk of being held liable for illicitly hosted content.’

(Source: ChemistryWorld.com)


“We believe that the outputs of scientific research, the majority of which is funded by public money, should be shared as openly as possible and we’ll continue to support researchers in sharing their work easily and legally,” says a spokesperson for ResearchGate. (Source:Nature)

It is important to know the background of dispute wherein ACS and Elsevier sued ResearchGate in 2017 for making copyrighted material freely available on the website. The ResearchGate stated that it is up to publishers to work with platforms to remove uploaded content wherein the action initiated since the case had been first brought. The ResearchGate have introduced software that can help prevent copyrighted material from being shared, thereby ensuring fully compliant to avoid disputes in the future with Elsevier and ACS or any other publisher. The ResearchGate defended itself by saying it could not be held responsible for content posted by authors on their network wherein the dispute arises out of copyright infringement of 50 research papers uploaded to their scientific, social networking website. However, ResearchGate had already removed the 50 research papers in question associated with the dispute. In Sept 2021, the site also removed around 2 Lakh files following Elsevier and the ACS complaints.

It is important to know that fair use of open access that refers to the public availability of scientific output (publications and data) created using public funds be made available without payment and re-use restrictions. The legal aspects of open access of scientific output resulting from the publicly funded research and should be analysed along with the provisions under copyright law ensuring benefits be leveraged for society. Most copyright laws state that the rights owner (here having ambiguity, who is the owner of the scientific data? licensee/authorized publisher) has the economic right to authorize or prevent certain uses in relation to a work or, in some cases, to pay/receive remuneration for the use of their work (such as through collective management). Here the signing of the copyright contract with the publisher of the journal, do the fair use of creator who use public funds and who published gets abolished?

We pause the discussion in this matter at this stage,

Please do share your views on,

·The economic rights of owner of a work who is developing the scientific output (information for publication / data) using public funds can prohibit or authorize ownership of copyrighted material created by research staff and/or students for the use by the third-party as their own materials which is leading to copyright infringement?

·Does the licensing and assigning rights to publish abolish the right for the use of the scientific output (publication / data) created using public funds from sharing the use of for further research or knowledge sharing?

·Do such fair access lead to IP issues for websites in India?

The matters need detail brainstorming and your views can certainly lead to policy dialogue. I will be coming with the views on above in my next IP Wave.

I will be looking for your reply on above open ended discussion points. Just press the reply button below.


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