Author Addenda, SPEC Kit 310 (July 2009)

Fischer, Karen

SPEC Kit 310: Author Addenda · 21
We have information on the subset of authors who, when using the addendum, follow the instructions on the
addendum to fax or e-mail a copy to the Libraries.
When we are contacted to help out.
Answered No
A law professor told me he had retained some of his author rights, but he did not say how.
Actually, what I have heard from 2 different faculty members is that they have “tried” to use the SPARC author’s
addenda and were turned down flat by the publisher.
Not yet. However, we plan to do so as we build a new Faculty Publications Database as part of our IR.
We are unaware of anyone adopting the addenda, primarily because we are not staffed to a degree that would
allow us to easily promote and collect information on faculty activity on copyright, author’s rights, etc.
We collect anecdotal stories of the use of addenda, but do not have a centralized place to aggregate the stories.
We sometimes learn anecdotally about experiences with addenda, but we do not systematically seek to gather this
information.
2. Has a specific author rights addendum been endorsed by administrators or a governing body at
your institution, or by a consortium to which your institution belongs? Check all that apply. N=69
N Institution
N=67
Consortium
N=57
Yes 36 22 27
No 43 37 27
Under consideration 11 8 3
3. Has your institution, or a consortium to which your institution belongs, promoted the use of an
author rights addendum by authors affiliated with your institution? Check all that apply. N=68
N Institution
N=66
Consortium
N=53
Yes 46 40 25
No 29 19 24
Under consideration 9 7 4

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22 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
Selected Comments from Respondents
A Faculty Senate subcommittee has drafted a resolution concerning open access, etc., that encourages faculty,
the Libraries, and university administration to take various actions, and the faculty section includes the following:
“…adopt and use an Addendum to Publication Agreement such as that provided by the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in order to retain their rights to use their work in the classroom and in
future publications and to archive final accepted manuscripts.” However, action on the resolution won’t be taken
for another month or two, so there is not yet an official endorsement or promotion.
A year ago we were planning on doing a large campaign to promote the recently endorsed addendum. However,
we then starting hearing from other institutions who where trying this that outreach and promotion for their
author addendum was not easy. At the same time, we saw that many publishers’ policies regarding author rights
were improving. Additionally, the addendum that our university endorsed (the CIC one) has a 6-month embargo
request — anecdotal evidence is showing that this may be too short for publishers (given that NIH policy is 12
months). Another important factor that has delayed progress on the promotion of our addendum is the fact that
we have been between provosts for the past year (there was an interim provost for a year), we had a terrible
flood (summer 2008) which flooded many campus buildings and which has demanded the attentions of our
administration since then.
Discussion at Faculty/Academic Council on campus, promotion on the CIC Web site.
Editing publisher contracts with a couple of standard paragraphs has proven more successful than addenda.
Except for a link on the libraries’ copyright site and a single PowerPoint slide that was shown to 4 groups of faculty
and graduate students as part of a copyright presentation, promotion of author’s addenda is not taking place on
this campus of the university.
I do not have information about the possible consortia we may belong to. We have several addenda links from
library and scholarly communications Web sites as a service and education, but we don’t endorse or promote
beyond that. We do educate about author rights but don’t endorse or promote any specific addenda. We are a
member of SPARC which does promote and endorse.
I’m on the GWLA IR task force and we’ve been discussing the possibility of recommending that the SPARC
addendum be endorsed.
Institutional negotiations with publishers are a preferred approach. For example, recent negotiations with Springer
have resulted in a pilot project in which articles are published under a Creative Commons compatible license (see:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/19335).
The university’s addendum was developed under the auspices of the Committee on Intellectual Property, which is
chaired by the Vice President for Research, in 2006. The Vice President for Research and the Director of Libraries
visited many academic departments to promote the addendum when it was first released. Since that time, the
Libraries have hired a Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant, whose responsibilities include supporting and
promoting the use of the addendum. One of the means of promoting the addendum is a Web site explaining the
reason for it and how to use it.
Office of the General Counsel advised authors that they, at a minimum, must retain the right to deposit work
arising from NIH funding into PubMed Central. Authors were encouraged to consider using a second, broader

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20 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
Background
1. To your knowledge, are any authors at your institution using an author’s addendum to retain
rights to their creative work? N=70
Yes 35 50%
No 2 3%
I don’t know 33 47%
If yes, is the library collecting information on authors’ use of addenda? N=35
Yes 8 23%
No 27 77%
Selected Comment from Respondents
Answered Yes
CISTI is the library of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). NRC authors do not use an author’s
addendum because all NRC authors must use the NRC Licence to Publish form. Because elements of the ARL and
CARL author addenda were incorporated into the NRC Licence to Publish form in January 2009, the survey is
being answered as if NRC authors used an author’s addendum. NRC has always used a Licence to Publish form
because NRC authors are employees of the Canadian federal government and all works by NRC employees are
covered by Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright cannot be assigned. NRC authors are directed to sign the NRC
Licence to Publish form and not to use any licence to publisher forms of publishers. NRC established a policy
making it mandatory, starting in January 2009, for NRC institutes to deposit copies of all peer-reviewed, NRC-
authored publications and technical reports in their institutional repository (NRC Publications Archive, NPArC). The
NRC Licence to Publish (Crown Copyright) has been updated to declare the NRC’s intent to deposit the full-text of
NRC-authored publications in NPArC and to retain specific rights. The ARL and CARL author’s addenda were used
as models for the wording of these specific rights. On the submission form for NPArC, authors (or delegates) must
indicate that they have used the NRC Licence to Publish form and any changes made to the form.
The library only collects information on authors who contact the library in regard to using the addendum.
We are not formally collecting information on authors’ use of addenda, but when we consult with authors about
the addendum we request that they report back to us on their success or failure. Sometimes they do, but only
rarely.
We are not systematically tracking it’s mostly just anecdotal at this point.
We collect information when we hear from authors about use which is not very often and has only been when the
addendum has been rejected. We hear much more often questions about general copyright transfer.

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SPEC Kit 310: Author Addenda (July 2009) resources