Warm weather tourism on July 29 in Nantes, on the Place Royale, the Basilique Saint-Nicolas de Nantes at the center. Image – Getty: Dennis VDW
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
More recent news relative to copyright, court action, and publishers:
Internet Archive Takes Another Blow in Court on Copyright
Piracy and Copyright: A Court Upholds a DMCA Provision
The International Publishers Association at Frankfurter Buchmesse
‘Calling for Vigilance’
While much of the news in the open-access world trumpets new transformational agreements and academic houses tout ever more scholarly journals relative to open access, the French publishers’ association in Paris—the Syndicat national de l’édition—has let us know of a situation in which things took a more negative stance, for a while.
In their media messaging, the publishers and the Société des Gens de Lettres are cheering a change of policy on the part of the University of Nantes, which has renounced a prior regulation that obligated its researchers to publish in open access.
This has come out in an administrative court case in which the publishers’ association and the Society of Letters had strenuously objected, asserting that making open-access publication a requirement “ran counter to copyright and academic freedom.”
As the association now tells it, in May 2021, the university “made it compulsory for researchers’ publications to be deposited in open archives, and for publications deposited in this way to be taken into account in institutional evaluations and laboratory grants.”
The university’s decision, the SNE writes, “thus went well beyond the framework of open science laid down by law in article L. 533-4 of the French Research Code, and infringed on the copyright and academic freedom of teacher-researchers.”
Background on the Case
Philippe Forest, a professor at the university who is also an essayist and novelist, lodged an appeal with the Nantes administrative court in 2022, the publishers are telling the news media. And it’s that court action that was then joined by the Société des Gens de Lettres and the Syndicat national de l’édition.
The court’s decision arrived in the favor of Forest, the society and the association on August 1. And in line with that order, “The SGDL and SNE take note of the modification of the University of Nantes’ action plan for open science, which enshrined the need to update its scientific publication deposit policy.”
The publishers go on to write of their satisfaction, “The SGDL and the SNE welcome this change, while calling for vigilance with regard to any policy at French or European level which, under the guise of recommendations and wishes, results in authors being forced by the weight of the university hierarchy or research funding to publish on open archives.”
The publishers’ association and the society pledge that they’ll continue to monitor the implementation of these policies by universities. What’s more, they’re calling on the ministry of higher education and research to remind all higher-education and research establishments of these principles.
More from Publishing Perspectives on copyright and world publishing is here, more on open access is here, more on academic and scholarly publishing is here, and more on the French book business and market is here.