Cc-europe mailing list

[John Hendrik Weitzmann <jhweitzmann AT mx.uni-saarland.de>]

Hi all,

> There should also be a German copyright reform effective as of 2014
> saying that authors of scientific articles have an unwaivable right to
> republish in green oa after 6 months. John, do you have more details on
> this?

Well, this reform was heavily criticised by science orgs and was in fact
a bad horse trade (because as the "price" we also got the infamous
ancillary right for press publishers).

The new "right to secondary publication" of scientific works says that
they can legally be made pubicly available in their manuscript version,
contrary agreements void ...

- if they come from scientific activities
- that were at least half funded publicly and
- if they were published in a collection/medium
- that is published regularly
- at least twice a year and
- if 12 months embargo period have passed and
- as long as the secondary publication does not serve commercial purposes

You can imagine how limited the joy was about that reform. Especially
because it's more or less limited to science that happens ouside
universities and in public-private cooperation. Also the 12 months have
been citicised.

This is probably no role model for other EU countries and surely not the
last word regarding OA in law reform.

Best
John