This article argues that, as the Canadian government and governments in peer jurisdictions adopt open access policies requiring researchers to provide free and immediate (embargo-free) public access to research publications resulting from government-funded research projects, the green road to open access (self-archiving) must remain a viable means of complying with these policies. This is essential to ensure that government open access policies do not create an unsustainable dependency on limited government resources. Although the gold road to open access offers immediate access, it often necessitates the payment of article processing fees demanded by publishers. In contrast, the green road to open access does not require payment to publishers for public access to a reliable version of the research publication (the author’s accepted manuscript); however, researchers frequently have limited authority to provide open access to their works in this manner when publishers acquire their copyrights and impose restrictions on republication. Such restrictions typically take the form of embargoes on republication, which undermine opportunities to use the green road to deliver immediate public access to research. Researchers often have weak, and sometimes nonexistent, bargaining power. Consequently, it is frequently challenging for them to navigate the publishing industry’s contractual framework that secures copyrights for free, prevents researchers from retaining the rights necessary to republish their accepted manuscripts on an open access basis, and limits their capacity to provide immediate public access to research by imposing embargoes on republication. To support the green road to open access as a viable option for researchers to provide immediate public access to research, I argue that Canada and other countries must implement, alongside their open access policies, a legislative strategy involving a secondary publication right within copyright law. This article proposes an ideal secondary publication right framework and advocates for its implementation in Canada and beyond.

From hospitals and universities to IT systems, the machinery of compliance meant to reduce risk is increasingly swallowing the work it was designed to support.

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While a lot of the attention in the AI and copyright space has gone to the hundreds of ongoing cases in the US, courts around the world have been tackling the question of copyright infringement alr…

Paper mill activity has exploded in recent years, polluting the scientific ecosystem with falsified data and compromising medical research

Australia is subsidising rising diesel use, personal carbon footprints distract from systemic change, forest loss is accelerating and feral cats are killing even more native wildlife than we thought.

Patient authors have been increasingly included on company-sponsored research publications, contributing a unique and needed expertise. Patients are routinely and rightfully remunerated for their c...

iStock A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges…

Today's guest post warns the community that, in the AI era, we cannot keep building the pieces that lay the foundation and letting someone else own what gets built on top of it.

Copim reflects on Wiley’s acquisition of Emerald and the issues of scale and corporate consolidation in academic publishing.

For more than two decades, European copyright policy has pursued the goal of harmonisation. Successive directives have sought to establish a common framework for copyright protection and limitations a...

As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

Copyright law has long served owners and technology companies more effectively than creators. AI licensing now makes the case for stronger protection for artists.

Understanding how AI changes discovery is no longer optional. This report gives scholarly publishers and platforms insights, actionable recommendations and a strategic roadmap.

A new procurement record says ICE wants access to personal data, including names, Social Security numbers, and ethnicity, to investigate in part what the agency calls “voters fraud.” It also plans to ...

A scholar led open access publishing collective

Labor MP says ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ was a founding principle of the ALP as media union calls for tougher new rules on AI use of creative work

Tens of billions of dollars in investment, and Australia's ambition to become a global AI power, could hinge on a law written in 1968 for an era of black-and-white television, film and radio.

A digital-only gaming landscape shouldn't give publishers unlimited control over what we actually own. Physical media may die, but our rights should live forever.

Leaders must ensure artificial intelligence “supports trustworthy, reproducible and reliable research”, expert warns

A South Australian artist is fighting drop-ship company Temu over its selling of her mosaic design on rugs. But how did the artwork get there in the first place?

Publishing and having access to scientific articles is an expensive business for research institutions. Fortunately, there are content providers out there who deliver rigorous material that’s free of charge.

An AI detection company found that amount of AI content that users actually see in their day-to-day browsing is shockingly high.

The EU wants to build digital sovereignty through open source AI, yet its own copyright rules stand in the way. A study of eight European initiatives maps the resulting legal friction and proposes sol...

Australian musicians are fighting against the rise of AI. Moscow has been attacked by swarms of Ukrainian drones and missiles. Plus Sarah Ferguson interviews Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy.

The investors claim the former CEO and other high-ranking officers reassured them the company did not train AI models on copyrighted material, but later Adobe admitted to using copyrighted works.

Overwork, extreme stress, and a lack of physical safety is underpinned by active hostility to academic staff in general - and union activists in particular.

The Australian Government's public position on copyright and AI questioned, Five Eyes have issued an urgent cyber security call arts organisations may find it hard to answer and the EU has made a decl...