Suddenly, it seems that Rights (Acquisition) Management has become a ‘thing’.

It is a topic at conferences, systems have been developed to support it and even new kinds of jobs are now dedicated to it. But why? Hasn’t the publishing industry always had to manage its rights? Aren’t rights fundamental to the very existence of publishers?

Well, yes, but it turns out that, by and large, we were somewhat relaxed about managing our rights when the world was based on paper, and digital (as with every other aspect of publishing) has made it all much more complex. In order to publish anything, we have always relied on an agreement with the person who created it (or those they had agreed could license it on their behalf), be that an author we commissioned, an in-house writer under an employment contract, or a photograph whose rights were secured via an image library.

Agreements were fairly standard and usually granted publishers a broad range of print based rights which would last for at least the edition’s lifetime, if not the full term of copyright. The likelihood of anyone straying too far from what was enshrined in these agreements was small, and the impact, if they did inadvertently exceed licensing terms, minimal. Consequently, most publishers did not worry too much about it, as long as they had an agreement with the main contributor, and had obtained (or got the author to obtain) permission for any 3rd party content, they had done their job, documents were filed, end of story.

However, as publishers have innovated in the digital space the range of rights they demand from rights holders has increased – seeking more rights, to cover more products, for longer periods of time. Rights holders have understandably responded cautiously, wanting to protect their revenue (and future earning potential), reputation and, importantly, control over how their content is being used. Publishers are not simply getting the rights they are asking for, or are getting them on more limited terms, and this poses some problems.

Add to that, the fact that all this innovation in the content that publishers are putting ‘out there’ means it is not just author contracts and a few permissions agreements to worry about, but you also have to get rights agreements with the person who shoots your video, records your pod-cast, the users who contribute user-generated content, the freelance writers who write your blogs, the software developer who created your app, and many, many more creators who have been engaged to deliver content. More rights in more content from more people = a bit of a headache!

How do you know who has given you what rights, for how long, and with what restrictions? You can no longer assume that everything you might want to do with the content is covered by the agreement you put in place several years ago, the big issue now is that you actually have to check. And you do actually have to check, you can’t bury your head under the duvet and hope it will all go away because ‘we’ve never had to do all this before’.

There is now a very real chance you will be sued if you get it wrong, or at least have to deal with a time-consuming settlement for an eye-watering amount of money. Suddenly, having the author manage some of those agreements or shoving everything in an archived, paper, editorial file doesn’t seem like such a good idea. It becomes necessary to think up front, before you even commission a project about what rights you will need to make the project viable and whether you are likely to be able to get them.

Time taken to acquire the rights and budget needed to pay for them needs to be factored into the process and the product needs to be monitored post release to ensure that all of the licences remain valid and re-clearance arranged (and paid for) where necessary. Documents and data about rights acquired need to be collated and stored and new workflows need to be established. And, so Rights Management as a ‘thing’ has emerged, with staff and systems and blog posts to boot, and it’s a ‘thing’ we all need to get to grips with, and quickly.

Clare Hodder, is a copyright and licensing specialist at Rights2 Consultancy. She will take part in the ALPSP and PLS webinar Effective Management of Rights on Monday 23rd January. Register now to secure your free place and find out more about how to manage rights management in your organization.

Sarah Faulder

What is the cost of getting rights wrong? Sarah Faulder, Chief Executive of the Publishers Licensing Society chaired a session that offered advice on developing the correct rights acquisition strategy.

They recently worked with the other collecting bodies to re-negotiate what is paid to rights holders. The outcome from the valuation last year based on journals 76% to publishers, 23% to authors and 1% to visual artists. This will be reviewed in 2019 and it is hoped that it will be increased for publishers. However,  this is dependent on getting tighter documentation demonstrating rights. Faulder urged the publishers in the room to get into good practice now by ensuring you have the right rights as it will be key to a successful negotiation. They have also launched PLSclear: a new permission clearing service to help with the identification of rights holders. Rights are very important, but they come with obligations: to use and enforce them.

Clare Hodder

The speakers considered how to ensure you have all the rights you need for your content, and provided guidance on the systems, support and training that is available.

Clare Hodder of Rights2 Consultancy and Natalina Bertoli from Bertoli Mitchell outlined seven commercial risks of poor rights management.

1. Lost income: good rights management practice results in increased revenues.
2. Stifling innovation: good rights management enables you to innovate and move swiftly to market with new products.
3. Hard to combat piracy: good rights management enables you to combat piracy and unauthorised use, protecting your business.
4. Infringement: means you mitigate the risk of infringing copyright, and dealing with costly legal bills
5. Reputational damage: good rights management enhances your reputation amongst the author community and your market
6. Erosion of copyright: good rights management means that publishers and users of our content can work with in an efficient copyright framework, without the threat of broadening exceptions to copyright which undermine business models
7. Increase costs and risks for mergers and acquisitions: good rights management enables mergers and acquisitions to be completed swiftly and at the right price.

Natalina Bertoli

Clare Hodder, one of the speakers on the Are Your Rights in Order? PLS sponsored session at the ALPSP Conference, is passionate about the right way - and wrong way - to do rights. We interviewed her in advance of the conference to find out just exactly what the problems are.

What are the cost of getting rights wrong?  

There are a few things...missing out on revenue from subsidiary rights, because you don't know what rights you have to licence, not being able to digitise your backlist because you don't know if you have the rights, not being able to enforce infringement action because you have no documentation to prove you are the rights holder (as in the Georgia State University case). And that's just the start.

In one instance, a publishing company had to pulp an entire first print run, because they realised too late in the day, that the licence they thought they had acquired for the picture on a book cover, didn't come with an image release from the people pictured. The people in the picture objected to the use of their image and insisted the book was pulped. The publisher had to foot the bill for destroying their stock, finding an alternative image and reprinting the book and of course valuable sales opportunities were missed and marketing effort wasted, due to the delay to publication.

Some rights holders, particularly photographers are getting really hot at looking for unauthorised uses of their work on-line. Publishers who have acquired licences for a certain number of years or to cover a certain number of copies have been finding themselves on the receiving end of lawsuits when they have exceeded those terms unknowingly. In most cases settlement is reached relatively quickly but its time-consuming and expensive - damages awarded for such infringement, particularly in the US courts are high.

What are the benefits of getting it right?

If you have comprehensive rights data on all of your assets, the world is your oyster. You can endlessly re-publish, slice and dice, and licence those assets in infinite combinations, broadening the reach of your content and generating lots of additional revenue. Without that data, you don't know what it is possible to sell or licence so you either miss out on those opportunities or become a copyright infringer - risking large financial and reputational penalties in so doing. It makes so much sense to put your rights in order first and set yourself up to fully exploit the content you have invested in.

Which of the 7 ways to avoid risks can you share in advance of the conference?

Make sure you have a rights acquisition policy that is widely known within your organization (and complied with!) getting the right rights in the first place saves you a whole world of pain later on! Guard against the raft of infringement claims now facing publishers by ensuring you can manage licence compliance. Adapt systems and processes to alert you when you are about to exceed licence terms and give you time to re-licence or remove content to avoid infringing.

Clare Hodder is a Rights Consultant with Rights2 consultancy. She has been working with the Publishers Licensing Society to develop PLSclear and delivering Straightforward Permissions and Rights Management workshops. Clare will take part in the Are Your Rights in Order? 7 risks and 7 ways of avoiding them at the ALPSP Conference 2016 at 2pm on Thursday 15 September.

• IP is very important to growth (89% of businesses felt it very important with a further 9% somewhat important)
• Developments in technology were seen as a key growth area for over 50% of respondents
• Over 90% of businesses felt that a stable IP framework was crucial for their business to gain investment

The Alliance's IP Map of the UK

• Cessation of the IP change agenda.  Industry has consistently proved that legislation is appropriate and the Government needs to acknowledge this
• Support for IP in the investment community, which will come from a clear signal of a stable IP framework.
• Representation and defence of the IP-rich creative industries outside the UK.  The UK is second only to the US in exporting music and has one of the largest publishing industries in the world.  

Press release
Manifesto

Pippa Smart: is copyright a business or moral right?

Pippa Smart, Editor of ALPSP Alert and publishing consultant reflects on copyright in this guest post.

"Many years ago I wrote a short “how to get published” guide. Now, I’m not going to pretend it was the best guide ever; I’m sure there are plenty of others (in fact I know there are) that are more succinct, more instructive and more useful to authors. But it was my own work, and I was (quietly) pleased with it. It was downloaded from the company website and – I hope – useful to at least one author, somewhere in the world.

Then I discovered that someone had taken it and reproduced it in a journal. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t flattered, but I was a bit annoyed that my name (and my employer’s) was removed. We wrote to ask for a correction – no reply. So, after a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders we moved on and forgot it – after all, nobody was killed, there was just a little bit of injured pride.

Would we have reacted differently, I wonder if the article had been for sale? Would we have been more concerned if we thought the author benefitted financially rather than just reputationally? Perhaps.

This came to mind recently when a friend of mine had an article she had published in an open access journal posted on a reprints site, being sold for $5. She was furious. She streamed her angst on the airwaves. She named names and pointed fingers. After a few postings reminding her that the CC-BY licence allowed this reprints company to do exactly what they were doing, she calmed a little – then asked her publisher to demand a take-down. The publisher obliged and the reprints site capitulated.

These examples raise several important points. Copyright protection is there to protect authors, not just to make money for big business. And publishers have a duty to help authors protect their rights. Authors care about their content – and may not understand how copyright can protect them, and when it cannot. Add into this mix different legal obligations and cultural expectations, and we live in a complex IPR world.

I forecast more examples like these (copyright and plagiarism) in the next few years. There will be a greater need for publishers to help (and to educate) authors, and a need for them to understand the wider debates about access and the intersection with legal and moral issues. Interesting times."

Pippa is author of ALPSP's eLearning course International Copyright. Take the new online demo for the course and receive up to an hour of free training.

Pippa Smart is a research communication and publishing consultant with over 20 years experience, working for CAB International, Blackwell and Cambridge University Press to name a few. She now researches and writes on publishing issues, runs training courses and runs PSP Consulting. She is the editor of the ALPSP Alert and can be contacted at pippa.smart@gmail.com.

Roy Kaufman is Managing Director, New Ventures at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) where, since 2012, he has been responsible for expanding capabilities as the business develops new services for authors, publishers and other rights holders. Prior to CCC, Kaufman served as lead counsel for the Scientific, Technical, Medical and Scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., working in all areas of licensing, contracts, strategic alliances and online publishing.

Here, Roy highlights considerations publishers should take into account when developing open access models.

“CCC has been providing services around open access since 2006. Through our on-going work with publishers, authors, agents and institutions around OA, we know several things. Publishers are testing different business models to determine what will work best for their organizations. This means taking into account the needs of various stakeholders, effectively collecting fees from authors and funders, managing a whole range of licensing rules at article level, and measuring and testing. 

Five considerations for publishers to take into account when developing an open access business model include:

1. Open access doesn’t necessarily mean free
There are costs involved in publication, and these can be offset in a variety of ways including through collecting of article processing charges, licensing fees for commercial use and others.

2. There are diversified sources of revenue
Open access challenges publishers’ traditional subscription-based business models.

3. There is a new focus on both pre-publication and post-publication transactions
Streamlined transactions are required for authors at pre-publication, and clear communication of licensing options are required post-publication to ensure compliance with funder guidelines.

4. Increased role for intermediaries
The increased complexity of licensing and access requires better technology and scope for trusted, specialist industry partners to deliver an improved customer experience.

5. Measurement, measurement, measurement
As with all new or emerging business models, publishers need to measure and track the impact of pricing to help develop and improve usage and support clear reporting to authors and funding agents.

These five considerations are drawn from a white paper CCC developed earlier this year to help our publisher clients when considering open access. The full version can be downloaded here."

CCC offers ALPSP members 10% off the RightsLink suite of licensing tools. Review information about their open access solution on their website at www.copyright.com/openaccess.

Text and Data Mining: international perspectives, licensing and legal aspects was a Journals Publisher Forum seminar organised in conjunction with ALPSP, the Publishers Association and STM held last week in London. This is the last in a series of posts summarising discussions.

Sarah Faulder, Chief Executive of the Publishers Licensing Society announced they are developing PLS Clear – the PLS clearing house – a central window to handle license requests that will be a rights holder search and discovery service.

Text and data mining involves access to, and usage of, articles in bulk. Researchers need to track and contact potentially hundreds of publishers for permission to mine their text. The PLS service will connect researchers to rights owners for search and discovery.

Publishers already entrust licensing their secondary rights to PLS on a non-exclusive basis. As a result PLS has built arguably the most comprehensive database in the UK of publishers and their content (by ISBN/ISSN and, in due course, by DOI). This is a natural role for PLS and the network of Reproduction Rights Organizations all over the world.

They are testing a single discovery portal through which researchers can both find the appropriate publisher(s) and route their permissions requests to the relevant person in the publishing house. The plans are for a generic clearing house. The first application is text and data mining, but it will have wider usage over time.

Text and data mining presents a technical infrastructure problem first and foremost. Licensing is a necessary means of managing access to content where the scale of access increases risk of leakage and therefore piracy, and puts an unacceptable strain on publisher platforms not designed for systematic crawling and scraping.

Carlo Scollo Lavizzari is legal advisor to STM on copyright law, policy and legal affairs. Lavizzari outlined how structuring a license is easy. Leave rhetoric aside and look to business opportunities, it is about defining the terms, what are the sources, input of content, what does the user do with that content? Where is it stored, what is done with it, can it compete or not, etc. Consider the mechanical clause on delivery mechanisms. Should also deal with the end of project – always have an exit strategy! That is the legal skeleton of a legal license.

There are calls for cooperation between those who hold content in public domain, those who hold open access content, those who hold content that is subscribed to or purchased; those who already hold a lot of purchased contents; and researchers who might want to access/mine. The question they haven’t managed to get through with any community is how to combine open access environment and copyright protected license. It is an area where he believes that licensing can provide a solution, but still trying to tackle.

John Billington works in corporate products and services at Copyright Clearance Center, who’ve been working on their Text and Data Mining Pilot Service. They have developed a pilot service that provides licensed, compliant access and retrieval of full text XML and metadata from multiple scientific publishers for the purposes of text mining.

CCC’s role is to provide an authorized means to access and retrieve published content in a standard format. The initial pilot is focused on corporate users with an access, retrieval and licensing layer. Future markets may include corporate marketing users, or academic uses.

He reflected on how it has been challenging to extract full text from different publishers and convert to a normalized format that is usable in text mining technologies. There is a lack of federation and existing tools are still difficult. They are trying to provide a one-stop shop for users and publishers that incorporate standardization, license and business model and access method that works for both sides.

He noted that a researcher wouldn’t want to be limited to what the library is subscribed to. So the tool will show them the metadata for what they aren’t subscribed to. It will filter to help them understand what they have subscribed to or not. They intend to include a purchase mechanism for full text unsubscribed articles. You will be able to download results in normalized XML format. It currently has a web interface, but they are working on an API so they systematize it.

Ed Pentz from CrossRef closed the day by outlining their latest beta application Prospect. They work on the assumption that researchers aren’t doing search or discovery – researchers will know or will have used another tool. Their service relies on DOI Content Negotiation. They are now collecting ORCID IDs for researchers. In text and data mining it is important to have a unique ID for a researcher so you can see who is doing it. They are also including funding information.

DOI content negotiation can serve as a cross-publisher API for accessing full text for TDM purposes. To make use of hits, publishers merely need to register URIs to full-text. NISO is working on a fuller specification on some metadata. They are focusing on an interim solution to at least record URIs to well known licenses. They think it will also be possible to extend to handle embargoes.

He observed that there’s potential to coordinate across initiatives, but only once each organization has individually figured out during their own trial periods. CrossRef are testing the system over the summer and will then assess if it is workable as a production system.