The scholarly ecosystem is evolving at an increasing rate due to digital practices. It is imperative that researchers understand emerging issues in scholarly communications, as it affects their research and the institutions that support their research.
From Kevin Gunn's guest post : Digital Scholarship @ CUA: Digital Humanities in the Library
Being involved early in the project planning process, educating scholars about the services that the library can provide, adding subject expertise when necessary, and networking across campus to make resources available for scholarly support, are only a few of the roles librarians can adopt in implementing digital scholarship standards at their institutions.
Open Access – Beginning with the Budapest Open Access Agreement 2002 and the NIH Public Access Policy of 2008 and through the development of Open Access archives like arxiv.org and journals like the Public Library of Science Open Access publication PLoSBiology the Open Access movement encourages research to be accessible to all. Scholarly publication author agreements are often restrictive, but now offer new options to publish an article as an open access article often for a fee. Some institutions have developed Open Access policies (EXAMPLE Harvard's Open Access Policy) and funds to encourage researchers to make their research Open Access.
Institutional Repository – The CUA Institutional Repository (Digital Scholarship @ CUA) began in 2007 on a shared Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) platform. All dissertations (Electronic Theses and Dissertations - ETD) produced through CUA were deposited in this Open Access repository. Organized by academic departments, other research materials like conference proceedings, symposium materials and research data are collected and curated. In 2014, a new platform was proposed and implemented.
Author’s Rights - Researchers are aware of government mandates to provide open access to federally funded research. Researchers know that research activity is a global endeavor and needs to be accessible. Individual authors understand issues around their own copyright and publisher agreements when they publish their research. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Researchers Association (SPARC) through the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) provides guidance through the SPARC Author Addendum to Publication Rights.
Science Commons: Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine: The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will help you generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
Data Services - As a partner in the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), Catholic University Libraries exchange expertise in research data management, digital formats, preservation, and metadata with colleagues at eight other research universities.
Copyright - A form of protection provided by the laws of the United States for "original works of authorship", including literary, dramatic, musical, architectural, cartographic, choreographic, pantomimic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and audiovisual creations. "Copyright" literally means the right to copy but has come to mean that body of exclusive rights granted by law to copyright owners for protection of their work. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, title, principle, or discovery. Similarly, names, titles, short phrases, slogans, familiar symbols, mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, coloring, and listings of contents or ingredients are not subject to copyright. Source: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/definitions.html
@CUA
I. Introduction: The federal Copyright Law (Title 17, United States Code, Section 101
II. Policy: CUA's Copyright Guidelines were developed to assist members of the Catholic University community in complying with federal copyright law and to enable them to distinguish between permitted and prohibited uses of copyrighted materials. Members of the Catholic University community are expected to familiarize themselves with these guidelines and to comply conscientiously with their requirements. Faculty members, staff and other employees who willfully disregard CUA Copyright Policy place themselves individually at risk of legal action. In such cases, the University may refuse to defend the employee named in the court suit and in these suits personal liability may be incurred by the employee. Source: https://policies.catholic.edu/faculty-staff/intellectualproperty/copyright.html
Fair Use - One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of “fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law. Source: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Factors determining copyright are from a list created by Madelyn Wessel (University of Virginia) and Deborah Gerhardt (University of North Carolina) and are used with permission.) Source: http://libraries.cua.edu/access/copyright.cfm