building a repository of publishing contracts

7 Responses to building a repository of publishing contracts

  1. Dude, I would totally share my publishing contracts. Not that I have many. Maybe two. I almost wonder whether the best format for this is instead a Google spreadsheet with a form, à la the Adjunct Spreadsheet. Probably not, though, since people would be interested to read the whole text. Which means you’re looking at a database of PDFs or docs, and then relying on our old frenemy descriptive metadata to make the repository useful. Hmmm.

  2. Great idea. I think this would also be helpful for libraries with institutional repositories in dealing with the copyright clearance funtimes. I can’t tell you how much of a pain it can be to find publisher agreements on publisher websites – they hide them on purpose!

    For the ‘sharing the scholarly process’ angle, I know Heather Piwowar is also trying to get people to open up about their publishing process experiences.

  3. In the contracts I’ve looked at, there are no non-disclosure statements. The contracts might be subject to copyright but that doesn’t mean that we can’t share the ones that we’ve signed—it’s one of the reasons I’m suggesting we share our specific contracts rather than generic ones.

  4. I won’t be at THATCamp Prime, but I am also interested in contracts other people have signed. I’m currently in the process of negotiating with a publisher about publishing a print book, which would be preceded by an OA/CC digital project on the same topic. I’m calling it a digital project rather than a digital edition, because it is not going to be replicated in full as a print book. The digital project will have more depth/breadth than the manuscript (i.e. full text transcriptions, digital artifacts), but there would be a large percentage appearing in digital form prior to the publication of the print book. We’re trying to figure out the language to use in a contract so that the digital project remains under my full copyright (CC). Does anyone have any examples of such an agreement, if so, please send me a line (anna.kijas at uconn.edu)