Hi all,
Our Special Collections department is digitizing older dissertation/theses to make them available open access on HathiTrust. They ask the authors for permission to do so.
Most authors agree apparently (many are flattered that “my dissertation from 1982 is of interest!”
😊). But in some disciplines there are dissertations that include author’s previously published articles in scholarly journals. And these authors ask
me about the copyright situation since the copyright, especially in the old pre-OA days, was transferred to the publisher. The authors don’t want to contact the publisher to ask for permission to make the work OA and certainly don’t want to pay a fee. And
the publisher policies are not really clear about open access of paywalled articles that are part of dissertations. HathiTrust has a Take-Down Policy, but some authors are very cautious.
Does any of you provide guidance on this issue and what guidance would this be?
Best
Michael
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Michael Ladisch
Scholarly Communication Officer
University of California Davis, Library
100 North West Quad
Davis, CA 95616-5292
(530) 752-6385