[Rdap] News from the Dept of Education

[Daureen Nesdill]

Just learned from SLA about this response.
Daureen

From: Rdap [mailto:rdap-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Daureen Nesdill
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 2:59 PM
To: Research Data, Access and Preservation
Subject: [Rdap] News from the Dept of Education

Hi,
Thought I would share information From the Dept of Education
Federal Register had this announcement on Nov 3rd
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/FR-2015-11-03/2015-27930

I went back to the CFR to learn about this FR announcement.
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/11/03/2015-27930/open-licensing-requirement-for-direct-grant-programs#h-9

For policies related to publications and research data resulting from ED funded research see http://ies.ed.gov/funding/researchaccess.asp  It is more or less the same as other agencies.
Additionally, the proposed regulations would not apply to grants that provide funding for general operating expenses, grants that provide support to individuals (e.g., scholarships, fellowships), or peer-reviewed research publications that arise from scientific research funded, either fully or partially, from grants awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences (Institute) that are already covered by the Institute's existing public access policy, found at http://ies.ed.gov/funding/researchaccess.asp.

This proposed policy has to do with educational materials and the announcement is letting us know that we are presently in the comment period.
We believe that the wide variety of educational materials created through the Department's discretionary competitive grants should be shared more broadly with the public. Even though current policy allows the public to access grant-funded resources for use for Federal Government purposes by seeking permission from the Department, the public rarely requested access to these copyrighted materials, possibly due to administrative barriers, lack of clarity regarding the scope of Federal Government purposes, or lack of information about available products. We believe that removing barriers and clarifying usage rights to these products, including lesson plans, instructional plans, professional development tools, and other teaching and learning resources will benefit the Department's diverse stakeholders and will benefit teaching and learning.

Under the current practice the awardees of ED grants  are able to commercialize on the educational materials produced as a result of grants. ED wants them to be easily accessible to the public. ED wants the educational materials openly licensed to the public.
The comment period ends Dec 3, 2015. Send comments to Sharon Leu, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW., room 6W252, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 453-5646 or by email: tech at ed.gov<mailto:tech at ed.gov>

Presently -
Under current regulations, grantees that create copyrightable works as part of a grant program retain unlimited rights to copyright and royalty income while the Department also retains a royalty-free, non-exclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use, and to authorize others to use without cost, works created with Department grant funds for Federal Government purposes. These rights are assigned to the grantee at the time of the grant award and no further action is necessary to designate these rights. Grantees may establish terms and conditions that permit use and re-use of their works to any member of the public, for each instance of use or for each created work.

Being proposed -
Proposed changes to the regulation would require that grantees openly license copyrightable works to enable the public to use the work without restriction, so long as they provide attribution to the grantee as the author of the works or the holder of the copyright and author, if different. While the type of license will differ depending on the type of work created, applying an open license to a grant product typically involves the addition of a brief license identification statement or insertion of a license icon. This could occur following the development of the product, at the same time that the disclaimer currently required under 34 CFR 75.620<https://www.federalregister.gov/select-citation/2015/11/03/34-CFR-75.620> is applied.
In this context, the proposed regulations could reduce commercial incentives for an eligible entity to apply to participate in a discretionary grant program. For example, under some competitive grant programs, grant recipients have produced materials that were subsequently sold or licensed to third parties, such as publishing companies or others in the field. Although an open license does not preclude the grantee or any individual from developing commercial products and derivatives from the grant funded material, it does remove the competitive advantage that these grantees currently possess as the exclusive copyright holder. In addition, publishers and other third parties may incur loss of revenue since their commercial product will potentially compete with freely available versions of a similar product. We note, however, that based on the Department's program offices' past grantmaking experiences, relatively few grantees develop and market copyrighted content paid for with Department funds.

I think they should follow the procedures laid out for peer-reviewed publications and have a 12 month embargo period for those groups that want to commercialize their products. The grantee and the ED would receive revenue. Maybe the ED should think about promoting commercialization.

Daureen

Daureen Nesdill, MS, MLIS
Research Data Management Librarian
The Faculty Center @ the J. W. Marriott Library
University of Utah
801-585-5975
daureen.nesdill at utah.edu<mailto:daureen.nesdill at utah.edu>
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0126-5038


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kunverj.com/pipermail/rdap/attachments/20151112/359c6370/attachment.html>