Princeton Moves to Open Access for Scholarly Works

Given my previous blog entry on Princeton University and its copyright policy, I thought it fair to show the recent change on Princeton’s policy with respect to copyright for scholarly works for faculty. The university approved a change to its copyright policy to encourage open access. Under the policy, the university is granted a non-exclusive right to make the faculty articles available. The university claims its intended purpose is to prevent faculty from giving away all of their rights in publishing the articles in scholarly journals (which charge fees for their works). It is interesting to note that the university claims that the faculty maintains their exclusive rights in all of their works. (Which seems somewhat contrary to the university’s actions with other works – see previous blog entry.) Of course, faculty members may seek waivers. The university makes it seem that they are following in the footsteps of other universities and hopes that it will force journals to amend their publishing contracts thereby preventing granting full rights to the publishers. This is an interesting concept. I do not know how successful it will be or who stands to benefit the most. The FAQ at the end also provides some insight into the potential impact.

My School Infringed My Homework

On May 13, 2010, the blog located at Redstate.com posted Elena Kagan’s senior thesis To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933 from Princeton University.

Subsequently, the blogger received a notice from Princeton University to remove the copy of the thesis from her website. See notice here. The Princeton University Archives claims that the copies provided are governed by U.S. Copyright Law, are for private individual use only and electronic distribution is prohibited.

This got me thinking…how did Princeton University Archives obtain rights to this thesis? Clearly Princeton University could not claim that they were the author, unless the student, in this case, Elena Kagan, was employed by Princeton University and the thesis was prepared in the context of her employment. (Ed. – for what students pay to attend most universities, no student produced material should ever be considered a work made for hire.) The rights of an educational institution with respect to a student - produced work is quite a quagmire and includes issues of authorship and fair use / educational purposes defenses, among others. It should not be.

The student created the work. The student should be free to do what they wish with the work and not be subjected to what the school would do with the submitted work. At least on this level I will give Princeton some credit….

This is when I found a copy of the senior thesis of Michelle Obama (then Robinson) from Princeton University on the Politico blog and figured out what Princeton University had – a limited license.