The Rationale of Storage of Publications in Institutional Academic Archives
Institutional academic archives aim to store all academic resources such as books, articles, theses, papers, reports, and digital media produced within the institution and to which the institutional archive is affiliated, and to provide them with Open Access in accordance with copyright to increase their impact. There is no obstacle to the storage of publications produced within universities in institutional academic archives. In fact, it is a legal obligation to store these publications in institutional academic archives.
Publications of researchers working within a state or foundation university are stored in institutional academic archives within the framework of the Higher Education Law No. 2547 and the contract that the researcher made with the workplace. Articles 4 / c, 12 / c, 42 / c and 42 / d of the Higher Education Law No. 2547 are as follows:
Article 4 – Purpose of Higher Education:
“c) As higher educational institutions, to carry out studies and research of high academic level, to promote knowledge and technology, to disseminate scientific findings to assist progress and development at the national level, and, through cooperation with national and international institutions, to become recognized members of the academic world and contribute to universal, contemporary progress.
Article 12 – Duties of the Institutions of Higher Education
“c) To disseminate, in oral, written, or other forms, scientific data and scholarly findings such as might be expected to raise the standard of living of Turkish society and enlighten the public in general.
Article 42 – Intramural Academic Supervision
“c) Each teaching faculty member shall submit to the Rectorate, through the administrator of his/her own unit, a list showing his/her academic research, publications, courses taught, seminars organized, practical work and a copy of each paper presented at an academic congress whether in the country or abroad. If papers have not been published, a type-written copy should be presented to the Rectorate. The rights granted by Law No. 5846 on Copyright are reserved. .
“d) (Amended: 17/8/1983 – 2880/23 art.) The academic publications of the faculty members will be kept in special archives by the universities and by the Council of Higher Education.
Storing publications of employees within the institution in institutional academic archives of universities is a duty given by the Higher Education Law No. 2547. For this reason, there is no obstacle to storing the publications produced on behalf of a university, regardless of the media, in institutional academic archives. As it is known, institutional academic archive directives or policies in universities are prepared on the basis of 4 / c, 12 / c, 42 / d and 42 / c articles of Higher Education Law No. 2547.
Researchers working within the state or foundation university work depending on the institution they belong to within the framework of certain legislation. Therefore, they cannot transfer the copyrights of their research results (articles, papers, books, etc.) from their institution to an unauthorized publisher. Contracts with the publisher cannot be considered valid because of the fact that the employment contract is not taken into consideration in the transfers made without permission from the institution. Researchers should pay attention to this issue in their contracts with publishers.
The most crucial point to be considered when storing publications in institutional academic archives is determining the type of access. In other words, the stored publication should be stored with a suitable one of the Open Access, Embargoed Access, Limited Access or Closed Access options. Storage of a publication in the institutional academic archive does not prevent the researcher’s rights arising from the Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works, as stated in article 42 / c of the Higher Education Law No. 2547. As a result, there is no obstacle to storing the works of a researcher working under a university in accordance with the copyright of the institution’s academic archive system.
How to Check the Copyright Status of the Works to be Stored in the Institutional Archive
The copyright and personal archiving policies of magazine publishers can be checked and stored using the SHERPA / RoMEO list. Currently, about 78% of publishers allow self-archiving.
Use of Creative Commons licenses, where authors determine their rights to use their publications, is encouraged. The Creative Commons Project defends the discourse of “some rights reserved” rather than “all rights reserved”. Instead of preventing any use of the publication by others, it offers four different types of licensing options that indicate that the publications are allowed to be used for educational and research purposes, if necessary, as a basis for other studies, etc.
The rights regarding the protection of intellectual, artistic and scientific works in our country are secured by the Law on Protection of Intellectual and Artistic Works No. 19546 dated 1951. According to this;
Article 23 – “The right to disseminate, lease, lend or sell or make a subject of trade in any way whatsoever a work and its copies obtained by duplication from the original or adaptation of it and to benefit from this way belongs only to the owner of the work. In case the copies of the work duplicated abroad are brought home, the right to promulgate the work at home and to benefit from the work belongs exclusively to the owner of the work…”
Copyrights are valid for all works that are in the scope of archiving policy, have been published before, are in the process of publishing or will be published in the archive for the first time. Since the law of protection of intellectual and artistic works is legitimated for educational and research-based informational purposes, it is already permitted to store and make available the information resources in an electronic environment to serve these purposes.
Article 33 – (Amended: 21/2/2001 – 4630/17 art.) “The free performance of a published work; in all education and training institutions, for the purpose of face-to-face education and training is allowed, provided that there is no direct or indirect profit and the name of the owner and the work is declared in the usual manner.” In the light of the above-mentioned information, in accordance with the legal process, the rights of use of these works in both of the following two cases, in which archiving work takes place, belongs to the owners.
Authors can carry out the transfer of their works to electronic media in accordance with their copyright. Today, the number of publishing houses, which also support the open access movement, is increasing everyday. In order to access the copyright policies of publishers around the world, the “Sherpa7Roemo Publisher Copyright Policies” web page can be viewed.
It is legal to archive electronic copies of scientific studies that have been published or are being published, taking into account the points mentioned above. It will be useful to inform the authors about the copyrights while explaining the policies to be followed on the website of the archive to be created. On the other hand, according to the policy to be determined by the institution, a disclosure can be made for the authors to protect their copyrights as given below. Moreover, a copyright agreement form can be made in line with the requirements.
Examples of Copyright Disclosure
Adopting the principles of the Berlin Declaration adopted in 2003, our institution supports unlimited access to scientific data within the institution. In this case, it is legal to archive the electronic copies of scientific studies within the will of their authors. However, all data in our archive which is used, must be referenced. On the other hand, our research authors should not ignore the principle that knowledge can increase only if it is shared by everyone, considering that the work they presented on Open Access may be copied without permission.
Copyright agreements for the researches who own their theses in electronic media, can be prepared to protect the copyrights, as in the example below:
Any book, article, etc. based on the whole or part of the information on my thesis titled … is authorized by me to be archived in electronic format and to be used and multiplied given that the source is referenced and provided that the right of use belongs to me.