Juggling copyright and open access in the 21st century: a South African case study

Abstract

With the establishment of an Institutional Repository (IR) one of the first questions the organisation should ask is: ‘How could we promote Open Access (OA) and still adhere to the restrictions of copyright? The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa has also had to deal with this duality. The main purpose of this paper is to share the processes and systems that ensure that the CSIR adheres to legal requirements while providing OA to research publications. For copyright clearance the CSIR makes extensive use of SHERPA RoMEO. However, the most important mechanism used is the document management workflow system. The system manages the reporting of all explicit intellectual outputs – OA and proprietary. This paper aims to highlight how publications archived in an IR can be shared and disseminated without legal infringements and highlights some of the global initiatives that the CSIR is tracking to participate in the process of ensuring better flow of information to and from developing countries. It also provides clear evidence that traditional copyright processes and OA can exist together harmoniously.