As a member of both IPOsgoode and the , Professor is well placed to explain why it is not. She recently presented "A Feminist Copyright Agenda: Open Access, Attribution, and the Academy" as part of the Greenberg Speakers Series. Her presentation was based on her paper with Joseph Turcotte and Rosemary Coombe in the open access journal ,

Feminist Legal Theory, she noted, involves looking at laws and legal systems and understanding how and why they reinforce patriarchal power structures. Those problems stretch beyond obvious areas like Criminal and Family law and into all the reaches of the law. IP law is no exception. If this is the information age, information might be the most important source of power. Copyright is how we protect that power.

Prof. Craig went on to talk about the relative invisibility of copyright in our daily lives. We interact with copyright-protected material constantly in our work, in our research and study, in our downtime when we're binge-watching Netflix. But we rarely think about the laws and licensing details that dictate what information we can have, when we can have it, and how much we are going to pay for it.

The key question she raised was, under current copyright law, whose speech are we encouraging and whose speech are we devaluing?

She looked at the question through the lens of academic publishing, calling out the problems with the current closed-journal model in which men are more likely to get their work published and to have that work cited and thus have more work published; in which access to research results is restricted to those who are affiliated with institutions who can afford the steep price tag of journal subscriptions; in which treating the written word as individual property ignores the reality that academic work is not produced in isolation but builds on shared ideas and shared relationships.

She advocated for an open access model of publishing, not as a final solution to the problem of copyright and the reinforcement of traditional power structures, but as a step in the right direction. Using tools like and licences, feminists can turn the legal force of property ownership against itself in a kind of copyright karate. The same right to control your own work that is normally used to lock up research can be used to set it free.

This is a distinctly feminist approach, she argued, because the emphasis on sharing and attribution in open licences reflects the feminist relationship-centered view of creativity and knowledge sharing. It de-privileges the market-driven perspective and can reduce exclusion and gatekeeping.

Prof. Craig did not ignore the reality that open access publishing may also be used to reinforce existing power structures. She repeated some of the criticisms of the movement: that sharing women's work freely may simply be devaluing it; that the costs associated with open access publishing mean it is still only available to those with institutional support; that the increasing emphasis on collecting data about views and citations might reinforce existing power structures.

While she acknowledged that these problems are real, Prof. Craig contends that they can be overcome if feminist scholars develop deliberate, thoughtful practices around citation and amplification of women's voices. They must continually question whose voices they are hearing and sharing and strive to diversity those relationships. They must reconsider who and what is considered authoritative. By applying these feminist principles in their interactions with academia, feminist scholars can reshape academic strictures into structures that support and engage their female peers.

It may not be an easy fight, but it certainly seems like a fight worth fighting.

Jacquilynne Schlesier is an IPilogue Editor and a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

The post Feminist Copyright is Not a Non Sequitur appeared first on IPOsgoode.

These announcements are part of a growing open access movement. The goal of this movement is to ensure the widest possible access to scholarship and research in recognition that greater access will lead to greater impact. Increased accessibility means that more people are able to read, expand on, scrutinize, comment on, and use the information. This has long been a goal of academia but advances in information technology are now making such wide distribution more practical.

Momentum is being built at all levels in the research chain from funding, to creation, to publication.

At the funding level, major granting agencies around the world, including the in the United States, are beginning to attach open access publishing requirements to their funding. In Canada, such policies have been adopted by , , and with and slowly moving in this direction.

At the creator level, as mentioned above, the faculty at Harvard and now MIT are leading the way in adopting so called ‘self archiving’ polices that mandate that they place copies of their work in freely accessible institutional repositories. In addition, other institutions such as Canada’s have previously adopted non-mandatory policies encouraging self archiving. In fact, the links to 31 institutions around the world that have some form of open access mandate. However, the momentum extends beyond these important institutional policies to the many individual faculty members at other institutions who are individually self-archiving their work in other freely accessible repositories.

At the publication level, there is a growing trend by individual journals to adopt open access policies and make their contents freely accessible online or at the very least adopting copyright contracts with their contributing authors that allow those authors to self-archive. Momentum in this area can be seen in the recently signed . The statement is signed by library directors from the top law schools in the US and calls for their schools to implement open access, digital publication of their respective law journals in place of print formats. While statistics on the number of journals that have adopted open access policies vary, the lists 3,999 open access journals and estimates as to the number of journals that will allow authors to self archive are as high as -%.

Open access to scholarly articles is of particular importance to the legal community. Legal scholarship plays an important role in challenging and advancing the way we think about and apply the law. More so than in many areas, legal scholarship is frequently used outside of academia. Practitioners, the judiciary, and policy makers can all benefit from increased access to this information to be better advocates and to enhance our legal system. Open access is also important beyond this cabal of sophisticated users, it is essential if we want to further inform and engage the broader public on important legal issues. We need to look no further than the remarkable example of how ’s work providing open access to case law is affecting the way legal information is being accessed to see the importance this movement can have in the field of law.

It is important that we all become engaged on the issue of open access both so that we can continue building momentum here in Canada at our law schools and in our legal journals, and so that we stay informed of the new availability of these accessible sources.

The post Open Access to Scholarly Work Gaining Momentum appeared first on IPOsgoode.