HEFCE IPR in E-Learning report 2006/20 - Will it have an impact?

The Higher Education Funding Council for England have published a report on IPR in e-learning programmes aimed at senior managers within HE and FE. The report focuses on HEI ownership rights and the importance of making staff, students and third parties aware of their rights whilst being respectful to such groups. It highlights many common situations that can occur amongst these stakeholders and ways around such situations and ways of reducing the risk of disputes occurring between such parties.

Despite the report being informative and useful for institutions, it is unclear whether the recommendations of the report will be implemented within an institutional environment. In the past, the majority of senior managers have been uninterested in IPR and it is unknown whether the report will get digested and have an impact within institutions.

The report highlights a number of legal frameworks and the relationships of institutions, employed staff, students and collaborative third parties. For a long time now a set of clear guidelines for staff, students, other institutions and third parties has been needed to ensure that each stakeholder is aware of the IPR issues and legal situation. The report states that "Every HEI needs to establish a clear, preferably plain English, IPR policy and disseminate it widely across the organisation, including IT guidelines and codes of practice for staff and students" and I agree. This is becoming increasingly important due to the increase in e-learning usage and the increased need to share research and teaching material through systems such as Institutional Repositories and social networking/software sites.

The report also highlights the assistance that is available to institutions in order to combat the problem of rights unawareness and in order to distinguish a clear and plain english IPR policy, including JISC Legal. I'm not convinced whether institutions make use of this support or whether they follow some of the recommendations highlighted in the document. It could be another case where important issues get brushed under the carpet and don't get dealt with because of the lack of knowledge. This report aims to bridge the unawareness gap and to educate managers and other staff about a range of rights issues.

The full report can be found at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006/06_20/ and is 81 pages long, however, the first 31 pages is the written report and the latter 50 is in Annex's of model licence agreements that could be used within institutions.

The popularity and truths of Creative Commons Licences

There has been much talk in recent years about the use of Creative Commons licences, their suitability for use and their pros and cons.

Korn and Oppenheim (2006) explore the these licences and the consideration of using such licences for their works or within an institutional setting. They state that such licences are " driven by those who believe in free and open exchange of digital content"

The full article can be found at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue49/korn-oppenheim/ and is well worth a read.


From researching into Creative Commons licences , some key points have been discovered;

- They cannot be used in a restrictive environment and therefore promote Open Access. I.e. they could used within an Institutional Repository that restricted access to items.
- They cannot be modified in anyway and then be used with a work.
- The majority of the Creative Commons licences require derivative works (works that are modified) to be distributed under an exact licence that the original work was published.
- They cater for many different countries, and use the relevent jurisdictions for each.

Creative Commons licences are being more widely used and recognised by a variety of people throughout the world of HE and FE and it looks likely that this will continue.

Welcome to the Copyright Cog!

Welcome to the Copyright Cog - keeping you up to date with copyright issues related to digital repositories in Higher and Further Education.

Links to articles, websites and information surrounding copyright and related issues will be posted. Thoughts, opinions and interests will also appear here!