Intellectual Property Law

Congratulations, U of Iowa graduate students!

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

Chronicle.com:

U. of Iowa Reverses New Policy That Would Have Made Nearly All Theses Freely Available Online

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

The University of Iowa has backtracked on a plan to post all graduate students' theses online and make them freely available to the public. The reversal came in response to vigorous protests last week from students in the university's prestigious graduate program in writing, who said that the plan could threaten the commercial value of their novels, plays, and other creative works.

Lola L. Lopes, the interim provost of the university, announced on Monday that the institution won't publish theses from students in the writing programs as open-access documents. The decision affects students who will earn master-of-fine-arts degrees in Iowa's wide-ranging graduate writing concentrations in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, and translation.

"It was only a germ of a thought to begin with," Ms. Lopes said in an interview. "And we have squelched it."

Ms. Lopes sent a written statement to all of the writing students and the professors who lead the writing programs, informing them of her decision. The university is on its spring break this week.

...

This whole event should clarify the difference between default open access policies for faculty (who, after all, are employees of the university and often the state and often depend on federal research money to support their research) and graduate students (who often pay their own way or produce research that chiefly benefits their faculty mentors).

Also, it clarifies the difference between creative work and general academic work.

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).