Open Access, Creative Commons Licensing and Plagiarism: Clearing Up Some Copyright Confusion

The primary goal of this presentation is to provide participants with a working understanding of the relationship between copyright law and open access publishing, Creative Commons licenses, and plagiarism. Open access publishing models get confused with public domain materials. Typically, open access journals are available for free but the authors retain the copyright ownership of their works. So, while open access articles etc. may be freely used, the copyrights of the owners remain intact and must be honored. Creative Commons licensing is in some respects similar to open access publishing. Creative Commons licenses afford copyright owners a free and easy to use method of publishing their works with a "terms of use" attached. That "terms of use" is the Creative Commons license. Copyright owners, for free, select the license that suits their purposes, attach the symbol from the Creative Commons web site, and then publish their works. Users are then allowed to use that work within the limits of the license chosen by the author/owner. Copyright law does not protect ideas, it protects the expression of ideas. This is what is known in copyright law as the idea/expression dichotomy. Consequently, from the perspective of copyright law, there is nothing wrong (i.e. illegal) about taking an idea from someone else and creating your own version of it, i.e., expressing it in your own way. Nevertheless, taking someone else's ideas without giving them credit is plagiarism which can and sometimes does have negative professional consequences particularly in academic and research settings. Open access works, Creative Commons licenses and plagiarism will be examined in relation to questions of copyright ownership and possible copyright infringement.