Who owns their research?
Last spring, I did a few talks on scholarly communication for the campus community. I won’t say they were entirely a flop, because I met some useful people and picked up some stuff for the repository from them… but I will say I was disappointed by the (lack of) response.
Well, I’m about to take another whack at the problem, and with any luck do it right this time. The problem last time was that I’m a scholarly-communication hound. I love this stuff. I find it utterly fascinating. In a word, I’m obsessed.
Faculty aren’t. I call them “the slumbering behemoth” for a reason. Sure, they ought to give a damn who owns their stuff. They don’t, or they think wrongly that they own it. I forgot that.
So the message is getting punched up a bit. I’m calling the new talk “Who owns your research?” and keeping it to nuts-and-bolts information (not to say propaganda—okay, okay, yes, it’s propaganda) about publishing agreements and self-protection from same.
Anybody want to beta-read this thing when I’m done with it? I’ll credit you and love you forever. It’ll be released with a CC license, so you don’t have to beta-read it to use and adapt it.