Public Lecture
Thursday 6 March 2025, 18:00 (BST); BG110
The event is free to attend, but registration is required. Please e-mail Prof. Dinusha Mendis at dmendis@bournemouth.ac.uk to book your place.
Copyright is generally understood to protect the interests of authors and incentivise the creation of works. In the field of academic publishing, however, current practice requires the transfer or exclusive licensing of copyright from researcher-authors to the publishers of scientific journals – thus limiting access to the material experts need to produce research. While in an analogue world the distribution of print journals was essential for the dissemination of scientific information, digital technologies offer alternative options. In light of the ongoing serials crisis – i.e., the rising subscription costs for scholarly journals that strains academic institutions’ budgets – criticism has intensified. The consequences are particularly troublesome for publicly funded research, where the result is the appropriation of publicly funding by private entities. This reality underpins recent calls for release of publicly funded research under Open Access (OA). Various tactics to encourage OA publishing have emerged at both the legislative and non-legislative level. This presentation will examine the ways in which current European copyright law inhibits access to and reuse of scientific publications and considers possible solutions.
Dr Christina Angelopoulos is an is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, where she specialises in Intellectual Property Law. She is a member of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) and a Senior Member of Newnham College. She is also a regular visiting lecturer and researcher at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and a joint managing editor of the Kluwer Copyright Blog. Alongside her academic work, Christina has conducted work for the European Commission, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and various NGOs active in the field of copyright.
