ULC Annual Report 1994-95

Intellectual Property Subcommittee

The subcommittee set as its immediate goal for this academic year arriving at a set of practical recommendations to begin addressing the intellectual property/scholarly communications crisis at the campus level. The consensus of the subcommittee was that current internal performance review practices (e.g. merit, tenure, promotion), together with external grant review/renewal practices, were primary factors contributing to the publications explosion most academic disciplines have experienced in recent decades. The emphasis on quantity over quality in many arenas contributes to the proliferation of unrefereed or marginally-refereed journals and conference proceedings whose contributions to the discipline in question can often be characterized as minimal, but for which libraries must pay dearly to collect.

The subcommittee is working on a set of recommendations regarding intellectual property issues that it envisions as the first step in a series of recommendations that would ultimately form part of a 3-5 year "Strategic Plan" for addressing the intellectual property crisis on campus. Among the items under discussion are educating faculty and students on intellectual property, the university's role in supporting university presses and the publications of scholarly societies, the faculty's role as primary producers/consumers of intellectual property, cancellation of journal subscriptions based on an assessment of value (i.e. cost per use), and electronic publication.

Last modified July 7, 1998