Purpose This article explores the challenges related to copyright policies in the context of science and engineering open access (OA) journals based in Korea.
Methods From Korea Citation Index (KCI)-listed science and engineering journals in English indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or Scopus, 162 journals were identified as of January 10, 2024. Of these, 104 were published independently by Korean academic societies. All were open access. Data were collected from the KCI database and verified via each journal’s website. Discrepancies were resolved using the journal website information.
Results The English-language science and engineering OA journals published independently by Korean academic societies typically exhibit three common characteristics regarding their copyright and licensing policies. First, authors are generally required to transfer their copyrights. Second, the Creative Commons (CC) license terms are predominantly BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial), without providing authors the option to select alternative licensing terms. Third, the journals do not sufficiently protect the rights of the authors. From the analyses presented herein, it is evident that the current copyright and licensing policies of Korea’s English-language science and engineering OA journals lack a robust structure.
Conclusion These policies need to be revised to allow authors to retain copyright and require them to consent for the CC license terms it adopts, in order to align with the common practice among OA journals. Furthermore, to better protect authors’ rights, it would be beneficial to permit authors to choose the specific terms of the CC license for their articles.
Serious concerns have been raised about the Morisky Medication Adherence Scales (MMAS-4 and MMAS-8) ever since researchers from Asia and other regions were claimed to have used the MMAS without a license. Donald Morisky and his team have claimed that numerous authors have infringed copyright, trademark, or other rights over the MMAS. This case study will scrutinize whether the MMAS is protected by any intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark. In many cases, the authors have not applied the MMAS for their research, but have only introduced or described the MMAS in papers that are accessible and open to the public. The MMAS is a measure to keep track of and check the regularity and accuracy with which patients take their medications; it is not meant as a diagnosis and does not form a basis for treatment plans. If another researcher rephrases the questions in a way that achieves a certain level of originality, not infringing the original expressions of the MMAS, then Morisky and his team may not be able to claim infringement of its copyright. Even assuming that the MMAS is subject to copyright, the authors can raise a “fair use” defense. Concerted actions may be necessary for researchers to protect academic integrity and the public nature of scholarly works. The fair use of the MMAS in a scholarly article should not be barred by false copyright infringement claims.
Citations
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