Copyright and Scholarship—Achieving a Balance

Barbara Wilson

Academic publishers’ use of copyright to benefit from the publication of research, particularly in the STM area, has encouraged the rise of new models of scholarly publication aimed at freeing up access to this material, notably “open access”. In addition, the extension of periods of copyright protection in the US and Australia, and the restrictions of “fair use” (US) and “fair dealing” (Australia), can be considered to work against the dissemination and creation of knowledge, in all fields of scholarly (and other) endeavour. This has also encouraged the rise of alternative models of knowledge sharing, such as Creative Commons.