Copyright and licensing of E-journals: Perspective from E-journals in J-STAGE

Abstract

While E-journals become popular among researchers, publishing businesses have been converting from print to online, resulting in the regulation of usage and copyrights being revised to fit such changes for license businesses. However, E-journals in Japan still provide free services and have not caught up with the change of regulations that relate to license and copyright matters. It is also not clear how societies in Japan will adopt to open access movements. This paper describes some results of a survey of E-journals on the J-STAGE platform showing some problems and potential solutions for copyright and license matters of scholarly publishing in Japan. It also describes a potential advantage in Japan which may lead to a new model for scholarly publishing.