We are excited to share that, as of today, the UC Berkeley Library’s Office of Scholarly Communication Services (OSCS) is now called Scholarly Communication and Information Policy (SCIP).
We made this change to better serve YOU! We wanted the UC Berkeley campus and the world to understand and rely upon the breadth of services we offer. The inclusion of “information policy” in our name more accurately and effectively communicates our support not just for scholarly publishing, but also for copyright, contracts, licensing, privacy, and ethics matters within research, scholarship, and instruction.
Since 2016, our office has provided (an extraordinary volume of) services to UC Berkeley on fundamental scholarly communication issues, including open access publishing, copyright and fair use in research and instruction, authors’ rights, scholarly impact, and beyond. But we also do much more to guide campus and the Library on related law and policy issues.
To that end, the term “information policy” can be thought of as the application or shaping of laws, regulations, or doctrinal positions affecting information creation, access, and use. And that’s exactly what we do. For example:
- Electronic resource licensing: We negotiate all of the Library’s electronic resources agreements;
- Legal issues in research & teaching: We advise on accessibility, fair use, text and data mining, artificial intelligence, privacy, digital rights management, and intersections with international / foreign laws in research and instruction;
- Permissions & licensing: We oversee permissions and licensing for usage of library materials;
- Special collections rights and contractual issues: We address rights issues and contracts to guide incoming collections and collection digitization;
- Policy creation and advocacy: We advise on University and Library policies affecting scholars’ rights, and engage in broader legislative and regulatory advocacy; and more!
We believe that “information policy” better signals that we cover this wide range of law and policy matters, and are a trusted campus resource for support. Please continue to contact us at our same e-mail address (schol-comm@berkeley.edu) if you need any help, or check out our website (https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/research/scholarly-communication) which remains the same.