Today’s guest post is written by the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship (JCEL). JCEL is a US-based open access journal that covers the same topics we are interested in at copyrightliteracy.org and we were very pleased to have a paper we co-wrote with Inga-Lill Nilsson published in the journal last year. We will let Carla, Tucky, Micah and Katie explain what JCEL is all about…
Copyright permeates many aspects of the services libraries, archives, museums, and educational institutions offer. Too often, practitioners in the field do not receive instruction in the law; or they find misleading information that perpetuates pervasive misconceptions. Increasingly, however, professionals are specializing in copyright law, as well as other relevant intellectual property (IP) considerations (e.g., privacy law) that impact their organizations. Given the open and collaborative nature of these fields, the work of these individuals is often not limited solely to their place of employment. Many, along with legal experts and thought leaders, actively seek out opportunities to share their knowledge with colleagues across the profession and advance their own knowledge of the law by learning from their peers. As a result, in the past decades we’ve seen an increase in the number and scope of opportunities available for librarians, educators, archivists, and museum staff to learn about the law from reputable and knowledgeable individuals working on the front lines addressing IP issues at their institutions. These opportunities include webinars, conference sessions, conferences, institutes and other intensive training opportunities, and scholarly publications.
The Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship (JCEL) has had the good fortune to be partners in many such initiatives. JCEL was founded as a peer-reviewed open-access publication for original articles, reviews and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships, and impact of copyright law on public, school, academic, and digital libraries, archives, museums, and research institutions and their educational initiatives. JCEL is dedicated to the principle that quality copyright information authored by practitioners in these fields should be freely available to everyone.
To date, JCEL’s manuscripts have had over 100,000 abstract views and over 53,000 downloads. You can find the JCEL issue archive here. We are excited to have recently begun rolling publication of our eighth issue (vol. 4, issue 1), which includes an article on innovative ways of providing copyright instruction in a conference setting as well as a tool that helps users identify the proper Rights Statement to attach to a work. We also just put out a call for proposals for a special issue in the fall that will explore copyright considerations impacting libraries and academia in the time of COVID-19.
Some of our most popular articles in terms of citations and downloads include Josh Bolick’s Leveraging Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Undermine Embargo, which has been viewed over 11,000 times, and Will Cross’s More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library, which has been cited in College & Research Libraries, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Collection Management, and other journals. Our article discussing Harvard’s Fair Use Week is cited on Wikipedia’s entry on Controlled Digital Lending, adding peer-reviewed information to help bring clarity to this current and important issue.
As part of these efforts, JCEL has partnered with other groups who share our passion for copyright education. This includes publishing a special issue that highlights information and research presented at the Kraemer Copyright Conference, publishing articles based upon presentations from the Miami University Libraries Copyright Conference, and a forthcoming special issue from the Triangle Scholarly Communications Institute that will feature research being conducted by Kyle Courtney, Will Cross, Eric Harbeson, Carrie Russell, Tucker Taylor related to Scholarly Communication in a Consumer-Licensed World: Understanding and Reducing the Legal Risk of Commercial Platforms for Popular Media.
We have also been delighted to work with international colleagues to help promote awareness and understanding of the law. This includes publishing a special issue of JCEL in conjunction with the IFLA World Library and Information Congress that explored models for copyright education in information literacy programs. We are excited to work with the coordinators of copyrightliteracy.org and ICEPOPS to promote the wonderful work they are doing to educate copyright specialists and non-specialists, librarians, archivists, curators, learning technologists, educational developers, teachers, lecturers, publishers and creators involved in copyright education in a fun and informative way.
Libraries, archives, museums, and educational institutions play a critical role in society by providing the public with access to quality information, research, art, and cultural resources, all of which help us lead informed and enriched lives. As a profession, we are also enriched when we share our knowledge and experience with others. We encourage readers to take advantage of opportunities identified here and others provided by reputable individuals and organizations to expand their understanding of the law. We also hope that you will get involved with these efforts by sharing your knowledge and experience working with copyright via presentations and publications as, together, we can help ensure we’re acting as good stewards of the variety of resources provided to us, including user rights found (e.g., fair use/fair dealing) in the law!
JCEL Editors-in-Chief
Carla Myers
Miami University
University of South Carolina
Micah Zeller
Washington University in St. Louis
Katie Zimmerman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copyright Literacy 
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