IP Caucus proposal submitted

[Mike Edwards]

Hi all,

It's in! I'll follow through with Eileen Maley tomorrow to make sure
it goes where it's supposed to. Description follows.

Best,

ME

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Intellectual Property in Composition Studies

Session Description = The Caucus on Intellectual Property and
Composition/Communication Studies (CCCC-IP) invites composition
teachers and scholars who are concerned with issues of copyright, fair
use, openness, remix, access, and the ownership and use of
intellectual property (IP) to its annual meeting. The Caucus is the
public and open counterpart to the work of the CCCC Committee on
Intellectual Property, and since 1994 has sponsored explorations of IP
issues pertinent to teachers, scholars, and students. All are welcome
to the practical and action-focused meetings, where participants work
in roundtables to discuss topics such as plagiarism and authorship,
student and teacher IP rights, open access and open source policies,
and best practices in teaching students and instructors about IP.
Roundtable leaders provide overviews of their topics, and participants
then create action plans, develop lobbying strategies, and produce
documents for political, professional, and pedagogical use. At the end
of the workshop, participants reconvene to share their plans and
recommendations for future action.

Roundtable 1: Legal and Legislative Developments

This roundtable hosts a discussion of the year's legal and legislative
IP developments as they affect students and educators. In previous
years our colleagues at this table have discussed the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which under some circumstances can
have an adverse impact on what students and faculty are able to
accomplish in the classroom. Other subjects of discussion have
included the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect
Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), each proposed in 2011 and withdrawn
in 2012 in the face of intense criticism. Discussions have also
touched on court cases being closely watched by the educational
community, such as one involving Georgia State University's system of
electronic reserves. No matter what the specific topics, discussion
will revolve around finding ways to safeguard the ability of students
and teachers to make appropriate use of copyrighted material in
furtherance of legitimate educational goals.

Roundtable 2: Sharing IP Stories: Teaching IP, Copyright/left, and Openness

This table invites teachers 1) to share their stories, resources, and
successful pedagogies for teaching the complex and overlapping issues
of intellectual property, plagiarism, and copyright in composition
classes, and 2) to plan ways to distribute these pedagogies, as voices
that can counteract the rhetoric of fear and criminality pervading
discourse on IP. Examples of sharing include IP stories uploaded to
the DALN (Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives) to reach a large
community, perhaps even beyond composition studies.

Roundtable 3: Advocating for Open Access in Composition Studies

This roundtable seeks to identify strategies composition and rhetoric
teachers and scholars might use to foster greater acceptance and use
of Open Access practices within and beyond our discipline. Open Access
(OA) practices are increasingly important in an economic climate of
rising subscription fees for scholarly journals and initiatives for
the privatization of public knowledge, as evidenced by Reed Elsevier's
sponsoring of the Research Works Act that sought to close off public
access to taxpayer-funded scholarship. Discussion focuses on issues of
Green and Gold OA, funding concerns associated with scholarly
publication (including attention to OA-aligned imprints such as CCDP
and Parlor Press that publish composition scholarship), citation
impact, and aligning possible lobbying strategies with NCTE's DC
office.

Roundtable 4: Evolving IP Policies for Journals

Evolving IP policies and applications of copyright are shaping
scholarly journals and publication practices. This table focuses on
two cases. First, publishers of scientific journals have begun to
establish new IP policies, as they respond to greater numbers of
authors; distributed, open-access venues for displaying data; a
perceived rise in scientific fraud cases; and new templates for
article formats. These developments are noteworthy as the policies of
scientific journals tend to influence academic publishing as a whole.
Second, some journal publishers are now requiring copyright
permissions be secured for article epigraphs, treating them as
different that quotations analyzed within the body of a text. This
roundtable updates participants on the latest policies and their
potential impact on Writing Studies.

--
Mike Edwards, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Philosophy
United States Military Academy
314 Lincoln Hall, Building 607
West Point, NY 10996

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy
Topoi Editor :: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/

Conference on College Composition and Communication
Intellectual Property Caucus Senior Chair 2012-2013