The Libraries’ Will Cross receives a Fulbright to study open knowledge and copyright across the EU

Will Cross, Director of the Libraries’ Open Knowledge Center (OKC) and Head of Information Policy, will be a 2022-2023 Fulbright-Schuman Innovation Fellow studying the future of copyright law and open knowledge practices and policies across the EU.

His project, titled “Community-Based Copyright Literacy in the European Union: Codes of Fair Practice as Core Open Knowledge Infrastructure,” will be centered in the Netherlands where he will study the copyright literacy practices of Dutch researchers, conduct comparative research across the EU and explore the Codes of Fair Practice model for knitting together national laws in order to create shared open knowledge practices. As a Fulbright-Schuman Fellow, Cross will work with partners including the Institute for Information Law (IViR) in the Netherlands and consortium members participating in the reCreating Europe Project.

“In my own work, navigating unclear or misaligned copyright rules has been a major roadblock,” Cross says. “Whether it’s training under-resourced librarians in the Library Copyright Institute or developing inclusive, student-centered OER for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, the perceived mismatch between American fair use law and the copyright exceptions of other nations has made it harder to share our expertise and solve problems at a global scale. This project will help develop the reliable, transferable copyright practices that have been the missing ingredient from everything from open access research to open and inclusive pedagogy.”

Throughout the EU, many scholars are moving toward open knowledge models, sharing their research, data and educational materials free from barriers of cost and reuse in order to make their work more efficient, impactful and equitable. As a lawyer, librarian, and researcher in the Open Knowledge Center, Cross’ work is focused on developing the core legal and intellectual infrastructure needed to develop a global body of open knowledge. 

“We launched the OKC last year in order to align with and help drive the global shift toward public and open science, open education and pedagogy and public and digital humanities,” he says. “These movements—which are building a more just, inclusive, and publicly-engaged model of scholarship—require rules that are clearly understood and that reflect the values at the heart of this work. My research with the Fulbright will sustain and expand the Libraries leadership in navigating the interdisciplinary, open future of knowledge production.”

With partners at the IViR and the reCreating Europe Project, Cross plans to explore and document efforts to open up knowledge, whether through the removal of an article’s paywall, the support of text and data mining of a corpus or the development of the broad constellation of rights needed to fight a global pandemic. He is looking forward to heading to Europe to learn from international leaders in open education and to develop the shared copyright literacy needed for global collaboration. But a Fulbright offers more than professional opportunity, too:

“On a personal level, my five-year-old son has spent most of his life in a pandemic that has kept him from exploring the world much beyond our (figurative and, at times, literal) backyard,” Cross says. “I’m so excited to introduce him to a bit of the amazing diversity of cultures, languages and people that Europe has to offer. I hope he will bring as much curiosity and take as much joy from this experience as I will.”