About

I have been actively involved in Patient Advocacy work since 2001, as Vice‐Chairman for the Human BSE Foundation (2001-2005) and then as Information Resource Manager for the CJD International Support Alliance (CJDISA; 2005-2007). More recently, my activities have been focused mainly on neurodegenerative conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease.

I am mostly now also involved in advocating for Open Access/Science/Data and act in an voluntary/advisory capacity for Open Knowledge International, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and most recently, Creative Commons.

As of 2018, I am a Publishing Consultant.

From a recent section of work I provided to a client:-

Generally speaking, in contrast to open access publishers, traditional/subscription publishers require authors to sign what is called a copyright transfer agreement (CTA). A CTA is a legal document containing provisions for the conveyance of full or partial copyright from the rights owner to another party. It is similar to contracts signed between authors and publishers but does not normally involve the payment of remuneration or royalties.

Such agreements are a key element of subscription-based academic publishing, and have been said to facilitate the handling of copyright-based permissions in print-only publishing. In the age of electronic communication, the benefits of copyright transfer agreements have been questioned and while they remain the norm, open licenses as used in open access publishing have been established as an alternative.

“Graham has worked as a consultant for our company on several occasions, sourcing materials and providing valuable insights into the ever evolving open access and publishing landscape, in addition to co-organising the annual ReCon Event conference for the previous five years.

He is a pleasure to work with and a valuable member of the team; in addition, his extensive network of contacts in the industry and his knowledge have been very helpful. Graham’s dedication to various projects we have worked on together is impressive and I look forward to working with him again soon.”

– Dr J Young, The Scientific Editing Company

Graham can be found on Twtiter @McDawg and by email at steelgraham7@gmail.com

Unless stated otherwise, all content on this blog is CC-BY.