Authors of scholarly objects might fear that there is a potential risk that the original material they publish in online sites or that they submit for evaluation to scientific journals or conferences is used by others as their own material. In such cases, it would not be easy for the original authors to prove authorship of the original contribution. In similar circumstances, it is very difficult to prove the authorship or origin of some materials that are being distributed amongst social networks, private or institutional websites or any other means through the Internet, namely documents, papers, images, data, etc. Those materials can be easily plagiarised (e.g. partially or totally translated) and redistributed without any control and with no means to prove authorship. In this context, we propose an online framework for the registration, search, interchange and trade of scholarly objects, which helps to overcome the potential drawbacks of online distribution and publishing. This framework acts as an intellectual property repository and sales point, where people is able to register content and determine the way they want to trade it, while providing innovative search capabilities based on the MPEG Query Format standard [1]. Creative Commons (CC) [2] limitations are identified and overcome by means of a licensing approach that combines Rights Expression Languages and the MPEG-21 Media Value Chain Ontology [3].

Peer Reviewed