Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, [identity deleted] wrote: I have noticed your recent postings on the liblicense listserv. I am the librarian at [name deleted] Hospital, and we are looking at archiving the papers published by our staff. I don't know how long we will do this as I am hopeful that eventually [deleted] University will embark on such a project but for the present they have no such plans. We currently have a staff publications database of [number deleted] papers. Our goal is to provide the full-text for as many of the papers as possible. I have noticed your postings encouraging everyone to self-archive. I have a couple of questions. First is, do you know of any resource either print or on the web which lists which publications/journals allow authors to post their own work? Yes, see: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm as well as http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1 I am also interested in what distinction there may be with the hospital putting up these papers. Do you know if the publishers' intent is to allow the parent institution of the researcher this right? The author's institution is the place where the author is entitled to self-archive. This is to rule out 3rd-party institutions that could re-sell or under-sell a publisher's content. Whether the researcher's institution is a hospital or a university or both should not matter at all, as long as the author is indeed employed by those institutions. I'm looking for additional information regarding any and all copyright information you may have regarding the self-archiving issue. See these past copyright threads in the American Scientist Forum: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2EB52666 Stevan Harnad NOTE: Complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 99 00 01 02 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Posted discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Dual Open-Access Strategy: BOAI-2: Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. BOAI-1: Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
In a recent posting, Stevan Harnad wrote: The goal is to free the refereed literature for one and all online. That is what self-archiving does. I am correct in assuming, I take it, that this freeing of the academic literature also frees it from certain copyright restrictions and, in particular, allows such articles to be downloaded, printed, and distributed by academics to own students at the cost of printing, that is, allows non-profit educational uses of this literature without permission. This matter is seldom, if ever mentioned, on the list...but anything less does not free the literature. Regards Alan Story Alan Story Kent Law School University of Kent Canterbury Kent U.K CT2 7NS. a.c.st...@ukc.ac.uk 44 (0)1227 823316
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Alan Story wrote: In a recent posting, Stevan Harnad wrote: The goal is to free the refereed literature for one and all online. That is what self-archiving does. I am correct in assuming, I take it, that this freeing of the academic literature also frees it from certain copyright restrictions See: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld007.htm and, in particular, allows such articles to be downloaded, printed, and distributed by academics to own students at the cost of printing, that is, allows non-profit educational uses of this literature without permission. Yes, but note that this only applies to the author/institution self-archived REFEREED JOURNAL literature. This special author-give-away should literature should not be conflated with fair-use issues pertaining to, say, textbook or other material that is non-author-giveaway (i.e., by far the lion's share of the literature) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld002.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld006.htm This matter is seldom, if ever mentioned, on the list...but anything less does not free the literature. The matter, like many others, is repeatedly mentioned on the list! See the Archives 1998-2000: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 99 00): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Christopher D. Green wrote: sh Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright sh LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice sh that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such as sh not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no difference for people who must attempt to publish in American Psychological Assocaition journals in order to advance (or even maintain) their academic careers now. The simple fact (whether legal, political, or even crassly careerist) is that scientific psychologists will not be self-archiving in droves until the problem is resolved. Don't be so pessimistic! The problem IS solved, insofar as legality is concerned. Moreover, the APA embargo policy is not even enforceable. So it is now all just about PERCEIVED (but unreal) risk: I know Physicists are somewhat brighter than us Psychologists, but not THAT much brighter. We will catch on soon, especially with the help of interoperable Open Archives, as they sprout at the universities and begin to fill with distributed content. The universities will be allies too, with their embattled periodicals budgets. But the biggest ally will be the palpably growing impact of those who ARE sensible enough to take this small step: We are developing citation-analytic and other informetric/webmetric tools to measure, estimate and predict the enhanced impact gained by freely accessible refereed papers compared to controls kept behind the financial firewall: http://opcit.eprints.org See also: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/elib04.html http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~cssrccc2/papers/ Despite your apparent optimism about the matter, I have seen no indication that APA will see the light given the extraordinary degree of control they currently have. As you know better than most, they have been relatively resistant to even acknowledging the importance of electronic media. Just a bit more patience (and a bit more boldness)... Question: Do you know what the current policies are among the few, major non-APA scientific psychology journals? e.g., American Journal of Psychology (U. Illinois), Psychological Science (APS), Cognitive Science (Ablex), and Cognition (Elsevier) come immediately to mind. There must be others as well. No I don't, but as you know, I am not a supporter of the switch strategy, not even among established journals, to favor the ones that allow self-archiving (although it is again a strategy I wish well). The strategy I advocate is the legal but subversive one of BOTH sticking to one's established journal of choice AND self-archiving. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Christopher D. Green writes Stevan Harnad wrote: Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such as not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no difference for people who must attempt to publish ... Could not agree more. At the end of the day, each author has a choice to make between getting published and surrender copyright, or not getting published and continue to have the right to self-archive. For journals, that is a tough choice. But it is a different matter for conference proceedings. The prestige from giving a paper at a conference comes from presenting it there. It does not really come from having the paper included in the conference proceedings. I have just written to the organisers of ECDL2000 http://www.bn.pt/org/agenda/ecdl2000/ that I and my co-authors will not surrender the copyright to our paper http://openlib.org/home/krichel/phoenix.html to Springer for inclusion in the proceedings. I presume that I will still be able to present the paper. It will simply not appear in the conference proceedings, which I consider to be a minor inconvenience. Has anybody here stories to share about copyright surrender refusal? Cheers, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Does anybody know what is the legal status of preprinting a paper as a technical report? It is a frequent practice in academic departments to distribute not-yet-published articles as technical reports and I have never heard of problems when the same papers are submitted to refereed journals. Technical reports can be distributed and archived, and often have the same identical content as the submitted paper. Antonella Pavese -- Antonella Pavese, PhDph: (215) 456-5887 Moss Rehabilitation Fax: (215) 456-5926 Research Institute Korman Bldg., Suite 203 1200 West Tabor Road mailto:pav...@hslc.org Philadelphia, PA 19141http://www.geocities.com/pavesina/
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such as not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no difference for people who must attempt to publish in American Psychological Assocaition journals in order to advance (or even maintain) their academic careers now. The simple fact (whether legal, political, or even crassly careerist) is that scientific psychologists will not be self-archiving in droves until the problem is resolved. Despite your apparent optimism about the matter, I have seen no indication that APA will see the light given the extraordinary degree of control they currently have. As you know better than most, they have been relatively resistant to even acknowledging the importance of electronic media. Question: Do you know what the current policies are among the few, major non-APA scientific psychology journals? e.g., American Journal of Psycohlogy (U. Illinois), Psychological Science (APS), Cognitive Science (Ablex), and Cognition (Elsevier) come immediately to mind. There must be others as well. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Christopher D. Green wrote: Please explain this to me one more time. How can we self-archive our published papers without breaking our legal contracts with the papers' publishers, and without risking being sued by them for breach of contract? (Of course, we may be willing to do these things, but your statement seems to suggest that we can self-archive without taking such risks.) There are 22 postings about this on: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html (the 2nd 14 unfortunately on a variant subject-header): Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts (8 messages) Legal ways around copyright for one own's giveway texts (14 messages) See also: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/help/copyright.html Here is quick synopsis of the steps/logic involved: (1) Self-archive all pre-refereeing preprints. These precede submission and are not bound by any prior legal agreement. (2) After refereeing, revision, and acceptance, if the copyright transfer agreement asks for a transfer of all rights for the final refereed draft to the publisher, first propose modifying the wording of the agreement: Agree to transfer to the publisher all rights to SELL the paper, on-paper or on-line; retain only your right to self-archive it for free on-line. (3) If the modified agreement is accepted by your publisher, self-archive the post-refereeing postprint. (4) If the modified agreement is not accepted by your publisher, sign the original agreement and self-archive only a list of the changes that have to be made in the (already-archived) preprint to transform it into the postprint. (Ask me about embargos and the Ingelfinger Rule separately: they are not even matters of copyright and legality.) Why is it so simple to do this legally? Because copyright is designed to protect intellectual property from theft; your paper is your intellectual property. If you want to give it away, that is your prerogative. Copyright agreements were never designed with give-away work in mind; they were designed for royalty/fee-based work where the author and the publisher have a common stake in the sales, and in preventing theft. (A book author or a CD recording artist or a commercial software writer would never put his intellectual property up on the Web, free for all before publishing it.) The refereed research literature was always an anomaly in this respect; in the Gutenberg era there was no way to resolve that anomaly; in the PostGutenberg era there is. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 99 00): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: Here is quick synopsis of the steps/logic involved: (1) Self-archive all pre-refereeing preprints. These precede submission and are not bound by any prior legal agreement. The American Psychological Association (and I assume most other traditional publishers) have explicitly stated that they will not consider submissions that have been previously published elsewhere, and that they consider web-posting to constitute a form of publication. So self-archiving pre-prints would make them ineligible submissions to APA journals. (2) After refereeing, revision, and acceptance, if the copyright transfer agreement asks for a transfer of all rights for the final refereed draft to the publisher, first propose modifying the wording of the agreement: Agree to transfer to the publisher all rights to SELL the paper, on-paper or on-line; retain only your right to self-archive it for free on-line. Fine, but this is completely dependent on the publisher's willingness to cooperate. APA will not. (3) If the modified agreement is accepted by your publisher, self-archive the post-refereeing postprint. (4) If the modified agreement is not accepted by your publisher, sign the original agreement and self-archive only a list of the changes that have to be made in the (already-archived) preprint to transform it into the postprint. Usually these agreements say something like substantively in them to block one from changing a single word (or a few words), and then publishing them elsewhere. Why is it so simple to do this legally? Because copyright is designed to protect intellectual property from theft; your paper is your intellectual property. If you want to give it away, that is your prerogative. Copyright agreements were never designed with give-away work in mind; they were designed for royalty/fee-based work where the author and the publisher have a common stake in the sales, and in preventing theft. Perhaps, but that doesn't keep people (publishers) from exploiting the advantages the law gives them, even if unintentionally. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan: I found your note very interesting, but to reply in detail would take more time than I have at the moment. I wish you and your colleagues the best in your efforts...and I hope that you succeed. But I guess that I come from a different political tradition than you; and without trying to sound like a veteran, the political tradition I come from has, at its core, several key tactical and strategical precepts: 1) unite all who can be united; 2) don't unnecessarily antogonize potential allies; 3) unite the many to defeat the few. Of course, these are very general and must be applied to each particular circumstance...and I will not try here to apply them to battle you are waging. But your foes are also the foes of others ( sometimes for the same reasons, sometime for different reasons) and I would suggest that rather than saying don't raise these issues, this just confuses things,etc., you took the approach here is how your interests will be forwarded as well, here is how your fight (eg. against the UK's Higher Education Copying Accord) relates to ours, let's establish joint principles (such as free access)and let's all work to weaken those ---such as our current particular foe, Reed Elsevier---who block and undermine these principles, that we would all have a better chance of winning in the end. In any event, best of luck with your proposal. Regards, Alan Story On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:43:22 + Stevan Harnad har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: 1. It may well be that securing paper copies for teachers and students is not the focus of this Forum. Fine. But if those who have initiated this list and support the self-archiving proposal ( and I think, as well, that it has a number of merits) wish self archiving to have a practical future outside the confines of this list, I think that you do need to provide some answers to the type of questions that I and others have asked. Alan, all researchers want their give-away refereed research to be available free for educational purposes too. And that will definitely be a spin-off of the open archiving initiative. But at this point, when there are still so many confusions and conflicts-of-interest, and the status quo is still firmly entrenched, it is extremely important to sort out the immediate, relevant, justifiable and implementable DRIVERS of this transition. Otherwise it will be wrapped into vaguer and more general information democracy views -- with which most of us also happen to sympathize, but which are up against much sterner market forces than the self-archiving initiative for the the give-away research literature faces today. So, please, let us not talk here about paper and xeroxing costs and copyright-clearance fees for xeroxing, and about books, and about access to computers for students and the third world, etc. That simply is not our remit. Our remit is the refereed research literature. (And this American Scientist Forum encompasses not just the subscribers to this list, but all researchers, scientists and scholars alike.) Our immediate objective is to make that refereed research literature available, free for all, online. We have direct, research-based interests and justification for this move. It is highly desirable in the interests of the conduct and progress of the research itself, which it the reason we are publishing it in the first place. Spin-offs -- such as remedying the library serials crisis, reducing educational costs, enfranchising the third world -- are all extremely welcome, but they would not in themselves directly justify what we are trying to do. To see this, just try to translate this into the terms of the NON-giveaway literature (paper journals, textbooks, monographs, educational materials, including multimedia). The critical factor is that the material must be a GIVEAWAY from the author's standpoint, and there must be a way of covering essential costs. Apart from the refereed journal literature online, little else meets this criterion (in general: there is always a vanity press lure for beginners and self-promoters, and self-funded altruists, but in general, non-giveaway authors are out to make a buck). Nor would the rationale for freeing the refereed literature be sound if it were based on educational rather than research considerations. If research were well-served by toll-gated access, few researchers could be persuaded to bother with self-archiving for educational purposes (because so little of the refereed journal literature is ever relevant to educational uses!). So print-on-paper, educational materials, and books are simply not the focus of this Forum, and what it is trying to do: although the benign implications are there, and real, they are not ALLIES in the cause right now, but distractors, and, to a certain extent, actually at odds with our otherwise very clear-cut direct rationale. In
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
This is a response to Stevan's message (below) as well as posts from Christopher Green (of York U.) and Marvin Margoshes. I concentrates primarily on some access and political and economic issues. 1. It may well be that securing paper copies for teachers and students is not the focus of this Forum. Fine. But if those who have initiated this list and support the self-archiving proposal ( and I think, as well, that it has a number of merits) wish self archiving to have a practical future outside the confines of this list, I think that you do need to provide some answers to the type of questions that I and others have asked. In other words, what I assume to be central to the self-archiving proposal is the creation of a non-tollgated public domain of academic writing...or, in property terms,making such material, in part, common property (though reserving and preserving the important right of attribution, the right to include where this material came fromor who created it and how it became common property.) This right of attribution is much more important than the infringement questions I raised; I take some of Stevan's points on this matter. I raised them because traditionally infringement questions have been much more central to IP and copyright in Anglo-US IP law (where moral rights/right of attribution have had a decidedly second place.)What you are seeking, I take it, is the creation of common property that is not fenced in and not commodified ( giveaway texts) and that is freely accessible to all. 2. So the first question is, who makes up this all? From my reading of list, I take it your first priority is online access by researchers,those who produce for archives and those who wish to use archives in their own research. (call them Group A) Again fine. But what about others? That is, teachers who want to use such material for teaching purposes, students, those who want to make paper copies, those without personal online access, those in GROUP A who are also teachers(call them Group B). Unless A can convince B that this proposal is a good one, that is, also in their interest, and unite A B to oppose the opponents of self-archiving (and your forum has contained plenty of details on these baddies), this proposal will have a short shelf life and never catch on,I suggest, beyond A. 3. In this regard, C. Green statement that soon we'll simply expect students to have hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g. from the classroom is interesting. I ask: who will pay for them? individuals? the state (that is, taxpayers)? And where? In affluent 1st world countries? In poorer 3rd world countries? This is a question this list needs to address, I think. And if you don't and do not take into account the trends in higher education finance in the UK, the US and elsewhere, you face the danger of creating a further information rich / information poor divide. I assume, in other words, that you actually do want to create an information democracy and not reproduce the current and unjust market-based and property-based (that is, private property based) system in information. And although hard copy is already on the decline, it still will be around for some time I suggest and in some places, for much longer than others. It will be a very long time before university students in Zimbabwe (Group B) have hand-held web access devices. Will Group A simply be researcher + the richest students in 1st world countries? So such access issues must be examined. 4. Marvin writes UK law may differ, but in the US it is okay to make copies of copyright material for teaching. They certainly do differ; Charles Oppenheim and others in the UK lis-copyseek discussion group spend literally hundreds of hours trying to work through the interpretative ins and outs of the UK's nightmarish Higher Education Copying Accord (HECA).And I am a member of another group, the Copyright in Higher Education Workgroup (CHEW) that is working for the dramatic overhauling/repeal of HECA. So the copyright issue for teaching purposes (e.g. student study packs), for libraries ( e.g. short loan or reserve collections) is a very real one here. Which is exactly one of the main reasons why I am interested in seeing what self-archiving proposal. And even in the US, Marvin, copyright IS AN ISSUE for teaching purposes. 5. Marvin, yes I understand that copyright is property. I have taught IP for 5 years and have written extensively on property law ( Modern Law Review, Journal of Political Philosophy.) This was the particularly non-collegial comment that got up my nose. 6. I want to applaud a number of comments in Stevan's first response to my original note. A good spirit, I think. At the same time, some of the legal issues are, in my opinion, somewhat more complex than you suggest. If I had more time, I would respond in more detail. Cheers Alan Story On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 23:18:02 + Stevan Harnad har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: On Fri, 10 Mar
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: 3. In this regard, C. Green statement that soon we'll simply expect students to have hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g. from the classroom is interesting. I ask: who will pay for them? individuals? the state (that is, taxpayers)? And where? In affluent 1st world countries? In poorer 3rd world countries? This is a question this list needs to address, I think. [...] The fact is that the researcher's case for freeing his own research reports is NOT contingent IN ANY WAY on who pays for hand-held classroom devices, and whether or not they ought to be free. Not should it be. And if you don't and do not take into account the trends in higher education finance in the UK, the US and elsewhere, you face the danger of creating a further information rich / information poor divide. Nothing of the sort. Freeing the research literature online now will have all the spinoff effects you desire, including the (secondary) DRIVING of demand for and provision of the means to access it (for teachers, students, 3rd world). Indeed, just the online freeing of the research literature will be an enormous boon for the disenfranchised 3rd world researcher right now: [...] I assume, in other words, that you actually do want to create an information democracy and not reproduce the current and unjust market-based and property-based (that is, private property based) system in information. I happen to be a socialist; but the research self-archiving movement, its rationale and its objectives, have absolutely nothing to do with that. We do not need to take on capitalism in order to achieve those face-valid objectives! Golly there's an awful lots of idealism and optimism at play here. I hardly know where to start. First, contrary to Stevan, I suspect that much of the third word will indeed be left behind by the increasing computerization of the first world. Although this may drive demand for electronics in the third world (note, however, I suspect the third world has far more pressing demands at present), it certainly won't provide the funds necessary to satisfy that demand. I don't see any obvious solution to that problem, however. Are we (scientists in the first world), REALLY, as Alan seems to suggest, supposed to continue to labor under the yoke of increasingly voracious publishing companies simply in order to satisfy the needs of that tiny fraction of the scientific community that resides in the third world? (Before someone righteously points out to me that the third world is a huge proportion of the earth's population, note that India and China are already making great strides toward computerization, and their best scientists and students won't be left behind. Countries like Zimbabwe, however -- the case Alan mentions specifically -- are of a different order, I think.) In any case, I suspect that *in the broader context,* it would be difficult could than Alan suggests to make a strong ethical case for this (viz. holding back so the third world can catch up). Consider: faster dissemination of scientific literature to scientists means, among other things, more rapid scientific progress (including improved treatment for disease in the third world, better food production and management, better water management, etc.). Is that to be traded away, or should, instead, those who are best off do the everything they can to help solve the problems of the world as a whole? Even if you could make a strong ethical case, do you really think that such an argument would really lead first world scientists to abstain from using one of their most powerful tools (computerized distribution of scientific results) or, do you, like I, expect that those scientists who did would rapidly become second-rate first worlds scientists)? Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
I have just joined this list and perhaps may not understand all of the details of the self-archiving proposal. Responding to Charles Oppenheim's 22 Feb. message, let me put forward the following hypothetical (assuming the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) to see if I understand it 1. On March 10 2000 at 3:00 p.m., an academic (A)completes article (X) on Why Ken Livingstone Should be Mayor of London. 2. At 3:10 p.m. (A) posts (X) on her/his personal web archives. As soon as this is done, (A) will have copyright (C) in (X) as is meets copyright requirements (e.g. originality, work, fixation in tangible form, available to public, etc.) which subsists until death of the (A)+70 years. (A) can allow anyone to use X (e.g. for non-profit educuational purposes). 3. At 3:15 p.m. on 10 March (A) posts (X) to publisher(P)...who passes it on to a referee. 4. On the basis of the referees comments, A edits X...which nows become X1. (though, see below, the differences between X and X1 may not matter for copyright infringement purposes) 5. (B) requires that (A) assigns all copyright, re-publication, digitalization rights in X1 to (B). (A) agrees and signs the publisher's standard form contract. The copyright (C1)(and all other rights) in X1 are owned by (P). 6. On 30 March (assume a very speedy (R),(A) and (P)), (P) simultaneously publishes X1 in its hard-copy journal and its digital journal. 7. On 1 April, nasty (I) allegedly infringes copyright in the article by photocopying a substantial part for use in a student course pack (ie. no permission sought, no fee paid, no attribution etc.) Unless X and X1 are very dramatically different, we can assume that the alleged infringement by (I)would be in relation to both X and X1. Which then raises the following questions 1) In the above scenario, what happens to (A)'s copyright (C)in X? That is, would A have a cause of action against (I)? Or would only (P)? Or would both of them? 2)In the proposed scheme, does (A) also assign (C) to (P)? (which, unless there were additional contractual clauses as in the American Physical Society form--- would mean that (A)no longer has any rights over X.) 3) If (A) does NOT assign C to (P)and then (P) does something with X1 that (A) doesn't like ( e.g. allows a crummy journal (CJ) to publish another version (now X3) without attribution to (A),) does (A) have a cause of action against (P) and (CJ)for copyright infringement? That is, although (CJ) has used X1 to publish X3, X3 may also likely infringes X...which would give (A) a cause of action against (CJ) as the primary infringer and against (P) as the secondary infringer. There are other questions, but let's leave it at that for now. Perhaps, of course, I have missed something along the line. And, to be clear, I am a friendly critic and do want to work towards tearing down the the current copyright user-pay tollgates. Regards Alan Story -- Alan Story Kent Law School Eliot College University of Kent Canterbury Kent UK CT2 7NS a.c.st...@ukc.ac.uk Ph. 01227 823316 Fax 01227 827831
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: Until every desk in every university classroom has its own web-accessible computer (still some way off...), there will be an interest in paper copies by university teachers. Paper copies are indispensable in the form student course packs for study and discussion and debate in class by reference to words in a text that everyone see in front of them. Hard copy is not dead yet for instructional purposes. Actually, we're not that far from having hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g., from in the classroom). Soon we'll simply expect students to have them, just like we now expect them to have calculators. What is more, students will always be able print papers that are available on-line and bring them to class if they prefer. I am currently assembling an archive of classic books and papers in the history of psychology (http://www.yorku.ca/dept/psych/classics/ ). I already assign these electronic editions -- to be read on-line or printed, as students see fit -- rather than having to deal with printshops, reference librarians, and all the other things that typically make assigning primary source material to students a difficult process. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
- Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 7:07 AM Subject: Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Marvin Margoshes wrote: sh Could we hear some informed legal opinion about whether PRIOR sh self-archiving on the Web counts as prior publication in the precise sh sense that one affirms in a copyright agreement stating that it has sh not previously been published? I'm not a lawyer, but I have had a patent attorney explain to me what publish means. Patents (and novels and software and music) are PRECISELY the wrong model for this give-away literature. Patent lawyers are concerned to protect the inventor from theft of his product. The researcher WANTS his product stolen. I'm afraid that you misread what I wrote. I did not talk about patents as a model. I only mentioned that I had been informed on this subject by a patent attorney. I wrote about what I've been told is meant in intellectual property law - in the U.S. - by the word publish. Both patents and copyrights are protections for intellectual property. This is an example of what I meant by saying that the Moderator is coloring the discussion by jumping in with his views as soon as a posting is made. In this case, he brought in an irrelevant matter as an objection.
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 18:18:43 + From: Charles Oppenheim c.oppenh...@lboro.ac.uk To: Stevan Harnad har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk, kam.pa...@thes.co.uk Subject: Re: legal ways around copyright of one's own giveaway texts There is no disagreement. I support Stevan's view that by doing the following: 1 author posts unrefereed preprint on web site 2 author submits same at a later date (maybe five minutes later!) to a refereed journal 3 if/when accepted, author makes amendments to the article in the light of the referees' and editor's comments 4 author signs copyright assignment form of publisher and hand on heart confirms that this article has not appeared anywhere before 5 author then posts note onto preprint, pointing out the sorts of areas where corrections might need to be made by a reader to improve the text then the author has done nothing wrong, has broken no law, and has not signed a contract (s)he should not have signed. Professor Charles Oppenheim Dept of Information Science Loughborough University Loughborough Leics LE11 3TU It seems to me that step 4 can be illegal. The copyright assignment is a contract. Laws differ by country, and I'd encourage anyone who wishes to follow procedure to consult an attorney. Small changes may not matter. There is also the matter of the ethics of lying. Children may think it is OK to lie if you cross your fingers, but adults are supposed to know better.
