The problem lies not only with the scientific community but also with lab directors, university administors and the like. With the internet it is easy to publish, and with tools like Google Scholar we can reach a much wider audience than we can with normal publications, but we are in this bind of peer review and prestigious journals. Other fields, like physics, place less emphasis on looking good and more on getting results out. For example, hot new results in high energy physics can be published in some of the leading journals without peer review if requested. Astronomers have ways of getting the word out in a matter of hours if they see a comet or supernova. But if we publish on the internet we don't get the necessary brownie points.
I once got a phone call from the editor in chief of a journal who said that he had seen a draft of a paper that I had sent to a colleague, that he had discussed it with his editorial board, and if I hadn't submitted it elsewhere they would like to publish it. I was of course delighted, but when I told my lab director the good news he frowned and said, "That would not be a peer-reviewed primary publication then." That's the attitude we have to fight against. Some worthy papers are left out of conference proceedings because there is a fixed publication budget and too many good papers (too many good papers!). When I have suggested putting the overflow on the web the response is generally negative. As one editor said, "Papers that appear on the web are crap." Well, I've put most of my papers on the web at www.bill.silvert.org if anyone wants to see the kind of crap I write! But I have to be careful about copyright, so what I post is always a draft unless I have the right to post the final version. Because in answer to Jasja's question, I think that once we have transferred copyright we really have no rights at all to our own work. Some journals give us the right to post or distribute digital reprints, but that is their decision. Once you have sold or given away copyright to your work, it is someone else's intellectual property. They may pay you $20 for the rights and then make millions (as has happened with some songs) but you have no recourse. They may destroy or otherwise suppress the work and you have no right to distribute it against the will of the copyright holder. It really is an awful system - although it gets touted as a way to protect the creators of intellectual property, it offers far more protection to publishers and other business interests. Can we revolt? It would be pretty hard to fight something so well entrenched, and science is a bit player compared to books, songs and movies. That is why in an early posting I suggested subversion instead. For example, I cannot post copies of all my copyrighted PDFs to my website, but I distribute them to anyone who asks. Many people with access to ScienceDirect and other download services are happy to help less privileged colleagues access the literature. That's a start. Bill Silvert ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dekker, Jasja" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 9:15 AM Subject: Online journals and publications: time to revolt? Copyright law > Dear all, > > So why do we keep submitting papers to this group of journals? Are page > charges so far spread that fitting, but free-of-charge journals are so > rare? I think the scientific community, being both primary producer and > consumer of the journals, has more power than it thinks! > > I hope you all will forgive me for starting again on copyright law, BUT: > does transfering copyright to the journal mean we can not offer our own > papers on personal websites? > > Kind regards, > > Jasja Dekker
