On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Rob Walker wrote: > I found this posting highly informative and very helpful. Over the > years I have become increasingly concerned at the stranglehold that > the major publishers seem to have over academic publishing. As an > individual it has affected me only in small ways - something I had > published in a journal being reprinted in a book without my knowledge > or consent (the publisher owns the copyright), being asked high fees > for the right to republish journal material on a CDROM intended for > student use (the publisher etc). It seems to me that we sign away our > intellectual property too easily and some time ago I began inserting > clauses into agreements saying that I would not sign over copyright > to private companies on work that was government sponsored. A move > that seemed to cause some irritation but not much more. > > This issue is one I think we need to take seriously and act together > on. I would welcome further discussion,
Ref: http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind01&L=september98-forum&F=l&S=&P=18612 In order to make sense of all this it is absolutely essential that certain distinctions be explicitly made. If you do not make these distinctions, if you conflate different, unrelated, sometimes even opposing aspects of "intellectual property" and try to treat them all in one uniform, "one-size-fits-all" way, the current confusion will just continue. There is no generalized "stranglehold" that "publishers" exert over "academic publishing." Academic publishing (whatever that is!) has many different forms, and they have to be treated distinctly. In general, book publishing is not the same as journal publishing, and that is the most important cut to make. And royalty issues are not the same as (indeed, they are in opposition to) access/impact issues. Please see: Harnad, S. (2001) For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm Excerpts below: 5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns There is a great deal of concern about copyright in the digital age, and some of it may not be easily resolvable (e.g., what to do about the pirating of software and music). But none of that need detain us here, because digital piracy is only a problem for non-give-away work, whereas we are concerned here only with give-away work. (Again, failing to make the give-away/non-give-away distinction leads only to confusion, and the misapplication of the much bigger and more representative non-give-away model to the anomalous give-away corpus, which it does not fit.) The following digital copyright concerns are relevant to the non-give-away literature only: 5.1. Protecting Intellectual Property (royalties) This is as much of a concern to authors of books as to authors of screenplays, music, and computer programs. It is also a concern to performers who have made digital audio or video disks of their work. They do not wish to see that work stolen; they want their fair share of the gate-receipts in return for their talent and efforts in producing the work. But the producers of refereed research reports do not wish to have protection from "theft" of this kind; on the contrary, they wish to encourage it. They have no royalties to gain from preventing it; they have only research impact to lose from access-blockage of any kind. 5.2. Allowing Fair Use (user issue) "Fair Use" is another worthy concern. It has to do with certain sanctioned uses of non-give-away material, such as all or parts of books, magazine articles, etc., often for teaching purposes; the producers of these works do not wish to lose their potential royalty/fee-income from these works. The producers of refereed research reports, in contrast, wish to give their work away; hence fair-use issues are moot for this special give-away literature. 5.3. Preventing Theft of Text (piracy) The producers of refereed research reports do not wish to prevent the theft of their texts; they wish to facilitate it as much as possible. (In the on-paper era they used to purchase and mail reprints to requesters at their own expense!) The following digital copyright concern is relevant to all literature, both give-away and non-give-away: 5.4. Preventing Theft of Authorship (plagiarism) No author wants any other author to claim to have been the author of his work. This concern is shared by all authors, give-away and non-give-away. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with concerns about theft-of-text, and should not be conflated with such concerns in any way: Give-away work need not be held hostage to non-give-away concerns about theft-of-text under the pretext of "protecting" it from theft-of-authorship. (Unfortunately, many journal publishers try to write and use their copyright transfer agreements for precisely this purpose, and authors need to become aware of it.) The following digital copyright concern is relevant to the give-away literature only: 5.5. Guaranteeing Author Give-Away Rights Apart from the protection from plagiarism and the assurance of priority that all authors seek, the only other "protection" the give-away author of refereed research reports seeks is protection of his give-away rights! (The intuitive model for this is advertisements: what advertiser wants to lose his right to give away his ads for free, diminishing their potential impact by charging for access to them!) Well, there is no need for the authors of refereed research to worry about exercising their give-away rights, for they can do it, legally, even under the most restrictive copyright agreement, by using the following strategy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] 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, Southampton http://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 & 01): 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: [email protected]
