Greetings, On Thursday, June 28, 2001, at 01:29 PM, Leslie Chan wrote:
While I am fully aware of the distinction between the "give-away" literature and the writing-for-fee literature, I can't help but wonder if the US Supreme Court ruling (see below) will have implications for the scholarly literature, as publishers have been digitizing back issues of journal articles that were published before the arrival of electronic publishing and before there were electronic rights for authors to give away. In other words, could authors prevent publishers from digitizing the material that they do not have the electronic rights to, just as some publishers have been preventing authors from self-archiving? And what would this really mean, if anything?
This is the bottom line argument for why the APS insists on taking copyright and giving authors back the rights they want rather than the other way around. Copyright law is well-established internationally. Licenses to publish are not. In fact open ended licenses (such as the ability to reuse the material in any future format/product) are unenforceable in some countries (Germany comes to mind). Without holding copyright, it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, for the APS to create our PROLA archive covering all material back to 1893. The issues isn't really who holds copyright - that is somewhat of a red-herring. The issue is what rights does an author have to do what they wish with their own work. The APS copyright transfer allows authors to retain the rights they naturally want without impeding us to do what we need to do to ensure wide dissemination and access. Cheers, Mark Mark Doyle Manager, Product Development The American Physical Society
