On Wednesday 11 July 2007 13:12, Maris Nartiss wrote: > I think there could be some legal issues. > > I.e. from COMPUTERS & GEOSCIENCES Guide for Authors [1] "e) if > accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English > or in any > other language, without the written consent of the Publisher." > IANAL but putting article PDF on wiki may be threated as "publishing"? > > Maris.
The key phrase is the one that reads ". . . in the same form . . ." Just as the author has a copyright to his or her own original work, so does the publisher retain rights with respect to how the paper is published in their journal. All the formatting and apearance of the piece, as well as the editing and proof work were paid for by the publisher, any illustrations that they developed for you, etc. Thus, they don't want you giving away their work for free. So, first rule is don't post copies of the published version as it appears in the journal without explicit (written) permission, which is what they are saying anyway. IF you sign a transfer of copyright, things are different. Effectively you have turned over your rights to the text and your own work, with the exception of whatever uses they tell you that you retain. (In the music industry many composers and lyricists have completely lost the right to perform their own works without permission.) You might have to rewrite the whole thing in a different form before using it again. Of course, when you look at the way in which some researchers wall paper various journals with closely related papers that all effectively say the same thing, this must be pretty common. Sometimes the biggest difference between two related articles seems to be the order in which the authors are listed. JWDougherty _______________________________________________ grassuser mailing list [email protected] http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
