Re: Call for Commentary: http://www.text-e.org/debats/

[Stevan Harnad]

Nov 15 - 30 is the Virtual Symposium is focussing on a paper by me.
All interested commentators are invited to contribute (in any of three
languages!) http://www.text-e.org/debats/

   Skyreading and Skywriting for Researchers:
   A Post-Gutenberg Anomaly and How to Resolve it

   Stevan Harnad

ABSTRACT: There will be a profound and fundamental dividing line in
the PostGutenberg Galaxy, between non-give-away work (books,
magazines, software, music) and give-away work (of which the most
important representative is refereed scientific and scho larly
research papers).  It is the failure to make this distinction that
causes so much confusion, and that is delaying the inevitable
transition of the give-away work to what is the optimal solution
for scholars and scientists: that the annual 2,000,000+ articles in
all 20,000+ refereed journals across disciplines and languages and
around the world should be freed on line through author/institution
self-archiving: http://www.eprints.org. This paper tries to show
how questions about copyright, peer review and other controversial
issues can be clarified if the give-away/non-give-away distinction
is made.



Press Release for the Symposium as a whole:

Screens and networks: towards a new relationship with the written word

(October 2001-March 2002)

A virtual symposium on the Web, at www.text-e.org Organized by the
Bibliothque publique d’information (BPI) - Centre Pompidou,
the Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS) and EURO-EDU in association with
GiantChair.com Sponsored by UNESCO

New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) are transforming
our world as radically as did the invention of the printing press. How
will this affect the written word and its uses in society? There may
be no immediate answers to these questions, but we can -and should-
investigate the issues involved.

In this context, the Bibliothque publique d’information (BPI),
the Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS and EHESS), the non-profit organization
EURO-EDU and GiantChair, have decided to set up a virtual symposium in
French, Italian and English. Launched on October 15th, 2001, it will
focus on the impact of NITC on our relationship with information and
the written word.

This international symposium should contribute to enriching current
debates about the emergence of hybrid tools of communication (e-books,
Internet and e-mail) and the social changes that accompany them. The
contributors’ papers will be published directly on the
symposium’s host site, www.text-e.org and will be accessible
from the BPI’s main site (www.bpi.fr). It will involve theorists
and other professionals affected by changes in their professional and
personal lives brought about by e-mail and the Internet, and it will
examine the impact of these technologies on reading, journalism,
scholarship, libraries, archives, literature and so on. The symposium
will provide participants with a forum for the discussion of all
points of view.

Through this program, we aim at once to engage in a collective
research project, to enact the new relationship to the written word
and to stage a public event using Web-based communication. The result
will be published in book as well as in electronic format.

PROGRAM

The focal point of the project is the establishment of a Web-based
event, beginning on October 15th, 2001 and ending in March 2002.

Ten contributors, including theorists and those involved in new
information technologies, will be invited to submit a paper for
discussion. A new paper will be published on the site every two
weeks.

Each paper will be discussed on-line for the two weeks following its
publication by some forty participants, comprising the ten
contributors and thirty guests.  Discussions will be chaired by the
organizers.

These papers, together with the ensuing discussions, will be made
available to the public. Those wishing to follow the symposium will be
able to register, receive the papers by e-mail and participate in a
forum.

Initial perspectives on the event will be debated at the Paris book
fair, the Salon du livre, in March 2002.

TOPICS AND SCHEDULE

15-31 October 2001
1. Readers and Reading  in the Age of Electronic Texts
(Roger Chartier, EHESS, Paris)
1-14 November 2001
2. What the Internet tells us about the Real Nature of
the Book (Roberto Casati, Institut Jean Nicod,
C.N.R.S., Paris)
15-30 November 2001
3. Skyreading/writing in the Post-Gutenbergian Galaxy
(Stevan Harnad, Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
1-14 December 2001
4. Digital Journalism: Virtual Journalism? (Bruno
Patino, Le Monde Interactif)
15-31 December 2001
5. Personal and Professional Conversation (Theodore
Zeldin, Oxford)
1-14 January 2002
  

Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations

[Bernard Lang]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 02:52:35PM +, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Chris Armstrong wrote:
>
> > the reason I do not usually enter into these discussions
> > with you is that you never reply except as a put-down...
> > You rarely add to a Socratic discourse, or so it seems to
> > me; only to a long list of didactic statements.
>
> Dear Chris,
>
> I apologize.
>
> Although it is obviously no excuse for hurting anyone's feelings, I
> think if my polemics have become increasingly impatient it is a
> cumulative consequence of the fact that I find myself still responding
> over and over to the very same prima facie worries (which I eventually
> compiled into the list of "Zeno's FAQs"). It seems that for every
> worrier I respond to, two more worriers pop up in their place! And this
> is still going on after 10 years and countless talks and papers and
> discussion lists.


welcome to the club ...

this symptom is unfortunately quite frequent on the web, and I have
seen it on several other lists, about other topics.

  Those people more often on the list become experts ... and they tend
to lose contact with less present members or beginners, or grow
impatient after repeating things too often.

  This is a phenomenon that seems a direct consequence of the type of
interactions and communities we have on the internet, and would be
worth investigating.

  FAQs were invented to alleviate the problem, but they are obviously
not a complete answer.
  Also, on a topic like this one, where opinion matters nearly as much
as objective facts, FAQs necessarily reflect the writer's opinions,
which may not be shared by all, and are thus not fully stisfactory
(may-be with sevral authors, and constrasting points of view ...)
   This last comment is no reflexion on Stevan's FAQ, which I think I
have not read :-)
  [ though I did read several of Stevan's papers ... ]

Bernard Lang


--
 Non aux Brevets Logiciels  -  No to Software Patents
   SIGNEZhttp://petition.eurolinux.org/SIGN

bernard.l...@inria.fr ,_  /\o\o/Tel  +33 1 3963 5644
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/  ^  Fax  +33 1 3963 5469
INRIA / B.P. 105 / 78153 Le Chesnay CEDEX / France
 Je n'exprime que mon opinion - I express only my opinion
 CAGED BEHIND WINDOWS or FREE WITH LINUX

Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations

[Stevan Harnad]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Chris Armstrong wrote:

> the reason I do not usually enter into these discussions
> with you is that you never reply except as a put-down...
> You rarely add to a Socratic discourse, or so it seems to
> me; only to a long list of didactic statements.

Dear Chris,

I apologize.

Although it is obviously no excuse for hurting anyone's feelings, I
think if my polemics have become increasingly impatient it is a
cumulative consequence of the fact that I find myself still responding
over and over to the very same prima facie worries (which I eventually
compiled into the list of "Zeno's FAQs"). It seems that for every
worrier I respond to, two more worriers pop up in their place! And this
is still going on after 10 years and countless talks and papers and
discussion lists.

But no one forces me to keep responding, so let's see if I can do a
better job this time of following Thumper's advice: "If you can't say
nothin' nice, don't say nothin' at all"...

> I do not have worries that belong on a Zeno's Paralysis
> list. I would just like the community - in its widest
> sense - to have the opportunity to discuss these issues.

But surely, if I have been guilty of being too impatient and critical
in my style of response, I have not been guilty of preventing the
community from airing its views!

> On second thoughts, I do have one worry. It is that
> authors and universities will be railroaded into the
> Subversive Proposal without understanding the issues
> involved or realising that there may just be alternatives
> ... that may just be better.

Please let me set your mind at ease on that score. Far from being
"railroaded" into anything, it is a historical fact that authors and
universities (with the exception of some physicists) have been
indescribably sluggish about doing anything about freeing online access
to their research so far. It is precisely this inertia and hysteresis
across such a long time period that has made my own tone increasingly
intemperate!

In the next posting, I will respond (temperately, I hope) to your long
posting to the Virtual Colloquium at http://www.text-e.org/debats/
which I have also branched to the Amsci Forum.

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad

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
or
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

You may join the list at the amsci site.

Discussion can be posted to:

american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org

Re: More thoughts on subversion

[Stevan Harnad]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Chris Armstrong wrote:

> More thoughts on subversion
>
> Chris Armstrong 
>
> there is clearly an anomaly surrounding journal charging
> that publishers, libraries and, to a lesser extent, authors have to
> face and address.

The anomaly, in my view, is that journals are charging readers and
their institutions anything at all for access to the author's give-away
work. It is not that journal publishers cannot and should not sell
products that add value to the author's research, be they on-paper
texts or on-line texts. But as the author does not seek or get
royalties or fees for his text -- unlike book-authors or journalists --
and instead seeks as many readers/users as possible, so as to maximize
the uptake and hence the impact of the research, there is no longer any
need or justification to hold the online refereed research reports
themselves hostage to those add-ons and their access tolls. They can and
should be sold as options (and I for one am not particularly interested
in the price charged -- as long as the no-frills online draft is
available free for everyone).

The only non-optional element of added value provided by a refereed
journal publisher is the implementation of peer review (the peers
themselves review for free too). The true cost of only this essential
SERVICE (to the author's institution) as opposed to the full cost of
the optional PRODUCT (to the reader's institution) can be amply covered
out of institutional savings on their expenditures for the PRODUCT (if
and when demand for that drops to the point that it no longer covers
the costs of the essential SERVICE of peer review) for the simple
reason that the author-institutions and the reader-institutions are the
same institutions.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

> Maybe I am too timid or stick-in-the-mud to attempt the self-archiving
> route or maybe I just cannot believe that there is any point.

You are not alone! Most of the authors of the well over 2 million
papers a year that appear in the world's 20,000 refereed journals
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ are still too timid or
stick-in-the-mud to self-archive! That is why the the proponents of the
self-archiving initiative are trying to show how it is both in
their interests and within their reach to do so, and to do so as soon
as possible: http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/

7. What you can do now to free the refereed literature online
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7

> Will such
> a recourse really stop publishers in their tracks? I doubt it - there
> is too much invested in the print publishing model.

No it won't, and it's not meant to. The self-archiving initiative is to
free access to refereed research online, now, not to drive down journal
prices or to make publishers do or stop doing anything!

Harnad, S. (2001) Six Proposals for Freeing the Refereed Literature
Ariadne28 June 2001.
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/minotaur/#1
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/ariadne.htm

Harnad, S. (2001) The Self-Archiving Initiative. Nature 410: 1024-1025
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/nature4.htm
Nature WebDebates version:
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/index.html
Fuller version:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/selfarch.htm

> Certainly, I agree,
> Universities are finding that they can afford fewer and fewer journal
> subscriptions (and I suppose this might suggest insufficient funds to
> begin and maintain an eprint archive) - this is beyond question - but,
> as I have said elsewhere in these discussions, work needs to be done at
> the library-publisher interface.

I regret that I cannot follow this at all. Yes, the fact that even the
richest universities can afford access to only a smaller and smaller
proportion of the 20,000 is the problem. 
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/arlbin/arl.cgi?task=setupstats
All give-away refereed research should be accessible to all researchers,
and there is no longer any reason at all why it cannot be.

But the pennies it takes for each institution to establish and maintain
Eprint Archives for providing access to all its own outgoing research
http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
are negligible
compared to the immense budgets being spent on acquiring access to
smaller and smaller portion of the outgoing research of other
institutions. And here the Golden Rule really works: Give-away research
need only be given by a research institution in order to get the
research of all the other institutions.

So those pennies are an investment not only in immediate free access to
and for research and researchers, but perhaps also eventual serials
budget savings.

> The gradual move to electronic journals offers a unique opportunity
> that is so far being largely squandered. There were in 1999, according
> to one source, over 10,000 e-journals av

Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations

[Chris Armstrong]

Stevan

the reason I do not usually enter into these discussions
with you is that you never reply except as a put-down:
you obviously haven't understood...
this has already been discussed...
etc.
You rarely add to a Socratic discourse, or so it seems to
me; only to a long list of didactic statements.

I do not have worries that belong on a Zeno's Paralysis
list. I would just like the community - in its widest
sense - to have the opportunity to discuss these issues.
For this they need to be aware that other issues and
views exist (and I am sure there are many more that I
haven't even thought of!)

On second thoughts, I do have one worry. It is that
authors and universities will be railroaded into the
Subversive Proposal without understanding the issues
involved or realising that there may just be alternatives
... that may just be better.

I have not copied this to the list, but feel free to do
so in full if you see fit.

Chris Armstrong
UKOLUG Chair & Newsletter Editor
lisq...@cix.co.uk

Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives

[Eberhard R. Hilf]

dear Stevan,
thanks a lot for your somehwat summary of the topic up to now.
I agree with what you say. All paths leading to the same destination.
Indeed, we work on all three lines: encourage the authors, the
institutions to set up selfarchiving with our help or gate or not and
promote central archives.
I now daw you img files .
Ebs

Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations

[Stevan Harnad]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Chris Armstrong wrote:

> If the subversive proposal takes hold,
> journal prices will be forced up - in the short term, at
> least. In the long term, IF it worries them, the
> publishers can lobby for litigation outside of the
> copyright laws, I suppose. Perhaps something to do with
> fair trading? And I bet the universities cave in first!

Speaking practically, and historically, this worry belongs on the
"Zeno's Paralysis" list:

8. Prima-Facie FaQs for Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis
"I worry about self-archiving because...":
 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#8

The conceptual possibility you mention is not at all something that should be
holding back either authors or their universities from vigorously
self-archiving immediately.

10. Copyright
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#10.Copyright

Moreover, all the evidence is that self-archiving will have just the
opposite effect, namely, to update journal copyright policy so as to
bring it in line with what is incontestably in the best interests of
researchers, their institutions, and research itself (hence of all
of society).

This has been precisely the outcome of the most successful
self-archiving initiative so far, that of the physicists. See the
new copyright policy of the publisher of the most prestigious
journals in physics, the American Physical Society:

Revised APS copyright form
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0746.html

Here are further topic threads (some of them quite extensive) in this
Forum's Archive:

Copyright Tribunal
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0762.html

Authors "Victorious" in UnCover Copyright Suit
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0768.html

Science 4 September on Copyright
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0085.html

Chron. High. Ed. 18 September on Cal Tech & Copyright
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0103.html

Academic Press Journal Article Copyright Policy
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0269.html

Elsevier Science Policy on Public Web Archiving Needs Re-Thinking
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0136.html

Elsevier's ChemWeb Preprint Archive
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0817.html

Interview with Elsevier Science
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1604.html

Copyright FAQ for refereed journal authors
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0416.html

The Copyright Non-Problem and Self-Archiving
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0449.html

Copyright, Embargo, and the Ingelfinger Rule
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0496.html

BioMed Central and new publishing models
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0522.html

Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0541.html

Journal Publisher Copyright Assignment Policies
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0930.html

PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1309.html

Inventory of Publishers' Copyright Policies?
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1535.html

Stevan Harnad

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
or
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

You may join the list at the amsci site.

Discussion can be posted to:

american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org

Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations

[Chris Armstrong]

A late comment on Charles Oppenheim's 16/11 email:

>I agree with Professor Riolo - the best way forward is
>for authors to refuse to assign copyright to a
>publisher, and simply to license them.
>
>...This means that the genie IS out of the bottle ...

Well yes - but, hasn't it really been out of the bottle
for a long time? Think of all those photocopied articles,
most without a copyright slip filled in, many for reasons
other than personal study, etc. The publishers must be
aware of this and they KNOW there is no point in the
litigation route; it simply ups the journal prices a
little. They are happy with that compromise!

And so it goes. If the subversive proposal takes hold,
journal prices will be forced up - in the short term, at
least. In the long term, IF it worries them, the
publishers can lobby for litigation outside of the
copyright laws, I suppose. Perhaps something to do with
fair trading? And I bet the universities cave in first!


Chris Armstrong
Centre for Information Quality Management (CIQM)
(+44) 1974 251441
lisq...@cix.co.uk