"Wallace E. Dixon, Jr." wrote: > I must be daft, but I would've thought since the major > Kinko's lawsuit several years ago, publishers of scientific journals > would've placed a greater value on the dissemination of scientific > knowledge than on revenue enhancement, and would've adjusted their > copyright policies accordingly. Maybe some publishers do, but not > the APA. I will need to be edified about the underlying rationale > for why scientific journals find it useful to place obstacles in the > free and unfettered dissemination of scientific knowledge, because I > can't see it. Anyone who can straighten me out, please do. > So here's the deal. As you may remember from my last > request, I am trying to gather provocative and exciting articles > published in the scientific literature to accompany a textbook for my > graduate research methods class. I found at least two dozen very > cool articles in the American Psychologist. Being rule-minded as I > am, I checked their copyright policy. I did this pro-forma because I > had assumed that APA would be at the cutting-edge about publication > policy for the distribution of their copyrighted articles for use in > academic courses.
On the contrary, APA is two-to-five years behind the curve of even the more conservative academic publishers outside of psychology. Of course, in high-energy physics, vritually everything has been on-line *FOR FREE* at http://www.arXiv.org/ for more than a decade now. The journals, which are still owned by scholarly societies rather than by major commercial publishers, hardly made a peep. You might think that APA, as a "scholarly society" would have followed suit, but the fact is that APA is so dependent on publication income for its various expensive projects that it has effectively become a commercial publisher. Since then, the APA has dragged its feet on virtually every electronic publishing inititative. First it wouldn't publish electronically. Then it created a single eletronic journal and disingenuously declared it to be no cheaper to produce and distribute than print journals (because they included the capital costs of commissioning complicated and unnecessary software to assist editors in routing manuscripts to reviewers, etc. Meanwhile Stevan Harnad -- who ran both _Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ and the electronic _Psycoloquy_ for a number of years -- estimated the savings at about 70%). Then they started posting HTML copies of their journals on the web, but did such a bad job (no page numbers for citation, images rarely appeared properly) that few would purchase it. Then they started converting to .pdf but they charge libraries nearly as much for the electronic version as for the paper versions, so most libraries have to *choose* which they want. APA sent out a card to their authors a couple years ago telling them that anything posted to the web would be regarded as having been "previously published" and rejected by their journals automatically. They have gradually relaxed that policy to saying that authors can post a copy on their personal websites, but not on "third party" sites (like Harnard's CogPrints and my own History & Theory of Psycholgy Eprint Archive -- http://htprints.yorku.ca/ ). By contrast, _Science_ and _Nature_, both of whom were highly resistant to electronic publication early on, have begun making their articles available on-line *FOR FREE* 6-12 mos. after their initial publication. Elsevier, who was demonized for their attitutde toward electronic publication early on, is now offering electronic versions for a much reduced rate to print subscribers. In addition, there is a whole movement of electronic-only journals in biomedicine that are competing head to head with traditional print journals (Biomed Central). For more information, see Stevan Harnad's personal website, where he has many, many articles on the topic available for free on-line. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 phone: 416-736-5115 ext.66164 fax: 416-736-5814 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================= > But you know what happens when you assume! Not > only am I not allowed to copy and distribute more than a single APA > article to my students freely, but I have to pay 35 cents per page > per student. This figure came from the Copyright Clearance Center. > Now I am confronted with three courses of action: 1) not > share the articles with my students, 2) break the copyright law and > distribute the articles anyway, or 3) find some loophole that will > allow my students to get copies of these articles without any of us > breaking the law. > I am writing to TIPS to follow up on the third option. Have > any of you found ways of accomplishing this objective without > becoming a criminal? > > Wally Dixon > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Wallace E. Dixon, Jr. | > Chair and Associate Professor | Rocket science is child's play > of Psychology | compared to understanding > Department of Psychology | child's play > East Tennessee State University| -unknown > Johnson City, TN 36714 | > (423) 439-6656 | > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
