On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Thomas J. Walker wrote:
>sh>Thomas, maybe it's just me, but I still can't determine from the
>sh>above: Does or does not ESA allow author self-archiving (of their own
>sh>final, accepted draft), without having to pay ESA anything extra? If it
>sh>does, then this is a true, benign option, and the most progressive one
>sh>I've seen to date, completely in harmony with the mission of a learned
>sh>society and the possibilities opened up by the new medium.
>
> To spell it out, ESA requires its authors to sign away _all_ their rights
> to their articles. It _should_ do what APS has done and specifically
> permit self-archiving of the content of the refereed version. In ESA's
> defense, I am sure ESA's GB would never authorize taking action against an
> author who self-archived content. In fact I was told that in a straw vote
> in June 1999, ESA's GB voted unanimously that ESA could not expect to
> continue to make money selling content. [This vote was not recorded in the
> minutes.]
In that case I withdraw my praise of ESA! It's not relevant that they
would not in reality prosecute. (No Learned Society would: the conflict
of interest would be too blatant and the membership would revolt.) But
the PERCEIVED restriction (because of the copyright agreement, and
despite the easy, legal Oppenheim-plan for getting around it) is bound
to contribute to retarding our passage to the optimal and the
inevitable for research and researchers, and that is inexcusable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad harnad_at_cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad_at_princeton.edu
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
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT