On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Rob Walker wrote:
> I found this posting highly informative and very helpful. Over the
> years I have become increasingly concerned at the stranglehold that
> the major publishers seem to have over academic publishing. As an
> individual it has affected me only in small ways - something I had
> published in a journal being reprinted in a book without my knowledge
> or consent (the publisher owns the copyright), being asked high fees
> for the right to republish journal material on a CDROM intended for
> student use (the publisher etc). It seems to me that we sign away our
> intellectual property too easily and some time ago I began inserting
> clauses into agreements saying that I would not sign over copyright
> to private companies on work that was government sponsored. A move
> that seemed to cause some irritation but not much more.
>
> This issue is one I think we need to take seriously and act together
> on. I would welcome further discussion,
Ref:
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind01&L=september98-forum&F=l&S=&P=18612
In order to make sense of all this it is absolutely essential that
certain distinctions be explicitly made. If you do not make these
distinctions, if you conflate different, unrelated, sometimes even
opposing aspects of "intellectual property" and try to treat them all
in one uniform, "one-size-fits-all" way, the current confusion will
just continue.
There is no generalized "stranglehold" that "publishers" exert over
"academic publishing." Academic publishing (whatever that is!) has
many different forms, and they have to be treated distinctly. In
general, book publishing is not the same as journal publishing, and
that is the most important cut to make. And royalty issues are not the
same as (indeed, they are in opposition to) access/impact issues.
Please see:
Harnad, S. (2001) For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the
Refereed Research Literature Online Through Author/Institution
Self-Archiving, Now.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm
Excerpts below:
5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns
There is a great deal of concern about copyright in the digital
age, and some of it may not be easily resolvable (e.g., what to do
about the pirating of software and music). But none of that need
detain us here, because digital piracy is only a problem for
non-give-away work, whereas we are concerned here only with
give-away work. (Again, failing to make the give-away/non-give-away
distinction leads only to confusion, and the misapplication of the
much bigger and more representative non-give-away model to the
anomalous give-away corpus, which it does not fit.)
The following digital copyright concerns are relevant to the
non-give-away literature only:
5.1. Protecting Intellectual Property (royalties)
This is as much of a concern to authors of books as to
authors of screenplays, music, and computer programs. It is
also a concern to performers who have made digital audio or
video disks of their work. They do not wish to see that
work stolen; they want their fair share of the
gate-receipts in return for their talent and efforts in
producing the work.
But the producers of refereed research reports do not wish
to have protection from "theft" of this kind; on the
contrary, they wish to encourage it. They have no royalties
to gain from preventing it; they have only research impact
to lose from access-blockage of any kind.
5.2. Allowing Fair Use (user issue)
"Fair Use" is another worthy concern. It has to do with
certain sanctioned uses of non-give-away material, such as
all or parts of books, magazine articles, etc., often for
teaching purposes; the producers of these works do not wish
to lose their potential royalty/fee-income from these
works.
The producers of refereed research reports, in contrast,
wish to give their work away; hence fair-use issues are
moot for this special give-away literature.
5.3. Preventing Theft of Text (piracy)
The producers of refereed research reports do not wish to
prevent the theft of their texts; they wish to facilitate
it as much as possible. (In the on-paper era they used to
purchase and mail reprints to requesters at their own
expense!)
The following digital copyright concern is relevant to all
literature, both give-away and non-give-away:
5.4. Preventing Theft of Authorship (plagiarism)
No author wants any other author to claim to have been the
author of his work. This concern is shared by all authors,
give-away and non-give-away. But it has nothing whatsoever
to do with concerns about theft-of-text, and should not be
conflated with such concerns in any way: Give-away work
need not be held hostage to non-give-away concerns about
theft-of-text under the pretext of "protecting" it from
theft-of-authorship. (Unfortunately, many journal
publishers try to write and use their copyright transfer
agreements for precisely this purpose, and authors need to
become aware of it.)
The following digital copyright concern is relevant to the
give-away literature only:
5.5. Guaranteeing Author Give-Away Rights
Apart from the protection from plagiarism and the assurance
of priority that all authors seek, the only other
"protection" the give-away author of refereed research
reports seeks is protection of his give-away rights!
(The intuitive model for this is advertisements: what
advertiser wants to lose his right to give away his ads for
free, diminishing their potential impact by charging for
access to them!)
Well, there is no need for the authors of refereed research
to worry about exercising their give-away rights, for they
can do it, legally, even under the most restrictive
copyright agreement, by using the following strategy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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
You may join the list at the site above.
Discussion can be posted to:
american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT