Re: Zen response to e-Archiving Challenge

From: Charles Oppenheim <C.Oppenheim_at_LBORO.AC.UK>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 09:08:02 +0000

Albert Henderson stated:

>> >
> First, the transfer of copyright covers all copies
> before and after. Copyright does not differ much
> from the cake you cannot eat and then have.
>
> Second, AGU et al. v. Texaco proved infringement all
> the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is no different.

Copyright infringement takes place when person B *copies* a work owned by
person A. In this case, person B is the original author, and person A is
the publisher to whom person B has assigned copyright of a *later version*
of the paper. So infringement cannot have taken place. The real question
is whether person B was in a position to assign copyright to person A, and
if (s)he was not, then there is a potential breach of contract, but not
infringement. Copyright infringement cannot take place where no copying of
a document took place.

AGU versus Texaco was a case concerning fair use in photocopying of
published journal articles. It was nothing to do with preprint (or any
other type of) archives. The discussion we are having is nothing to do
with fair use.


In response to my comment:

>> Blaise Cronin did some important research about ten years ago that showed
>> that US academics' salaries were directly correlated with their citation
>> counts. Since citation counts are (it is universally agreed) a measure of
>> a scientist's impact, I think the relationship IS proved - unless Albert
>> has evidence contradicting Cronin's results?

Albert replied:

> Cronin and Overfelt focused on a single SLIS department
> and produced a table that compared full professors
> with assistants and associates on a given day. They
> did not set out to study the relationship of cites
> to income, nor did they do so with their data. Their
> aim was elsewhere. They emphasized, "The conclusion
> must be that most other top-ranking library and
> information science schools have less impressive track
> records than Indiana ...." and so on. (JASIS 45:61-72 1994)
> They also pointed out that the most highly-cited LIS
> journals are not refereed. Is that the work you had
> in mind??

No, it is not. The article I was referring to *was* about income.

Albert also noted:
>
> The application of Lotka's law by Price, which I
> referred to above, would seem to stand.

Alas, Lotka's Law is nothing to do with academics' earning power.

Albert's other points were so off topic, there is no point in responding to
them.



Professor Charles Oppenheim
Dept of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU

Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509-223053
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT