on Fri, 22 Jun 2001 Alan Story <a.c.story_at_ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
> As soon as someone suggests " you know it really is a crazy system under
> which commercial publishers acquire, at no cost, all intellectual property
> rights to the work of authors which is produced by the often-unpaid labour
> of academics (because they love their subject area) and by the money of
> taxpayers (academic salaries, fellowships, libraries, prior education, etc.)
> and student tuition fees" you get accused of taking "clearly an anti-library
> anti-science position."
>
> Not at all clear to me, Albert, just as it was not clear to a lot of people
> some centuries that the earth was flat just because people said it was.
Also not clear is that saying that unpaid authors give
away their copyrights doesn't make it true.
Money is not the only token of value. One of the key
fallacies that burdens this forum is the failure to
recognize the economic exchanges that course through
the research communication process. Publishers exchange
recognition and dissemination services for the copyrights
of the articles they publish. Every economist I know agrees.
By the same token, the value of self-publishing is of lesser
value because it is unselective and offers little archival
promise in spite of the mis-use of the word by Harnad and
Gisparg.
Thanks for helping me clear this up.
Albert Henderson
<70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT