I have just joined this list - excuse this belated transmission of a
point of view to the Harnad/Johnson exchange of last week:
SH> ...and to be ensured that the text is not altered or corrupted in
any way,
SJ>I have to confess that I have no real idea what this latter
SJ>condition really means. Misattribution of authorship for
SJ>subsequent revisions and work is certainly an issue, but
SJ>just what does it mean for the author to assert that the
SJ>text is not to be altered or corrupted?
The subsequent thread seemed to veer away from the question, "just what
does it mean for the author to assert that the text is not to be altered
or corrupted?" Here's my take on the integrity right, with a few
supplementary questions:
Authors have the right to expect that their work will not be tampered
with in such a way as to misrepresent their opinions, sully their
reputations or otherwise bring dishonour and obloquy on their heads.
While this absolutist position can be insisted upon to the letter, comma
and space in fiction and poetry, in the world of academic journals the
integrity right is conditional on achieving a canonical version of the
text. That is, the author submits the paper to the publisher on the
understanding that there may well be, and usually is, a phase during
which the text is reviewed, revised, often copy-edited, and sometimes
completely re-arranged, ideally, but not always in a collaborative
process. Traditionally, the integrity of the text is not insisted upon
at this stage (as the author can always withdraw from the process in the
pre-contractual period if s/he doesn't like the changes). So what the
author's moral right of integrity applies to is the version that is
actually printed, even though this may be some distance from the
original version.
In preprint archives, we start with the absolutist position: the
author's original is the canonical version and this is the version to
which the integrity right applies. When the postprint is placed on the
server, this replaces the preprint as the new "integral", canonical
version. I'm not sure how this can apply to the "corrigendum" option of
Stevan's self-archiving methodology. Does the author assert the
integrity right to the preprint and to the corrigenda?
More vexing is the question of how any form of integrity right can fit
in with copyleft - or any of the other moral rights
(attribution/misattribution). If you feel that the identity of the
"original" (?) author is of any importance, then surely the idea of
releasing text under copyleft is to be resisted?
Chris Zielinski
Director, Information Waystations and Staging Posts Network
e-mail: zielinski2002_at_cs.com and informania_at_supanet.com
web site:
http://www.iwsp.org
-----Original Message-----
From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of Seth
Johnson
Sent: 10 February 2002 08:30
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: "Copyleft" article in New Scientist
Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> [. . .] Apart from wanting to be
> properly credited for its authorship (i.e., protected from plagiarism)
> and to be ensured that the text is not altered or corrupted in any
way,
I have to confess that I have no real idea what this latter
condition really means. Misattribution of authorship for
subsequent revisions and work is certainly an issue, but
just what does it mean for the author to assert that the
text is not to be altered or corrupted?
> < SNIP >
Received on Thu Feb 14 2002 - 12:34:44 GMT