Re: Self-archiving, academic staff, universities & intellectual property

From: Jim Till <till_at_UHNRES.UTORONTO.CA>
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 13:08:48 -0400

On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Stevan Harnad wrote:

[sh]> To summarize (again): Blocking access to patentable findings so that
[sh]> tolls can be derived from the sale of potential products derived
[sh]> from them makes sense; blocking access to the publication of
[sh]> peer-reviewed, non-patentable findings in order to collect access
[sh]> tolls makes zero sense.

I agree.

[sh]> If you would not want to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal (or
[sh]> not yet), then you would not want to self-archive it either.

Again, I agree.

[sh]> If research is being held back from publication waiting for a
[sh]> patent, then that is not the research we are concerned about here.
[sh]> The research we are concerned about here is seeking publication in a
[sh]> peer-reviewed journal -- seeking to maximize access to itself so as
[sh]> to maximize its research impact.

But, in the biotechnology area, there are authors who want to do both: 1)
by filing for patent protection, protect intellectual property that may
lead directly to an "invention", AND, then, 2) to publish their research
results in a high-impact, widely-accessible journal. These are
sequential, but not mutually-exclusive, objectives.

I know that Stevan prefers to focus the attention of participants in this
Forum mainly on the self-archiving strategy, but my own view is that the
Forum will be more useful if it addresses ALL barriers, temporary or
permanent, to rapid open access to the peer-reviewed research results.
The time required to seek (legitimate) protection of intellectual property
is one such (temporary) barrier.

Perhaps I should have started a new thread, instead of participating in an
existing one?

Jim Till
University of Toronto
Received on Sun Jun 23 2002 - 18:08:48 BST