The current (and fluid) situation is slightly more complicated than Stevan
makes out. Even publishers who appear to take a liberal view on
pre/postprints do impose rather tight restrictions when you read the small
print. Take the following example:
“<Publisher X’s> authors who assign their copyright to us retain unlimited
free reproduction rights for their own work. Authors do not give up their
rights to republish or reproduce their work for course notes, in another
journal or as a book chapter, or electronically including their own or
institutional Web Site, subject to acknowledging first publication details.
… Authors are not required to seek permission to re-use their own work.”
This seems quite self-archiving friendly. However, authors have also to
sign an undertaking that
“I/we warrant that the Work has not been published before”.
In other words, to quote from the explanation given by the editor of a
journal published by X:
“The freedom to use your paper in whatever form kicks in *after* the
publication date of the paper in the journal, not before. (…)
Pre-publication on a website would infringe this because a guarantee has
been signed that "the Work has not been published before"”.
Notice that if a form giving the above guarantee is not signed by the
author, the paper is not published. Full stop. So much for “the Ingelfinger
Rule [being] virtually unenforceable”.
Of course, one could break one’s word and still post the paper. However,
one would place oneself in the uncomfortable position of being in breach of
contract (nothing to do with copyright, as Stevan correctly points out).
I am no lawyer, but in what way is being in breach of contract "not a
legal matter" (as claimed in
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publisher-forbids)?
Perhaps the fact that the greatest majority of researcher do NOT
self-archive may have something to do with this?
If only things were black and white …
Manfredi La Manna
At 16:14 11/08/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Medical Eduation Online wrote:
>
> > I think it is best to be sure the authors
> > agree to publish their manuscripts in the non peer-reviewed section of the
> > journal as it may limit their ability to publish their manuscripts in
> > certain other peer-reviewed journals. I am modifying the submission form
> > and database to accommodate this field. Once in place, I'll do as Stevan
> > suggested, putting them in MEO but marking them as a preprint and updating
> > the record when they are published.
>
>I meant to reply specifically about this in your earlier posting.
>
>You are quite right not to post preprints without their authors'
>knowledge and consent. But although there are journals (a smaller and
>smaller number of them) that still practise the "Ingelfinger Rule" --
>which is the policy of imposing an embargo on any prepublication posting
>of preprints and a declining to referee papers that have been posted
>as preprints -- it is extremely important (and more in line with reality
>and reason) that you make it clear to your authors that:
>
>(1) This "Ingelfinger Rule" is dramatically on the wane. Few journals ever
>praticed it to begin with, but their number is rapidly shrinking now,
>because in the online age this policy is so clearly against the interests
>of research and researchers and is practised purely in the interests
>of publisher revenue. Please, in raising the matter, draw your authors'
>attention to the pertinent self-archiving FAQs on this question:
>
> "What if the publisher forbids preprint self-archiving?"
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publisher-forbids
>
> "What can publishers do to facilitate self-archiving?"
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publishers-do
>
>(2) Make it clear to your authors that the Ingelfinger Rule is not
>(and never has been) a legal matter and has nothing whatsoever to do
>with copyright. It is merely a journal policy matter. Moreover, it is
>virtually unenforceable.
>
>(3) The real questions about preprints not concern not the Ingelfinger
>Rule but:
>
> (a) Is the author ready to make the preprint public? The presumption
> is that if the preprint is ready for the journal's peer reviewers to
> see it then it should be ready for other peers to see it as well.
>
> (b) Are priority and authorship fully protected? The answer is that
> by asserting copyright on the preprint itself, as well as by the very
> act and (date-stamped) record of making the preprint public, authors
> are perhaps even better protected than by not making them public.
>
> (c) Should the preprint be publicly associated in any way with the
> name of the journal to which it has been submitted? My inclination
> is to say that in most cases it should not be -- until and unless
> it has been accepted. Until then it should be archived only
> as a preprint, without naming the journal to which it has been
> submitted. (Few authors have reason to want a public record of the
> journals by which their papers have been rejected!)
>
>Stevan Harnad
Dr Manfredi M.A. La Manna
Reader in Economics
ELSSS, Dept of Economics
University of St Andrews
St Andrews KY16 9AL
Scotland, UK
Tel: 44 + (0)1334 462434
Fax: 44+ (0)1334 462444
Mobile: 077526 19784
http:\\www.elsss.org.uk
Received on Sun Aug 11 2002 - 19:17:27 BST