Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research

From: Pam Davies <p.m.davies_at_leeds.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 11:46:09 +0000

Stevan says, in reply to Lizzie Gadd:

> From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk]
> Sent: 03 March 2003 11:47
> What would be a very useful exercise for those who believe that having a
> full-text permenantly accessible to every web-user on the planet 24
> hours a day does *not* provide all the possible uses that the author of
> that give-away research wants to ensure that every potential user has (in
> order to maximize the paper's usage and research impact) would be to
> list those extra, missing uses. Of the ones Lizzie lists above, not a
> single one is not provided by permanent full-text open-access on the web:
> ...
> (4) As to the right to print-off and distribute multiple hard copies
> to others: There is no need for this as long as the others too have
> web-access. This seems a reasonable way to protect the publisher from
> the logical next-step, which is another publisher's right to print-off
> and sell hard copies to others. All of this becomes moot online.

But in the context of learning and teaching there are indeed possible
uses that the author might want which are "not provided by permanent
full-text open-access on the web:"

1: in reply to Stevan's point 4: The key words are "as long as the others
too have web-access". But not everyone has access to the web. There are
courses taught by distance learning, either by post or by face-to-face
tuition in off-campus locations, where the students do not all have
networked PCs. In some cases a tutor would like to offer these students
access to his or her own research papers, and the right to make multiple
print copies (or, for the more technically sophisticated but still
non-networked, burning to CDROM) is needed.

2: authors may also want to include all or part of their authored papers in
online or CDROM teaching materials, either solely for their own institution
or for wider use. A link to the openly available web source is not always
going to be adequate: they may wish only to refer the student to a section
of the paper, or the student may be working from a CDROM so that it is
preferable to be able to include the whole paper rather than rely on the
student having web access and good network links for downloading.

So retention of copyright should be our goal, rather than only permission to
self-archive.

Best wishes,

Pam
Received on Tue Mar 04 2003 - 11:46:09 GMT