Re: The Special Case of Law Reviews

From: Dan Hunter <hunterd_at_WHARTON.UPENN.EDU>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 13:14:39 -0500

The law professor gets it. The (untenured) law professor just doesn't
have the bargaining position to negotiate a change in the contract when
the elite journals (that I rely on to get tenure) have explicitly said
that they won't negotiate contract terms and that if I don't like it I
can piss elsewhere.

And, seriously, if you think that the solution to this problem is
individual contractual responsibility then I would, with the greatest
of respect to you, suggest that you're part of the problem.

Dan Hunter.


On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 09:59 AM, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> Dan Hunter may be "merely asking the California Law Review to become
> 'green', which is to formally support author self-archiving", but if
> so perhaps it could be put more succinctly and more practically. As it
> stands, there seem to be some obvious faults in the argument. First Dan
> Hunter says
>
>> In agreeing to publish with you I have not made any amendments to your
>> standard form publishing contract which provides, inter alia, for an
>> assignment of copyright in the articles to your journal.
>
> Then later to the student editor
>
>> Thanks to you, if people want access to my ideas then they
>> can pay Westlaw or Lexis or Hein monopoly rents to get it.
>
> Why blame the student? If the law professor doesn't get it, how can the
> student be expected to?
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
> Email: sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
Received on Fri Nov 21 2003 - 18:14:39 GMT