On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote:
> I think it is perfectly reasonable (and in no way a denial of Open Access)
> for a publisher to wish to retain the right to sell derivative copies of a
> work, even if in its original form it is made freely available.
This is indeed perfectly reasonable and correct, and in no way a denial
of Open Access.
(But if the original form of a work is freely available online, it is
not clear what market there would be for derivative copies...)
> After all, they've got to recover their costs somehow - and if they
> recover more from other sources, they will not need to ask authors to
> pay so much.
This sentence is far less clear than the prior one, and appears to be conflating
the case where open-access to the work is being provided by self-archiving
an article that has been published in a toll-access ("green") journal with
the case where open-access to the woork is being provided by publishing
it in an open-access ("gold") journal.
If the sentence referred to self-archiving green journal articles,
then the authors are not paying anything (the green journals are still
charging access tolls).
If the sentence was referring to publishing articles in gold (open-access)
journals, then author/institution publication fees are paying the costs.
There might conceivably be additional revenue to be made from
selling derivative works, which could then lower the gold journal's
author/institution fees, but (as noted) who would want to pay for
derivative works if the full-text was already available free for all
online?
Many gold journals are using or planning to use the "creative commons"
license, which (as I understand it) allows anyone to publish derivative
works from the open-access work. That would of course include its gold publisher
too. So no further right needs to be retained by the gold publisher in that
case.
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Received on Tue Dec 30 2003 - 01:05:07 GMT