Re: Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research

From: Brian Lynch <blynch_at_stfx.ca>
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:01:04 -0300

Dear Stevan:

Until self-archiving and/or institutional repositories become universal, 
require all granting agencies and/or publishing organizations to mandate
that all abstracts of published papers of electronic or paper issues [to
be freely accessible through the Internet] must include either an e-mail
address  for the principal author, or an institutional web site providing
author access through a directory of e-mail addresses.
If this practice existed,  anyone interested in a specific paper could
ask the author to provide them with a preprint or postprint file.
It may be that toll-access journals would claim that an author obliging
such a request infringes copyright, but surely no
responsible justice system would or could secure a guilty verdict for the
supposed "offence".

The proposed action is the modern-day equivalent of providing a
reproduced copy of a reprint of one's own article
after you have exhausted your supply of publisher-supplied reprints.



Brian Lynch

Brian M. Lynch, M. Sc., Ph.D. [Melbourne], FCIC
Senior Research Professor
Department of Chemistry, St. Francis Xavier University
Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada
Tel: 902-867-3992 [office]; 902-867-0450 [cellphone: preferred]
Fax: 902-867-2414
Received on Mon Sep 19 2005 - 15:04:16 BST