Re: Stevan Harnad's misconception 6

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:55:39 +0000

On Wed, 28 Feb 2007, Velterop, Jan, Springer UK wrote:

> Misconception: If an author 'pays' for the services of a publisher by
> handing over rights, that payment is in addition to subscription
> charges.
>
> Stevan Harnad must not have understood what I said, and it's entirely
> possible that I wasn't clear enough. Mea culpa.

I understood perfectly well.

> No, Stevan, you can't just add these. Let me try to explain it again.
> The author 'pays' by transferring rights, these rights only represent
> 'potential' money. This 'potential' money has to be converted into
> 'actual' money for the publisher to be able to pay his bills. That's
> what subscriptions do, the convert rights into money.
>
> Why exclusive rights? 'Exclusive' here means that the same article may
> not be published in more than one journal. Virtually everybody in the
> scientific establishment agrees with that principle. Not absolutely
> everybody. Some articles appear in more than one journal. When this
> happens, it is frowned upon, even regarded as scientific fraud.

Who is talking about publishing articles in more than one journal. We are talking
about the right to self-archive the article.

If that wasn't clear enough, mea culpa.

> As for royalties to the author, of course they are given, if the
> publisher really wants to publish the work because in his judgement he
> can sell it well. For instance textbooks, or good review-articles. For
> research articles this doesn't apply, because it's not up to the
> publisher to decide which article to publish and which not. Just as
> well. Editors and editorial boards - scientists - decide, on the basis
> of scientific merit, not financial potential. This is as true for
> subscription-based journals as it is for OA journals and hybrid ones.

And because referees referee (for free) and editors decide, it follows
that the author should not self-archive his article? or that the
author's funder or employer should not mandate that the fundee/employee
self-archive his article?

The logic of "excluding" the right to self-archive, or to mandate self-archiving,
continues to escape me. (Could it be because I keep thinking of access and impact,
and you keep thinking of funding and revenues? But then why do you portray yourself
as being for OA?)

Stevan Harnad

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: SPARC Open Access Forum [mailto:SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org]
> > On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> > Sent: 28 February 2007 04:09
> > To: SPARC Open Access Forum
> > Subject: [SOAF] Reply to Jan Velterop, and a Challenge to
> > "OA" Publishers Who Oppose Mandating OA via Self-Archiving
> >
> > ** Cross-Posted **
> >
> [cut]
> >
> > > On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Velterop, Jan, Springer UK wrote:
> > >
> > > transfer of exclusive rights to a publisher is a form of
> > > 'payment'. Payment for the services of a publisher.
> >
> > Is that so? And then what are subscription revenues? A fringe benefit?
> >
> > (I would have thought that assigning a publisher the right to
> > publish and the exclusive right to collect revenues for
> > selling an author's work, without even paying any royalties
> > to the author, was "payment"
> > enough for the value added by the publisher...)
> >
> > > The publisher subsequently uses these exclusive rights to
> > sell > subscriptions > and licences in order to recoup his costs
> >
> > Why exclusive rights?
> >
> > > The advantage is seemingly for the author, who >
> > (mistakenly) has the feeling that he doesn't have to pay for
> > the > services of formal publication of his article, but who
> > seldom realizes > why he is asked to transfer exclusive rights.
> >
> > Authors are naive, but not quite as foolish as that. They
> > know the publisher needs to sell subscriptions to make ends
> > meet. But what you haven't explained is why the publisher
> > needs *exclusive* rights in order to do that.
> >
> [cut]
>
Received on Wed Feb 28 2007 - 20:15:45 GMT