Publication in academic terms is a different use of the term than in
copyright terms. When we talk of "a publication" or "a paper/monograph/book
being published" in academic terms that means that it has been properly
refereed and then made available to others. The means of making available
does not matter - it is the status of having been refereed and made available
that matters to academics. Under copyright law, wide scale distribution is of
course publication, but since we are talking about academic work here, we
should assume people mean the academic sense of "publication" unless stated
otherwise.
Fair Use/Fair Dealing rights are NOT part of the copyright owner's rights.
They are the rights of the public which restrict the scope of the monopoly of
the copyright owner. The "transfer of all rights" from author (original
copyright owner) to publishing house (new copyright owner) does not include
the fair use rights enjoyed not only by the author but by all other
individuals. The only circumstance in which the author might lose such rights
would be if they signed a contract in which they agreed to enjoin from
exerting those rights - contracts in which one agrees to give up rights are
often not valid, but that's an abstruse area of contract/copyright law
outside the scope of this list, since no academic publisher appears to have
such a contract.
The "Fair Use Button" in Open Access repository software is well grounded in
copyright law and suggesting that it is not is FUD, as is confusing the
academic and copyright law meaning of "publish"/"publication".
--
*E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk******** Dr Andrew A Adams
**snail*27 Westerham Walk********** School of Systems Engineering
***mail*Reading RG2 0BA, UK******** The University of Reading
****Tel*+44-118-378-6997*********** Reading, United Kingdom
**http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa/**
Received on Sat Jun 02 2007 - 12:18:34 BST