I have little doubt that it is raised in earnest because I have heard
similar comments; some academics enjoy some income from copying of
their articles and therefore have concerns that their income will
drop with OA. In my view, they really don't get the point of OA, or
indeed of why they are publishing in the first place.
Charles
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Head
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509 223053
e mail c.oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 24 November 2008 14:06
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Royalty-Seeking on Impact-Seeking Give-Away Content?
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sheppard, Nick <N.E.Sheppard -- leedsmet.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:10 AM
Subject: ACLS and royalties
To: JISC-REPOSITORIES -- jiscmail.ac.uk
An academic has recently contacted me with an enquiry
about ACLS [Authors' Licensing and Collecting Service ]
and the payment of royalties on material downloaded from
IRs:
> The other aspect of this is that academics - under the
ACLS
> service - authors collecting and licencing service -
derive
> (admittedly small) amounts of money from institutional
copying
> charges world wide of >published articles. If we start
putting up
> essays on a repository, we are in danger of cutting off
a
> legitimate source of income for our work - some years
it might
> be 70 quid others it might be 220 from p/copying in
Norway
> and USA or Europe etc. If the ACLS were able to figure
the
> number of hits to university repositories, we could
continue
> to receive payment on the basis of our copyright
ownership.
I spoke to someone at ACLS who told me they are unsure of
where they stand on the issue themselves and referred me
to the Society of Authors for further advice. Thought
I'd try the list first...
It is hard to discern whether this question was raised in earnest or
in jest!
Does anyone imagine that the authors of refereed journal articles
would gain more from (1) the pennies they might demand from ALCS
tolls on viewing their content (online viewing tolls alongside the
subscription tolls from which OA was meant to free refereed research
articles) than they would from (2) the enhanced uptake, usage, and
impact that OA itself provides, freeing their published papers from
all user-access-toll barriers -- and (3) the contribution of that
enhanced impact to their performance evaluations, salaries,
promotions, RAE ranking and research funding?
OA is about author-giveaway content: refereed journal articles,
written only for research usage and impact. OA is not about
royalty-seeking books, nor fee-based magazine articles. How on earth
does ALCS get into this at all?
1.1. Distinguish the non-give-away literature from the
give-away literature
1.2. Distinguish income (arising from article sales) from
impact (arising from article use)
http://cogprints.org/1639/1/resolution.htm#1.1
Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Nov 24 2008 - 18:25:12 GMT