Comment
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5393086/ (in German)
(1) Refutation of the Harnad/Suber-myth that journal editor's work
always falls under "give away"
(2) German court says that peer review resp. editor's work makes a
journal as collection of articles a copyrighted work.
(3) Negative consequences for OA: If a repository has almost all
articles of a journal issue legally self-archived according German law
with references to the journal (citation of issue and pages) this is a
violation of the right in the collection according the court.
If the editor is the rights holder he must consent (some extremists
propagating the useless request-button would argue that scholars
always have the natural aim to support open access ...) but in the
most cases the publisher has the rights. If and only if the publisher
has an explicite self-archiving policy and the publication in the
(disciplinary) repository is according this policy there is no danger.
In all other cases he can block OA to most articles even authors have
OA deposit rights according the German copyright act.
Klaus Graf
Received on Tue Dec 16 2008 - 23:22:48 GMT