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CALL FOR COMMENTARY in American Scientist September Forum
The following proposal to change copyright argeements and funding practises so authors can freely archive their work on the Web has just appeared in Science, followed by a dissenting Editorial: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Bachrach et al. Science 1998 September 4: 1459-1460 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459 EDITORIAL: The Rightness of Copyright. Bloom, F. Science 1998 September 4: 1451. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/281/5382/1451 For the time being, Science is allowing anyone to access both the proposal and the dissenting Editorial by Floyd Bloom (Editor, Science) for free (after some signup procedures) at: http://www.sciencemag.org/ See also: Harnad, S. (1998) On-Line Journals and Financial Fire-Walls. Nature 395: 127-128. September 10. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html and also Chronicle of Higher Education September 18: http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm Discussion (including quote/comments from the proposal and the Editorial) is invited in the Forum below READ THE PAPERS, AND THEN COMMENT AT: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september-forum.html
Here are some highlights: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Steven Bachrach, R. Stephen Berry, Martin Blume, Thomas von Foerster, Alexander Fowler, Paul Ginsparg, Stephen Heller, Neil Kestner, Andrew Odlyzko, Ann Okerson, Ron Wigington, Anne Moffat* "...The goals and motivations of scientists writing up their research are very different from those of professional authors, although they may be the same people in different settings. The scientist is concerned with sharing new findings, advancing research inquiry, and influencing the thinking of others. The benefits the scientist receives from publication are indirect; rarely is there direct remuneration for scientific articles. Indeed, scientists frequently pay page charges to publish their articles in journals. The world of the directly paid author is very different. There, the need for close protection of intellectual property follows directly from the need to protect income, making natural allies of the publisher and the professional author, whether a novelist or the author of a chemistry text..." "...The suggested policy is this: Federal agencies that fund research should recommend (or even require) as a condition of funding that the copyrights of articles or other works describing research that has been supported by those agencies remain with the author. The author, in turn, can give prospective publishers a wide-ranging nonexclusive license to use the work in a value-added publication, either in traditional or electronic form. The author thus retains the right to distribute informally, such as through a Web server for direct interaction with peers..." "...[Some publishers, such as] Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society, have adamantly opposed authors' posting of their own articles on Web pages or e-print servers, whereas others, such as the American Journal of Mathematics, the Journal of Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, and Physical Review, have considered such distribution consistent with, and even advertising for, their own journals..."
EDITORIAL The Rightness of Copyright: Floyd E. Bloom "...[C]opyright transfer is critical to the process of communicating scientific information accurately. Neither the public nor the scientific community benefits from the potentially no-holds-barred electronic dissemination capability provided by today's Internet tools. Much information on the Internet may be free, but quality information worthy of appreciation requires more effort than most scientists could muster, even if able...." Questions for Reflection [SH]: (1) Is this a logical or even a practical argument for copyright transfer? (2) Is the only choice really that between free papers, with no quality control, versus quality-controlled papers in exchange for copyright transfer and S/SL/PPV? "...A paper submitted to Science will undergo extensive review and, upon acceptance, extensive revision for clarity, accuracy, and solidity. A paper published in Science will be seen throughout the world by our 160,000 paid subscribers and perhaps two or three times more readers as issues are shared. More than 30,000 readers will be alerted to the new reports within hours of the appearance each week of Science Online...." (3) How many journals reach 160K subscribers (or even 1/100 % of that)? (4) Free posting on the Web can reach all 160K (and 100 times that). (5) Science magazine is a hybrid trade/refereed journal. It publishes refereed articles, contributed for free, plus commissioned and paid articles by staff writers and others, for fee. Hence it is in most relevant requests not representative of the vast refereed literature of which it (and a few other journals like it, such as Nature) constitutes a minuscule portion. "...This degree of investment in the scientific publication process requires the assignment of copyright. This allows the society publisher to provide a stewardship over the paper, to protect it from misuse by those who would otherwise be free to plagiarize or alter it, and to expand the distribution of information products for the benefit of the society. (6) Do we need this degree of investment? Is it worth the consequences (S/SL/PPV, fire-walls)? (7) What is "stewardship"? (8) What do copyright ASSIGNMENT (to the publisher) and S/SL/PPV have to do with protection from plagiarism or alteration? (Doesn't copyright simpliciter provide that?) "...Permissions are granted freely to the originating authors for their own uses. Science holds the copyright of its authors because of our belief that we materially improve and protect the product we create together...." (9) What if the "own use" is the provision of one's work to others, through free public archiving on the Web? (10) Would payment for the cost of the improvements not be sufficient, without the need for copyright assignment, S/SL/PPV and firewalls? [Again, this should all be considered in conjunction with the fact that Science magazine is far from representative of refereed journals, for the reasons noted above.] -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 1703 592582 Computer Science fax: +44 1703 593281 University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/
Message posted by: Frank S. Zollmann
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