First I will beg the indulgence of the moderator of this
list and
its readers to accept a flurry of postings from me. I have
dutifully downloaded the postings for the past six weeks but
had
such a busy schedule that I have had to postpone to this
weekend
responding to any. So here I begin....
I have a simple question to ask those who stand behind and
support this initiative (and others similar to it, like the
one
proposed by the CIC provosts): how does it help universities
that
pay for their presses to publish journals to create a lot of
extra work for their staffs explaining to authors why they
cannot
accept all of the proposed clauses in the addendum? This is
a
real cost, which will add to the burden of already
understaffed
university presses (like mine).
A university press (like mine) that relies for a very
substantial
part of its journal income from participation in Project
Muse
simply cannot afford to sign an agreement that would have
the
effect of undermining Project Muse. A clause that allows
authors,
or others, to post on the open Internet the final
peer-reviewed
and copyedited version of their articles, with or without a
six-month delay, is very likely to lead eventually to the
demise
of Muse-which, may I remind you all, was established with
the
support of a Mellon grant jointly to the press and library
at
Johns Hopkins and was developed from the beginning to be a
library-friendly, reasonably priced resource.
If Muse disappears, then so too do all of the ten journals
that
we currently publish and have enrolled in Muse, including
such
long-established leading journals in their fields as
Philosophy &
Rhetoric, The Chaucer Review, and Comparative Literature
Studies
and such newer journals as Book History (the official
journal of
the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and
Publishing). It has long since passed the time when their
print
subscriptions alone could sustain the cost of publishing
them.
I am also curious as to the legality of this further
strategy
proposed by SPARC and adopted by the University of Wisconsin
Faculty Senate on May 7 when it approved the CIC
initiative:
The Library Committee amended the original CIC addendum
distributed by the CIC provosts to include subsection 4 that
was
derived from ARL's Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources
Coalition (SPARC). ARL/SPARC has been an international
leader in
the discussion of author rights and scholarly
communications.
This sub-section is a default clause that states that in the
event that the publisher publishes the article in the
journal
without signing a copy of the addendum, the publisher will
be
deemed to have assented to the terms of the addendum.
Not being a lawyer, I'm no expert on the validity of such
"default" clauses, but I would bet that they are
unenforceable. A
license is a license, and if the publisher does not agree to
terms explicitly in writing, no "default" is going
to compel the
publisher to do anything it doesn't want to do. Other
opinions,
please?
As for the general approach of Creative Commons (copied in
this
Science Commons version) to provide a means for authors to
license any uses that are "noncommercial," I
would appreciate
knowing what "noncommercial" means. If it is meant
to be the
equivalent of "educational," then it is as vacuous
and unhelpful
as the view that "fair use" sanctions any
"educational"
use-which, as we all know from a variety of Supreme Court
cases,
is not the view of the highest court in the land. For the
vast
majority of the specialized scholarly writing that is the
subject
of journal licensing agreements, there is NO market outside
of
higher education-which is, by the way, the reason that
university
presses were established in the first place. Is
"noncommercial"
then supposed to be a synonym for "nonprofit"? But
university
presses are nonprofit entities. Thus, are we permitted by
Creative Commons licenses to republish any articles or book
chapters whose authors have signed such a license? It would
be
nice to know so that we don't have to bother paying them any
permission fees. The same, of course, would hold for
"nonprofit"
society publishers. Our missions are, of course, to serve
scholarship, so we would be happy to accept this
interpretation
of "noncommercial." I'm not sure its creators
intended for it to
be interpreted in that way. On the other hand, I really
haven't a
clue about how they did intend it to be construed, since it
is
inherently a slippery concept. And the whole edifice of CC
licensing is built upon this shaky commercial/noncommercial
distinction, is it not?
As in much else that is going on now, every step forward in
one
arena seems to entail a step backward in another. If
universities
were thinking systematically about this issue instead of
narrowly
focusing on the STM journal problem, they would realize that
proposals like these are at least partly self-defeating.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press
>SCIENCE COMMONS, SPARC ANNOUNCE NEW TOOLS FOR SCHOLARLY
PUBLISHING
>
>For Immediate Release
>Thursday, May 17, 2007
>Contact: Kaitlin Thaney
>Fax: (617) 532-0025
>E-mail: kaitlin creativecommons.org
>
>Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA - May 17, 2007
>
>Today, Science Commons and the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic
>Resources Coalition (SPARC) announce the release of new
online
>tools to help authors exercise choice in retaining
critical
>rights in their scholarly articles, including the rights
to
>reuse their scholarly articles and to post them in
online
>repositories.
>
>The new tools include the Scholar's Copyright Addendum
Engine,
>an online tool created by Science Commons to simplify
the
>process of choosing and implementing an addendum to
retain
>scholarly rights. By selecting from among four addenda
offered,
>any author can fill in a form to generate and print a
completed
>amendment that can be attached to a publisher's
copyright
>assignment agreement to retain critical rights to reuse
and
>offer their works online.
>
>The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will be offered
through
>the Science Commons, SPARC, the Massachusetts Institute
of
>Technology (MIT), and the Carnegie Mellon University Web
sites,
>and it will be freely available to other institutions
that wish
>to host it. It may be accessed on the Science Commons
Web site
>at http://scholars.s
ciencecommons.org.
>
>Also available for the first time is a new addendum from
Science
>Commons and SPARC, named 'Access-Reuse,' that represents
a
>collaboration to simplify choices for scholars by
combining two
>existing addenda, the SPARC Author Addendum and the
Science
>Commons Open Access-Creative Commons Addendum. This new
addendum
>will ensure that authors not only retain the rights to
reuse
>their own work and post them on online depositories, but
also to
>grant a non-exclusive license, such as the Creative
Commons
>Attribution-Non-Commercial license, to the public to
reuse and
>distribute the work. In addition, Science Commons will
be
>offering two other addenda, called 'Immediate Access'
and
>'Delayed Access,' representing alternative arrangements
that
>authors can choose.
>
>"The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will
enable authors to
>maximize the reach of their work," said Heather
Joseph,
>Executive Director of SPARC. "It's a significant
leap forward
>in making it easier for authors to effectively manage
their
>publication rights."
>
>In addition, MIT has contributed to this effort by
including its
>MIT Copyright Agreement Amendment in the choices
available
>through the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine. The MIT
>Copyright Amendment has been available since the spring
of 2006
>and allows authors to retain specific rights to deposit
articles
>in MIT Libraries' DSpace repository, and to deposit any
>NIH-funded manuscripts on the National Library of
Medicine's
>PubMed Central database.
>
>"The cumulative nature of scientific discovery
makes it
>imperative that unnecessary barriers to the timely
sharing of
>results of research should be eliminated wherever
possible,"
>said Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries for MIT.
"The MIT
>Libraries applauds Science Commons for its development
of tools
>such as the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine, which
enables
>authors of scholarly articles to ensure that they can
later
>reuse their works and make them widely accessible to
other
>researchers and the public. Timely and broad access to
the
>scholarly literature and research results is key to the
>advancement of science, and we are pleased to
participate in
>this important Science Commons initiative by offering
MIT's
>Copyright Amendment for inclusion in the Scholar's
Copyright
>Addendum Engine."
>
>"Scientists in many fields believe that progress
can best be
>achieved by sharing scientific information. Carnegie
Mellon is
>delighted to be able to host the addendum generator to
help
>faculty balance their rights as authors with those of
their
>scholarly publishers," said Dr. David Yaron,
Faculty Senate
>Library Committee Chair of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon
>University.
>
>SPARC offers a suite of materials, including a full
color
>brochure and poster, that introduce the topic of author
rights
>on campuses and complement the new SPARC-Science Commons
>'Access-Reuse' addendum. See http://www.arl.org/
sparc/author/.
>
>"This is about authors' rights," said John
Wilbanks, Vice
>President of Science Commons, a project of Creative
Commons.
>"Right now, authors trade the most important rights
- like the
>right to make copies of their own scholarly works - to
>traditional publishers. That trade has led to an
imbalanced
>world of restricted access to knowledge, skyrocketing
journal
>prices, and an inability to apply new technologies to
the
>scholarly canon of knowledge. Our Scholar's Copyright
project
>addresses this imbalance. Working with libraries and
>universities, we are providing the Scholar's Copyright
Addendum
>Engine so that scholars can retain rights to make copies
of
>their own writings available on the Web."
>
>###
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