For a scientist, Stevan, you sometimes make some
astonishingly
broad generalizations. E.g., in response to Rick Anderson
you
wrote:
At 4:18 PM -0400 8/15/07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>(b) Every single one of those articles (without
exception, and
>in stark contrast to the rest of the digital domain) is
written,
>and always has been written, purely for the sake of
research
>usage and impact, not for royalty income.
>(d) All these authors want only three things: (1) to
have their
>papers peer-reviewed by an established peer-review
authority
>(with a track-record for quality and rigor) and (2) to
have
>those peer-reviewed papers (certified as such, by the
name of
>the journal that implemented the peer review) accessible
online
>to every potential user on the planet, with absolutely
nothing
>blocking their (online) access -- least of all whether
the
>would-be user's institution happens to be able to afford
to pay
>for subscription access to the journal in which it
happened to
>be published.
Well, I can tell you of some authors whose articles we have
published in our scholarly journals who have profited
handsomely
(in the thousands of dollars) from frequent reproduction of
their
articles in commercial anthologies and university course
packs.
(In one case recently we received a payment of $14,000 from
CCC
for a large amount of copying done from an edited volume in
a
number of universities overseas.) They have all cashed the
checks
we sent them, so presumably they did "want" the
money even though
they weren't motivated originally to write by the pursuit of
profit.
Below you say I'm confused about fair use in your "Fair
Use
Button" because I really don't like the implication it
might have
for books. Well, as I've just said in response to Peter's
posting, I have no problem with an author supplying a
colleague
with a single copy of an article for research and teaching
purposes, so we have no disagreement there in principle.
(See my
questions about responding to requests resulting in
multiple-copy
distributions, however.) But you are simply wrong that book
authors are not interested in giving away their book content
for
free. In university press publishing many authors are paid
no
royalties, and some are even asked to supply subsidies, and
these
authors would have no compunction about giving away their
books
for free. They could readily fall under your three points
about
what scholarly authors really "want." Even some
high-profile
authors like Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler have persuaded
their
publishers to allow them to post their books online for
free. So,
as a generalization, that is much too broad.
So, too, is your flat assertion that "books are not
peer
reviewed." I guess you're not aware that to be a member
of the
Association of American University Presses a
university-based
publisher MUST have a process of peer review in place, and
every
book published by an AAUP-member press is peer reviewed.
That's
about 8,000 per year! Add to that the many thousands more
published by academic commercial publishers, which may not
be
required to conduct peer review but generally do. So, peer
review
is NOT a differentiating factor between scholarly journals
articles and scholarly books.
Finally, your reply to Rick that copyright has been applied
95%
to protecting against against illegal making of multiple
copies
is a number I think you have just pulled out of the air.
There
are many, many cases of alleged infringement that do NOT
involve
simple duplication or redistribution (the "reproduction
right" is
only one of six listed in Section 106), such as all those
involving charges of plagiarism, creation of derivative
works,
parodies, public performances and display, etc. Authors do
care
about these other uses, I daresay, and there are no other
laws
than copyright to protect them against such misuses. So,
however
much you'd like to see it go away, copyright retains
important
functions in the digital age. Even some authors of scholarly
journal articles might be exercised by, say, the kind of
parody
that Alan Sokal famously performed in mimicking
postmodernist
writing, and in some situations copyright law might protect
a
scientist like Sokal who performed a parody of a piece of
writing
by another scholar!
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press
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