> 1. Do you believe an author should have the right to
ownership
> of his or her own work? That right would include the
ability
> to charge for access if anyone is interested in
participating
> in a market. Or should an author (at least of
scholarly
> materials) have no presumption that he or she owns his
written
> work?
This isn't a binary issue -- that authors either do or don't
have
the right to do what they wish with their work. I think
it's
reasonable to argue that, yes, authors generally do have the
right to ownership of their work, but that they can still be
required to do certain specific things with that work when
the
work was funded by the public purse. If the public has
funded
the work, then it's reasonable for the public to be given
some
level of access to it.
After that, it becomes a question of degree. Should
everyone in
the world get unlimited free access from the moment of the
work's
creation, or should there be some kind of embargo that
leaves the
author the option of giving exclusive rights to a publisher
on a
temporary basis? This is what the proposed policy would
allow,
and it seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
University of Utah
rick.anderson utah.edu
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