As your Iowa example indicates, there has been a little
pushback
against the mandated deposit of dissertations in IRs or
centralized databases like ProQuest's or the Networked
Digital
library of Theses and Dissertations. But I emphasize
"little."
In truth, junior faculty put themselves at a disadvantage by
having their dissertations archived in such places because,
as I
have written elsewhere, many libraries refuse to purchase
books
based on dissertations, and in turn presses become reluctant
to
publish them because their sales tend to be lower.
Exceptions
are mostly made for dissertations in science where patent
issues
are involved.
I won't dispute your contention that journal authors are not
motivated to publish for monetary gain. In fact, though,
some of
them profit very handsomely from having their articles
frequently
reprinted and used in coursepacks. Some of our journal
authors
have made far more money from these sales than our book
authors
have made from royalties.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press
>On Sun, 23 Mar 2008, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
>
>>>Stevan Harnad: We must think beyond just the NIH
mandate to
>>>all university research output, funded and
unfunded, in all
>>>disciplines.
>>
>>You don't really mean "all," do you,
Stevan? Repeatedly in the
>>past you have excluded research that appears in book
form.
>>This, of course, doesn't make sense from the
standpoint of
>>achieving comprehensive coverage of all research
output of
>>universities and imposes artificial barriers between
research
>>appearing in different formats. There can ultimately
be no
>>intellectual justification for this separation.
>
>You are quite right, Sandy. I don't mean all research
output, I
>mean all peer-reviewed journal/conference output (the c.
2.5
>million papers per year).
>
>(I keep ritually reiterating the same portmanteau
phrases so
>often that I sometimes truncate them to give those who
have
>heard them too often a bit of a break!)
>
>And you are also right that a distinction between a
research
>paper and a research monograph is not a principled
distinction
>insofar as content is concerned. It is just a practical
>distinction, insofar as (current) author motivation is
>concerned. But as a current, practical distinction, it
is
>pertinent, accurate, and needs to be taken into
account:
>
>*All* peer-reviewed research paper authors, without a
single
>exception, give away their articles, having written them
>*exclusively* for research impact, not for royalty
income
>(actual or potential). Let us call them "give-away
authors."
>http:
//cogprints.org/1639/01/resolution.htm#1.1
>
>This is simply not true of all scholarly/scientific book
and
>monograph authors (often the same authors, but wearing
different
>hats): Not all (probably not even most) such book
authors are
>give-away authors.
>
>Hence it follows that even if most do not do it
spontaneously of
>their own accord (for paradoxical reasons I've dubbed
"Zeno's
>Paralysis -- consisting mostly of overwork inertia,
copyright
>paranoia, and simple ignorance, lately diminishing),
give-away
>authors can be induced by a mandate from their
institutions and
>funders to go ahead and give away their give-away work
by
>self-archiving it free for all online (preferably in
their
>Institutional Repository), *willingly* (as Alma Swan's
surveys
>have shown). http://eprints.
ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/
>
>But non-give-away authors cannot and should not be
mandated to
>give away their non-give-away work, so we should not
even think
>of trying it. That would only complicate the already
needlessly
>complicated road to Green OA self-archiving mandates for
the
>give-away work (already complicated by premature and
unnecessary
>over-reaching on copyright retention and by completely
>unnecessary insistence on direct central deposit instead
of
>institutional deposit and central harvesting).
></ritual-repetition>
>http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives
/369-guid.html
>http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives
/374-guid.html
>
>Counter-productively insisting on the OA self-archiving
of books
>that authors do not currently wish to give away would be
very
>much like insisting on copyright retention by authors
who are
>paranoid about not putting their chances of publication
in their
>preferred journals at any perceived risk. And it would
be just
>as unnecessary -- since, for both of these desirable
outcomes,
>their time will come in due course (as it will for Gold
OA
>publishing too). But first things first. And it is Green
OA
>self-archiving mandates for give-away research that will
pave
>the way.
>
>A symptom of the fact that OA book mandates would be a
no-no comes
>from the recent kerfuffle about Iowa Theses: Even though
most theses
>are probably author give-aways, and will be willingly
self-archived,
>those held in reserve for future book publication will
not, so OA
>should not be mandated for them.
>http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2008/march/031708mfa.html
>
>Here again, Green OA IRs offer a possible interim
compromise: Like
>articles published in journals that have not yet
endorsed immediate
>OA self-archiving, non-give-away theses can be deposited
as Closed
>Access instead of Open Access. The authors need simply
refuse all
>email eprint requests received via the Button. (They can
even store
>their refused eprint requests and use them as evidence
of demand for
>their work when they approach a publisher!)
>http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives
/274-guid.html
>
>Stevan Harnad
|
