The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics Who Want To Promote Their Own Research
from the don't-ask,-don't-tell dept
Ed Kohler points us to a long, but fascinating blog post, by Stuart Shieber, a CS professor at Harvard, discussing the somewhat ridiculous copyright situation that many academics deal with in trying to promote their own works. I've heard similar stories from other professors I know, but this one is worth reading. Shieber points out the importance of academics getting their research published in journals, but how annoying it is that most journals require those academics to give up all sorts of rights -- including the right to distribute their own research on their websites. However, he notes that most published academics simply ignore this rule, and you end up with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Even though they're legally prevented from putting up a PDF of their work on their website, they do so anyway, and journals just look the other way.Shieber, however, finds this situation to be a bad thing, and instead adds an amendment that at least grants him the right to publish his own research on his own website. It seems pretty ridiculous that this should even be an issue at all. He notes that most journals haven't had a problem with this -- which is surprising, but good to hear. He did run into one publisher, however, who fought him on it, and after lots of back and forth, his paper was pulled. The reasoning that the journal gave didn't make much sense, and Shieber shows how wrong they are (for example, they claim that if professors published the works on their website, demand for journal subscriptions would go down -- but Shieber did a quick look, and found that about 80% of those who published in the same journal had posted the content anyway, and it hadn't killed off the journal, so arguing against him seemed pointless). Eventually, he was able to convince the journal to change its policies and got his paper published, but it delayed publication for a while.
It's really unfortunate that journals still think that locking up such content makes sense. The idea that researchers shouldn't be allowed to share their own research with the world because some journal needs artificial scarcity for its business model is something that needs to be put to rest.
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Filed Under: academics, copyright, journals, open access, research, stuart shieber
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The Other Side...
Most of these journals are run on a shoestring budget by other academics who volunteer a ton of time. Any revenue from the reproduction of their content (including revenue from online subscription services like LexisNexis) is critical to their ongoing existence.
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Re: The Other Side...
Wait, what? Unlike any other publication, these journals don't have to pay reporters or editors... they get academics to PAY them to get published, and they get peer review FOR FREE and then they charge tons of money for subscriptions.
I'm not sure how you can talk about their shoestring budget when their whole setup is so much better than pretty much any traditional publication.
Besides, if you read the actual article, you'll realize that their position doesn't make any sense anyway. They claim they can't allow professors to put their work on their website since it will harm subscription rates, but a huge percentage of academics put it up anyway, and it hasn't harmed subscription rates.
So... how is the journals' position defensible?
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Re: Re: The Other Side...
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Re:
I don't think so. It's copyright that is allowing this situation to occur. It's copyright that is giving the journals cover to tried to control the rights to content way beyond what is reasonable.
It's because the journals are so focused on the copyright crutch that they think they need such "ownership." So, I would argue that it's very much copyright that is the problem.
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Where you publish is also of importance. Most professors don't think twice about giving up their rights to get into a respected journal.
I'm not sure what's more annoying, loosing the rights to anything I produce and having to put my professor's name on anything I publish or having to pay 2-3x market value for just about anything.
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Re:
But that doesn't make it right.
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Defensible? Do you not believe in the right to enter contracts granting an exclusive right to publish? As I alluded to in my previous comment, this entire topic has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with contracts.
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Re:
1. Opinion (generally negative) about actions taken by a company/individual/what have you
2. Commenters pointing out that the company/individual is within their legal rights and thus the negative opinion is meaningless.
Did the original article say "write your local congressperson and demand regulation to stop this heinous practice by academic publications?" No, it didn't. Of course what the publication is doing is legal. That doesn't forbid discussion on whether or not it is a wise course of action.
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The solution does not involve "rocket science". All it requires is that those desiring to publish papers make it clear to the journals that what the journals will receive is a non-exclusive license of appropriate dimensions...and nothing else. Of course, journals faced with this approach squawk and squeal, try to bluster with the veiled threat that the article may not be published because of the approach, etc., etc. Without naming names, I can identify several engineering journals who balked testily at the mere suggestion they would not "own" the associated copyrights.
Not once has an article not been published because such an approach was undertaken by me on behalf of the author(s)/corporation(s). A brief explanation of the approach and why the approach did not negatively impact the journal in any meaningful way was invariably sufficient to make the "problem" go away...never to return.
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Sort of silly
Sounds like a molehill issue to me.
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But I just what to know
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I agree
I agree. That does seem to be a popular theme here, but it works. It works because Most people are too busy to help you, but not too busy to prove your wrong. The comments and back-and-forth are illuminating.
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More than Silly
The school library or the MIS department could have a website devoted to online scholarly journals. The research papers can be "published" on CDs and mailed out to who ever. Peer review can be accomplished electronically. So what is the point of publishing (on paper) works that can be stored, searched, researched, and exposed to the entire world population more efficiently on/by computers?
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Re: More than Silly
Answer: P+T (promotion and tenure) committees. They are packed with people who do not, and cannot, accurately determine the value of a given candidate's research papers. So they count the number of papers in "good" journals. Hence the name "bean counter".
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Re: More than Silly
For example:
When I started doing research the computer I was given was that of the person who had been doing work most similar to mine since all of his data was still on it, and this is not a rare occurrence. I don't understand why. Data is easily transferred and copied. Sadly, the computer I'm working on is 7 years old now and getting a new one is proving very difficult.
I still find it hard to comprehend just how backwards some policies and practices are.
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Re: More than Silly
If it was simply about disseminating information, then you are right. But the issue is really about developing a consensus within the community on a given topic using the strength of peer review. It keeps the charlatans (most of them) at bay.
And you are right, like I mentioned, the information is not nearly as locked up as some seem to suggest. Many university libraries will get you any journal article you want for the cost of paper.
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Re: Re: More than Silly
I agree, peer review is a must, I had written: "The research papers can be "published" on CDs and mailed out to who ever. Peer review can be accomplished electronically."
Anonymous wrote: "Many university libraries will get you any journal article you want for the cost of paper." These should all be available for download, no need for paper. Also saves on staff time by eliminating the need to find the hard-copy of the document, photocopying it, and putting it back.
See this link to Copyfraud by Jason Mazzone as a model to implement for "publishing" papers.
Even the US Federal Government is now making draft documents available on the web for public review and comment. Saves a lot of paper and postage!!!!! Here is a sample link to the Draft Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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Can Creative Commons be the solution?
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Journals
It has always been possible for fellow academics to get a copy of the paper. In the old days one created a "preprint" of the paper. Copies of the preprint were sent to about 50 major institutions - several of which then circulated regular lists of everything they received to a rather larger group. You could then get a copy of anything on the list by sending a "preprint request" to the originating institution. Post publication you could still get a reprint of the paper for free directly from the author - in fact the journals facilitated this by giving the author about 50 free reprints of his paper. (Many still do this actually!)
The web has taken over from the preprint/reprint system - and doesn't harm the journals any more than the old system did. What the journals were trying to do with the copyright assignment is to prevent the same article being published in another journal - which is fair enough.
Going after authors who put material on their own websites is pointless anyway as the authors only signed away copyright in the actual text of the articles - not in the content of the work. All the author has to do to get around this is to create a different document for the website - many do this anyway - with the web document (unconstrained by journal page limits) being more complete and more up to date than the version in the journal.
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It's not "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
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PLoS
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A Reasonable Compromise
NIH has an open-access policy that mandates all peer-reviewed (NIH funded) research be available to the public. One proposed compromise has been to have an expiration date for the copyright, allowing everybody to view journals after a certain time, such as a month, a year, etc. It makes sense, which is probably why publishers hate it. ;)
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put it on your website first
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Why don't professors actually negotiate?
But we think professors need to be more responsible and proactive about this matter. It's not enough for professors to say "Oh, the publisher won't let me publish a preprint online," or "the contract says I can't do it." (The publishers will say they won't allow it because an online version competes with the final version. That's totally bogus, especially since the professor can't get credit for the online, preprint version for promotion and tenure purposes: only the "official," citable, final version counts.)
Professors will raise holy hell if they can't get a specific type of notepad for a meeting, but they'll cower to academic editors who say they can't publish an unofficial, online preprint of an accepted article when (a) there's no competition between the two, and (b) it may take as much as a year *from acceptance for publication* for a journal to publish the final version? It's true this is a problem; it's also true that too many professors have punked out and not stood up for their work or the rights associated with it.
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