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Re: Authors rights: Going too far



Expectations in a web world of scholarly communication are rapidly changing and citing old works about researchers' traditional value system isn't particularly relevant today. Today's realities are that Harvard Arts and Sciences faculty voted unanimously to adopt an open access mandate for its faculty members' research publications. A University of California study on Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication found that 22% of respondents said they had published in an open an access publication and 23% expected to do more in the coming year. The bottom line is that if funders like Welcome Trust, HHMI and NIH want material to be open access or available publicly in PubMed Central researchers will do it and institutions (including librarians) should do what they can to facilitate this. Including authors' rights in license agreements can smooth the path for authors complying with their funders' mandates or increase the impact of their work by making it more widely available. Of course, it's clear that there are significant differences between disciplines, which might lead to the wide ranging opinions on this topic. Beth Weil Marian Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library University of California, Berkeley Phil Davis wrote: Upon hindsight, I must first admit that the words I chose in my previous post, 'livid' and 'ridiculous' are somewhat hyperbolic. To those who base their retort on the choice of these words, I'm happy to substitute 'concerned' and 'problematic.' Surveys and interviews of authors repeatedly confirm that author-rights are not very important to academics in their choice where to publish. To argue that authors don't understand what they are signing essentially confirms that they are ambivalent about author rights and put more weight on other journal characteristics, namely: prestige, timeliness, peer review, etc. Contrary to the storybook version of science, in which scientists tirelessly and selflessly toil to advance knowledge and the welfare of society, we must accept a more realistic view in which the scientists are principally motivated by their desire to obtain recognition from their peers. The formal publication process represents this exchange of information (manuscripts) for social recognition [1]. Geog Franck describes scientific communication as a 'vanity fair.' [2] What initially irked me about Heather Morrison's post was the real notion that librarians may be basing their collection decisions on the values *they* believe are important, as opposed to the values authors and readers believe are important. Garvey's seminal book in which he coined the well-known phrase 'communication is the essence of science' [3] did something amazing for the field of librarianship, he *actually recognized* librarians as peers in the communication process -- not glorified secretaries and clerks, but peers! It therefore concerns me when the ethos of librarianship (or perhaps the disproportionate voices of a few), changes the role of the librarian from helping to *facilitate* the scholarly communication process to controlling it. Or to be more explicit, exerting their own values into a model that has been developed to serve those who are not librarians. This is the basis of my earlier reference to my mother making me eat my greens. While I acknowledge the other side of the argument (librarians as fiscal managers, librarians as social welfare maximizers, librarians as championing the rights of the disenfranchised), we are essentially arguing from different value frames. I see the role of librarians as facilitators of the formal scholarly communication process [4]. This is a position of great responsibility and something not to dismiss lightly. I don't imagine that these values will ingratiate me with a list devoted to librarianship, although I feel they need to be expressed since they underscore the rationale of my previous post. --Phil Davis Notes: [1] Hagstrom, W. O. (1965). The scientific community. New York: Basic Books. [2] Franck, G. (1999). Scientific Communication--A Vanity Fair? Science, 286(5437), 53-55. [3] Garvey, W. D. (1979). Communication, the essence of science : facilitating information exchange among librarians, scientists, engineers, and students. New York: Pergamon Press. [4] I want to distinguish the formal publication process as a small part of the whole scholarly communication process. Most of the communication of science is informal.