Re: BioOne Releases New Model Publication Agreement

[Mark Kurtz <mkurtz@arl.org>]

Sandy,

Thanks for your close and thoughtful read of our model agreement, 
as well as for your comments. Just a couple of points of 
clarification (by no means an attempt to address every issue you 
have raised):

1. The author's right to deposit the article in institutional or 
subject repositories (which is what I take you to mean when you 
say "distribute the article") immediately is presented as an 
option for the publisher to choose. As we note in the 
accompanying information sheet for publishers (p. 3, #3):

  [if and as required by your employing institution(s) or your
  funding source(s)] If you wish to allow authors to deposit their
  article in publicly accessible institutional and/or subject
  repositories during the exclusivity period without explicitly
  being required to do so, this phrase should be deleted. If, on
  the other hand, you prefer that authors not make voluntary
  deposit during the exclusivity period, this phrase should be
  retained."

2. BioOne is not a subsidized operation (initial capital 
contributions by Charter Supporters have been reimbursed) and 
must provide a sustainable revenue stream for its partner 
publishers through royalties paid on subscription revenues.  For 
more information on BioOne's business model, you may be 
interested in reading Carpenter, Joseph, & Waltham, "A Survey of 
Business Trends at BioOne Publishing Partners and Its 
Implications for BioOne," portal: Libraries and the Academy 4.4 
(2004): 465-84 (winner of the Johns Hopkins University Press 
award for 2005 Best Article).

3. We completely agree--and have tried to be frank on this 
point--that this model agreement is not suited to all 
publishers--likely not even all BioOne publishers--(much as SERU 
is not meant to replace all subscription licenses) or to all 
fields of scholarship. We attempted to build in enough 
flexibility, in the form of variable provisions, that it might be 
of rather wider than narrower use. At a minimum, we hope that the 
issues addressed in this agreement--especially those sections 
that address author and publisher repository deposits--will serve 
as a catalyst for discussion.

Best,

Mark

Mark Kurtz  |  Director of Business Development  |  BioOne
21 Dupont Circle Suite 800  |  Washington, DC  20036
Phone 202.296.2296  |  Fax 202.872.0884  |  Cell 617.669.4276
mkurtz@arl.org
www.BioOne.org


On Apr 10, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> This model agreement indeed incorporates many of the provisions 
> advocated in the various author addenda, although it does 
> require the author not to distribute or allow authors to 
> distribute the article for six months after first publication 
> in the journal in which it appears (with some exceptions for 
> the author's personal web page and immediate limited uses for 
> teaching and research activities).
>
> What I find most interesting is that it asks for transfer of an 
> exclusive right only for first publication in the journal; 
> everything else is handled under a non-exclusive license. This 
> arrangement may work for societies, and for subsidized 
> operations like BioOne, where there is no special need to 
> recover costs the publisher incurs and where the mission is to 
> maximize distribution irrespective of any need to recover 
> costs.
>
> But for publishers like university presses, and of course 
> commercial publishers, an exclusive right only to first 
> publication will provide no legal means for protecting the 
> investment against any pirate that chooses to take the articles 
> and republish them in any other arrangement than just the one 
> used for the original journal issue (which is protected by the 
> publisher's copyright in the work as a collective work).
>
> A nonexclusive right gives the holder no standing to sue for 
> infringement.  The publisher has a stake in protecting the 
> investment that no individual contributor does; in fact, the 
> individual contributor will benefit from wider distribution. 
> Thus only the publisher has a motivation to sue but, without an 
> exclusive right in more than first publication, could not do 
> so.
>
> Also, while the six-month delay may work for science journals, 
> it is unlikely to be sufficient to save journals in the 
> humanities and social sciences from subscription cancellations 
> as few libraries (maybe aside from ARL members) would consider 
> that delay any huge cost to pay in terms of slowing scholarly 
> communication. Heck, these articles sometimes take a year or 
> two to get through the review process, so what is the problem 
> with waiting another six months, I could hear many librarians 
> asking, if it means we can save money on subscribing?
>
> So, while I applaud BioOne for taking this progressive move, 
> let it be understood that its provisions apply to the special 
> nature of the journals that BioOne publishes and of the 
> subsidization that occurs in this sector of publishing, which 
> does not exist for university presses, at least for journals 
> (presses are subsidized primarily because they lose money 
> publishing books; few, if any, presses lose money publishing 
> journals), and certainly not for commercial publishers.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
> Penn State Press
>
> P.S. For an elaboration of this comment and more on the 
> author's addendum, see my forthcoming article on this topic in 
> Against the Grain.