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Re: In the news (Georgia State)

Paul and all: With respect to (not) compensating peer reviewers, I was surprised that Enrico Balli's (SISSA) message of 3/27 apparently went by without comment. I'm reproducing it here and wondering what reaction readers have to SISSA's plan. Ann Okerson

******

From: Enrico M. Balli <enrico@medialab.sissa.it>
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 8:36 PM
Subject: R: Rewarding reviewers
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

The real value of scientific journals today is the peer-review processing. Indeed, the development of the electronic archives has diminished the importance of the scientific journals as conveyors of information, as they are no longer the main sources of scientific information. Keeping in mind these facts, SISSA started several years ago JHEP, the Journal of High Energy Physics, which is now among the journals with the highest impact factor in his field. We believe that the main reason for this success of our journal is the high quality of the peer-review process.

Given that peer review is the most valuable asset of journals, in the spirit that scientific work should be remunerated, we have decided to allocate funds for this purpose and to pay a token fee for every referee report beginning in 2008. We strongly feel that this new practice in the policy of scientific journals is the right step on the way to further improve the quality of our peer review process.

Enrico M. Balli
Sissa Medialab
Via L. Stock 2/2, 34135 Trieste
T. +39-040-3787620
F. +39-040-3787615


On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Paul N. Courant wrote:

I love the idea that, in Joe's words, " ... we will see an increasing
amount of activity in this area, as the larger research universities
(the primary creators of intellectual property) express resentment in a
multitude of ways for not being compensated for their research and
publishing activities."

It would be wonderful if large research universities would express this
resentment to the commercial and nominally nonprofit publishers that get
their content and reviewing services from faculty and research scholars
who are paid by universities.  So far, I don't see it, but we can hope.
Of course, in the this formulation the problem facing research
universities lies with publishers (some, not all) and not with the likes
of Georgia State.

Paul N. Courant
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy
Professor of Economics and of Information
The University of Michigan
734-764-9356


Joe Esposito wrote:

[MOD NOTE: See full complaint at:
http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/documents/GSUlawsuitcomplaint.pdf]


From "Inside Higher Ed""

Three publishers sued Georgia State University Tuesday, charging that
digitally distributed course materials were violating their copyrights,
The New York Times reported. The case could be the online equivalent of
litigation waged by publishers years ago against printed coursepacks -
although those suits were generally filed against copy shops. Georgia
State told the Times that it hadn't seen the suit and couldn't comment,
but the publishers' lawyer told the newspaper that the university had
asserted its rights to use the material. The lawyer said that several
other universities, contacted with similar complaints, had agreed to
change policies. Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press,
and Sage Publications filed the suit.

***

JE:  Note that two of the plaintiffs are not-for-profit university
presses. This is in part a case about the "free rider" issue, where one
not-for-profit objects to another not-for-profit's not carrying its own
weight.  I anticipate we will see an increasing amount of activity in
this area, as the larger research universities (the primary creators of
intellectual property) express resentment in a multitude of ways for not
being compensated for their research and publishing activities.