Who Should Own Scientific Papers?

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

If you have been interested in numerous recent discussions about who
should own articles published in scholarly journals, whether copyright
should be transferred or publishers instead be licensed by authors, or
just how we should manage IP ownership in a new-tech era -- you will be
interested in two pieces in the brand new September 4th issue of SCIENCE.  
It contains a Policy Forum written by a Working Group of the American
Academy of Arts & Sciences (Transition From Paper)*. The Working Group
advances a cogent argument that authors of scholarly works should retain
their copyrights (leaving them free to post and distribute their work as
they need and want to) while broadly licensing publishers to add value to
those works and distribute them in the value-added mode.  They further
argue that the U.S. federal government, when granting funds for scientific
research, mandate the authors to retain copyright as a public service --
rather than transfer all rights to publishers.  The group calls for
national discussion on these matters.  The Policy Forum is illustrated by
a pointed cartoon drawn by Thelma Pickell of AT&T Bell Labs.

SCIENCE's editor, Dr. Floyd Bloom, replies to these arguments to deny
publishers full copyright transfer, in an editorial in the same issue.

For online versions, see:

1.  SCIENCE online.  Go to the URL below to register.  You should thereby
be able to retrieve both the Forum and the Editorial; however, you may be
blocked from the latter. If your library has a subscription to SCIENCE
online, you can get at the editorial that way.  Otherwise -- consult a
print copy.
                                                                                
http://www.sciencemag.org 
                                                                                
2.  The LIBLICENSE web site contains a copy of the Policy Forum.

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/POLICYF.HTM               


Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian
Yale University
LIBLICENSE Co-owner and
Member of the American Academy Working Group        
Ann.Okerson@yale.edu
        
____________________________________________________

*INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY:
Who Should Own Scientific Papers?

Steven Bachrach, R. Stephen Berry, Martin Blume, Thomas
von Foerster, Alexander Fowler, Paul Ginsparg, Stephen
Heller, Neil Kestner, Andrew Odlyzko, Ann Okerson, Ron
Wigington, Anne Moffat*

Publishing the results of scientific research was, for many years, a
symbiotic interaction between researchers and publishers, because the most
effective way scientists could disseminate their results was through
journals, produced by professional societies and independent publishers. 
Electronic communication has created new ways to distribute such results
and is forcing researchers and publishers to reassess the old procedures
and consider new possibilities as we learn to use the Internet.  Now, not
only can authors easily disseminate their results, but networked readers
can have cheap, fast access to more scientific literature and have it in a
form that facilitates its use in their own research. 

Because the electronic world offers many potential improvements to enhance
traditional publication, scientists, administrators, and federal science
policymakers must reconsider both how the results of publicly funded
research are best disseminated and how that dissemination is best
supported.   ETC.