Re: Copyright Protection paper

["John Cox" <John.E.Cox@btinternet.com>]

Sally makes some very good points.  As the joint author of the Scholarly
Publishing Practice report (http://www.alpsp.org/news/sppsummary0603.pdf)
she refers to in her second paragraph, I can confirm the following
numbers, based on an extensive survey of international publishers, both
commercial and non-profit:

1.  83 per cent of publishers do seek an assignment of copyright from
their authors; most of the remainder seek a formal licence to publish.

2.  PRIOR TO PUBLICATION, over 35 per cent allow authors to post to their
own website, nearly 25 per cent to the institutional web site and nearly
20 per cent to pre-print servers.

3.  AFTER PUBLICATION, nearly 50 per cent allow posting to the author's
website, nearly 30 per cent to the institutional web site and nearly 10
per cent to pre-print servers.

4.  Over 80 per cent of publishers allow re-use of the published article
within the author's academic institution, and more than half allow the
author to re-use his or her material within his or her own publications.

Isn't Sabo a sledgehammer taken to a nut that has already been cracked?

John Cox

John Cox Associates
Rookwood, Bradden
TOWCESTER, Northants NN12 8ED
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1327 860949
Fax: +44 (0) 1327 861184
E-mail: John.E.Cox@btinternet.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Morris" <sec-gen@alpsp.org>
To: "Samuel Trosow" <strosow@uwo.ca>
Sent: 27 August 2003 11:35 pm
Subject: Copyright Protection paper

> I do have some comments on your draft paper at
> http://publish.uwo.ca/~strosow/Sabo_Bill_Paper.pdf.
>
> I think it contains some fundamental misunderstandings and unsupported
> assertions:
>
> 1)    Most important -  The expected effect of the Sabo bill, if
> passed. I don't see why it would be any different from the existing
> effect of the public domain status of Government works.  It would be
> valuable to look at the extent to which the public availability of
> these (for example, when published as journal articles) differs in
> reality from that of articles which are not in the public domain.
> Unless someone looks at this and sees a beneficial difference, I can't
> see what Sabo would actually achieve.
>
> 2)    The restricting effect of copyright transfer from author to
> publisher (or indeed anyone else);  not borne out by the facts!
> Copyright ownership really isn't the point - a great many publishers
> commercial as well as not-for-profit) deal with journal authors under
> the terms of agreements which allow the authors to make their articles
> freely available on their own, institutional or subject websites; see
> our recent report, Scholarly Publishing Practice at
> <http://www.alpsp.org/news/sppsummary0603.pdf> - the survey covered
> every major publisher and a fair slice of the small and medium ones
> too.  What is important is not whose name appears on the copyright
> line - this is largely irrelevant - but what rights are held by whom.
> Copyright is not really a single right - it is divisible and this is
> often the most workable approach.  See www.surf.nl/copyright for many
> examples of enlightened publisher policies
>
> 3)    The extent to which DRM technologies actually restrict Fair
> Use/Fair Dealing rights;  many people allege this, but where are the
> facts?  Again, our survey shows the considerable extent to which
> publishers actually permit things like course pack use and inter-
> library loan with their electronic journals.  In any case, Fair
> Use/Fair Dealing, in the physical world, permits certain acts with
> publications to which you already have legitimate access.  It's the
> same in the digital world - these rights do not and should not permit
> anyone to access anything for 'Fair Use/Dealing' purposes;  you might
> as well say it's all right to steal a book from a bookstore because you
> wanted to use it for such purposes, and that locking the door of the
> bookstore at night restricts your rights!
>
> 4)    The usual wild generalisation that journal prices
> are 'skyrocketing'.   Yes, average increases exceed inflation - one
> major driver of this, as everyone understands, is that journals get
> bigger as more articles are produced.   But most publishers -
> especially, but not exclusively, not-for-profits, who are a very
> important part of the picture - keep their prices modest in the first
> instance (more relevant, really, than year-on-year increases per se)
> and increase them as modestly as they can.   The development of new
> ways of selling journals to libraries - collections, consortia
> licences - has also helped to reduce the cost, and many publishers make
> their journals freely available to less developed countries.
>
> Our organisation is not against finding new and better models for the
> ide distribution of scholarly information - quite the opposite.  But
> these developments should be based on facts - which is why we spend
> much of our resources on research.
>
> Sally Morris
> Secretary General, ALPSP