RE: Lancet November 8th issue on Open Access

["Ed Barnas" <ebarnas@cup.org>]

It might shed some light on this question to note that the reproduction
rights to many pieces of artwork are held by the museums or collections
which own the physical work. The permission fees in the print world are
generally tied to the level of distribution (circulation of the periodical
or print run of the book) in which the illustration will appear.

Distribution level is difficult to gauge in the online world and many
owners of rights to artwork are loath to lose control of their artwork and
jeopardize future revenues by releasing their images to the Internet.
(These rightsholders are also often concerned about the quality of the
reproduction as well.)

- Ed Barnas
Journals Manager, Cambridge University Press

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 6:24 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Lancet November 8th issue on Open Access

I want to disagree with Liz about this matter but can only make a tenuous
argument at best.

Since we do not know the actual intentions of the copyright holder from
withholding the electronic access rights of this image, the best we can do
is postulate as to why the image was withheld.

Given this caveat, I pose that the image was probably withheld due to the
general lack of security in the electronic environment when it comes to
images, as opposed to the fact that it was being used in a for-profit
journal. It doesn't matter whether the image was to be used in an open
access journal or a for profit journal, the risks to the copyright holder
would more than likely be equivalent.

Just for fun and to see what would come up, I did a Google(TM) search under
the Images tab for "Saint Jerome, patron saint of librarians" which resulted
in no images being found. However, I was able to find a half dozen images
when searching Jan van Eyck and Jerome. Two of the images were from .edu
domains, 2 from .org domains and 2 from .com domains.

In the end it's difficult to ascertain whether the open access status would
have made a difference to the copyright holder or whether the half dozen
images currently on the web are there legally or not.

Cordially, 

Jill Emery
<Jill.Emery@mail.uh.edu>