Re: Bethesda and copyright (RE: OA and copyright -- Andy Gass quote in LJ News Wire)

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Rick has raised some important issues.

My suggestion would be that authors should retain two rights with open
access:  the right to distribute for commercial purposes (OA, to me, is a
no-brainer for non-commercial purposes only, and does not imply rights for
sale), and rights to moral integrity and attribution.

For any author who is interested in impact - whether this stems from a
drive to advance scientific knowledge, to enhance one's academic career,
or to make one's world a better place - then OA will serve to advance this
goal.  More simply put, if you want people to read your work, making it
available for them to read helps.  The only time OA is not in the author's
interest, is when the author is writing for pay.  Unless, of course,
someone is willing to pay the author, on the understanding that the
author's work will then be OA.

cheers,

Heather Morrison

On 11-Jul-04, at 6:51 PM, Rick Anderson wrote:

> > You wrote earlier of an author who publishes with Open Access that 
> > "...she fully abdicates her *exclusive* rights to copy and to 
> > distribute the article. She probably also effectively gives up the 
> > *exclusive* right to display it publicly." (My emphasis.)
> >
> > I accept that that maybe so.  But in an Open Access context it means 
> > that the world benefits from that, as she does herself.
> Well, it does mean that the world benefits, assuming the article is of
> sufficient quality.  But there's not much reason to believe that the
> author will necessarily benefit.  (Of course, the traditional model
> offers no guarantee of benefit to the author, either.)
>
> > In the traditional context, the usual transfer of copyright to the
> > publisher means that "She fully abdicates her rights to copy and to
> > distribute the article. She also gives up the right to display it
> > publicly."
> Sure, but there's a fundamental difference: an author does have the
> option retaining copyright when publishing under the traditional model.  
> Most publishers may not agree to that, but there's nothing about the
> traditional publishing model itself that says authors must transfer
> copyright to publishers.  The question I'm trying to answer for myself
> is whether publishing under the OA model _does_ mean that an author must
> abdicate her copyright by, in essence, transferring it to the whole
> world. I didn't think so, but the Bethesda Principles do make such a
> renunciation explicit; an author who publishes according to those
> principles retains none of the exclusive rights that are integral to the
> concept of copyright.  (And make no mistake, it is the exclusiveness of
> those rights, not just the rights themselves, that makes copyright what
> it is.  If everyone in the world has the right to copy and distribute my
> work, then to say that I retain copyright in that work is meaningless.)  
> Obviously, the Bethesda Principles are not the only OA protocol, though,
> so I guess the answer to my original question is "it depends."  Maybe we
> don't need (and shouldn't pursue) a single universal OA definition or
> model.
>
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu