Re: copyright and preprints

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Brian:  Is this the article you were looking for:

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_8/clarke/index.html

"A proposal for an open content licence for research paper (Pr)ePrints, by
Roger Clarke.

ABSTRACT

Many academic papers that are to be submitted to refereed conferences and 
journals have been previously exposed to the author�s colleagues. The term 
�preprints� has long been used to describe such documents. �Departmental 
Working Paper� series were for many years a conventional vehicle for their 
publication. In the modern world, preprints are frequently transmitted 
electronically, variously as e�mail attachments and as files available for 
download via FTP or HTTP.

When a preprint is made available electronically, it is likely that the 
author provides the recipient not only with a copy, but also with a 
copyright licence. In most cases, however, the licence is only implicit, 
and the terms of the licence are unclear. This creates the potential for 
considerable uncertainties, and those uncertainties are of serious concern 
in the context of tension between for�profit publishers of refereed 
articles and the research communities that referee and edit them gratis, 
and depend on them for early access to information.

This paper briefly reviews the open content and ePrints movements, 
considers the interests of the various stakeholders, proposes a set of 
licence terms intended to satisfy the needs of all parties, and concludes 
that a particular Creative Commons licence type should be applied to all 
electronic preprints.

Ann Okerson/Yale library


On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Brian Simboli wrote:

> Can anyone suggest a good article about current understandings of
> copyright as it pertains to preprints (not postprints)? That is, when
> authors post items to preprint repositories, is there an explicit or
> tacit understanding that the author's work has certain accompanying
> rights, e.g. concerning distribution, or the need for others to
> attribute the work?
> 
> Have there been any studies of preprint repositories to clarify current
> practices? The prescriptive question here (e.g., whether everyone should
> use Creative Commons licensing or whatever) needs to be distinguished
> from the descriptive question (what do studies reveal about current
> practices). Brian Simboli
> 
> -- 
> Brian Simboli
> E-mail: brs4@lehigh.edu