Sally Morris

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

No doubt publishers have paid their own tributes to Sally Morris 
on her retirement as Chief Executive of ALPSP, but this tribute 
comes from one who holds great respect for Sally's work in 
constructive dialogues with the academic and library communities. 
Sally's contribution in two for a demonstrated her wish to 
approach difficult topics in a way which would produce solutions 
rather than problems, understanding rather than confrontation. In 
the late 1990s Sally played a major role in the JISC/PA 
discussions in the UK, discussions which tackled difficult topics 
such as the place of fair dealing in an electronic environment 
and which were held under "Chatham House" rules, i.e. we could 
express views openly without being reported. This environment 
helped those of us from the academic and library communities to 
explore and understand the publishers' viewpoint and I hope 
enabled publishers to explore and understand our viewpoint. The 
JISC/PA discussions also had a practical outcome in the form of a 
Model Licence which Sally had a big hand in drafting.

This approach was followed in the discussions in the Zwolle Group 
set up by SURF to enable a dialogue on copyright between all 
stakeholders, and again Sally played a vital role in that 
dialogue. We managed to get away from the controversial issue of 
who should own copyright, partly going back to principles and 
partly considering practical questions of particular rights 
important to the various stakeholders. I am not going to pretend 
that all differences were resolved. We still disagreed - 
sometimes fundamentally - on some matters in both the JISC/PA 
discussions and in the Zwolle Group, but for most of the time 
these were constructive discussions from which we all learned a 
great deal. Sally's contribution helped this process along in a 
way which was very positive, and I thank her for it. We still 
face many difficult issues in the changes taking place in 
scholarly communication and I hope that we can talk about those 
issues in the constructive way we talked about the difficult 
issues of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Sally, I thank you and wish you a happy retirement!

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk