Haworth demands copyright prior to peer review

[Thomas Krichel <krichel@openlib.org>]

Virginia Baldwin writes

> As for copyright permission prior to peer review, the publisher 
> needs permission to publish a work.

Yes, so they could require the permission before starting peer 
review. But they require full copyright transfer

http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sid=XV6Q7VFDW1298HPXQ6FEK7B3EPS5FWE5&sku=J122&detail=IFA#IFA

where I read today

| COPYRIGHT
| Copyright ownership of your manuscript must be transferred officially
| to The Haworth Press, Inc., before we can begin the peer-review
| process. The editor's letter acknowledging receipt of the manuscript
| will be accompanied by a form fully explaining this. All authors must
| sign the form and return the original to the editor as soon as
| possible. Failure to return the copyright form in a timely fashion
| will result in a delay in review and subsequent publication.

I quote this here because I suspect that they will change policy 
once this gets more publicity.

> Do we really need to burden a journal's (unpaid) editor with 
> obtaining peer review of a manuscript whose author has not yet 
> granted permission, and may be submitting simultaneously to 
> another journal?

Journal routinely require submission exclusivity, and that is 
fine.

> As for resubmission, once rejected, I do not know the legal 
> issues involved, but I think nullification of the copyright 
> agreement would be easy to obtain.

In the page cited above I did not see an indication that this 
will happen. There is no right to get back the copyright. On 
submission, you loose all your rights to your work. You have no 
bargaining power.

One would have to be quite insane to accept such conditions.

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel                         mailto:krichel@openlib.org
                                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
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