Re: Science Commons, SPARC Announce New Tools for Scholarly Publishing

[sgt3@psu.edu]

A cogent comment!  One wonders also how MIT's Director of 
Libraries feels about the standard copyright notice that appears 
in MIT Press books:  "No part of this book may be reproduced in 
any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including 
photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) 
without permission in writing from the publisher"-which 
effectively ignores that "fair use" is part of copyright law. By 
the way, I copied this out of the fifth edition of William 
Strong's "The Copyright Book" (MIT, 1999)-of all places!

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press


> The MIT Press, which I believe is overseen by the Director of 
> Libraries, provides us with a unique laboratory to study the 
> interaction between publishers and authors(as represented by 
> librarians).  On one hand, the Director of Libraries is a strong 
> proponent of copyright addenda, and on the other hand, the 
> copyright statements of some MIT Press journals are much more 
> restrictive than those of many society publishers.
>
> The copyright statement of the MIT Press journal "Artificial 
> Life"  <http://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/ journals/ARTL.pdf> does 
> not even allow authors to post an article on their own web site 
> for 12 months after publication.  Would MIT Press accept the 
> copyright addendum proposed by the MIT Libraries? The balancing 
> of author rights and the publishers' need to fund their added 
> value is a difficult situation.  I am hopeful that MIT Libraries 
> and MIT Press will be able to come up with a creative solution 
> to this most difficult problem that is confronting all of us.
>
> Sincerely,
> Gene D. Sprouse
> Editor-in-Chief
> American Physical Society