Re: Author Copyright Issue (SLEEP)

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

As Kevin Smith points out, the fact that the publisher's 
representative "had never heard of this" strongly suggests that 
education is in order.  As Sally Morris points out, the majority 
of publishers have actually already moved to nonexclusive 
licensing (when Sally was with ALPSP / Learned Publishing, they 
developed a good model in this regard about a decade ago).

In addition to considering a "license to publish" which leaves 
many rights with the author, publishers would be well advised to 
consider moving to Creative Commons licensing: 
http://creativecommons.org/

For examples of what other journals are doing, it's a good idea 
to check out the Sherpa RoMEO Publisher Copyright Policies and 
Self- Archiving Site: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Who can help with such educational efforts? Journal editors / 
scholar publishers who are university faculty can check with 
their library, as most libraries nowadays (indeed most liaison 
librarians) have taken on scholarly communication duties.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) 
is available to help publishers: http://www.arl.org/sparc/

It would be most timely and appropriate for other associations 
serving society publishers (such as the Association for Learned 
and Professional Society Publishers, or ALPSP, and the Society 
for Scholarly Publishers (SSP) to provide education to members on 
these matters (assuming that they are not already doing so).

Here are some reasons why SLEEP should really reconsider moving 
to open access publishing, or at minimum open access friendly 
models such as nonexclusive licensing:

-journals will be more widely read

-attract and keep authors who want to be widely read and cited

-retain authors subject to funding agency or institutional open 
access mandate policies: the NIH Public Access policy is only one 
of more than 250 open access mandate policies worldwide, with 
many more to come - for the current list, see: 
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

-open access is growing
As Peter Suber says, in 2010, OA growth was wide, deep and 
steady: 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-11.htm 
Heather Morrison refers to this phenomenon as The Dramatic Growth 
of Open Access - latest numbers can be found at: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html

Many librarians, like me, think that the best thing for the 
future of scholarly communication is a continued or growing 
involvement of scholar-publishers and scholarly society 
publishers. How can we help the society publishers to make the 
transition? My suggestion is for us to help out with the reason 
why this is difficult for so many - facilitate the underlying 
economic transition, in a sustainable way. In other words, join 
the Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE): 
http://www.oacompact.org/compact/

Heather G. Morrison, MLIS
Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com