Re: Author Copyright Issue (SLEEP)

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Sure, if you have the funding to publish your journal OA, by all 
means do so. If you want to recover costs from sales, however, 
and want to stay in business, accepting nonexclusive licensing is 
madness because you then have no way to defend yourself against 
any infringement of the content you publish.

I'm not sure what Heather means when she says that ALPSP "moved 
to nonexclusive licensing." I just prepared a book review for 
ALPSP's Learned Publishing, and the contract I signed grants 
"exclusive" rights to ALPSP.

CC licenses do permit users to do many things and, in this sense, 
grant nonexclusive licenses for these activities to all users.

If we are going to educate people about these matters, we first 
have to know what we are talking about!

Sandy Thatcher


>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