Dear all, Being somewhat of an opportunist, I would like to kidnap this thread to shamelessly plug the journal of which I am one of the editors.
In contrast to the 'big' journals, mentioned in this thread, our journal (Lutra, the scientific, peer-reviewed journal of the Dutch Mammal Society) does not only give the authors reprints and a pdf, but will be available online, free of charge, from the next issue onward. I am not so naieve to think that we can change scientific publishing by doing this, but hopefully more (smaller) journals will do the same. I've pasted some info on the journal below. Kind regards, Jasja Dekker Editor Lutra Lutra is a scientific journal published by the Society for the Study and Conservation of Mammals (VZZ) based in Arnhem, The Netherlands. The society is dedicated to the study and protection of native mammals in Western Europe. Lutra publishes peer reviewed scientific papers on mammals across all disciplines, but tends to focus on ecology, biogeography, behaviour and morphology. Although exceptions are made in some cases, Lutra generally publishes articles on mammal species native to Europe, including marine mammals. Lutra publishes full articles as well as short notes which may include novel research methods or remarkable observations of mammals. In addition Lutra publishes book reviews, and compilations of recent literature on mammals. Lutra publishes in British English as well as Dutch. Lutra publishes two issues per year and Lutra is indexed in Biological Abstracts, Zoological Records and Artik. -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Silvert Sent: maandag 21 november 2005 15:56 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: Copyright Law and Science While it would be nice to have scientists organise against the present practice with regard to signing away copyright, unless a real movement gets started most of us have no choice. We have to publish to function and the publishers hold the cards, namely the power to accept or reject our papers. It would be good to organise a boycott of publishers who insist on transfer of copyright, but that is a big job and would take a long time. Most scientists simply do what they consider the right thing and focus on their research. Keep in mind that I posted in response to a message about whether one could copy a book that was totally unavailable, the author dead, etc. I think that the responses that focussed on the technicalities of following copyright law, which basically require that the researcher has to do without this resource, are wrong. As for suppression of material, this is common in the movie business. I gave one of several examples of cases where Hollywood has decided to remake a film, often a classic film, and pulls the original version off the market. In fields where creativity requires funding, often creative work can be suppressed because the rights belong to the funding party. This can ocur in the movies (Hearst vs. Citizen Kane for example, which almost succeeded) and in science there is growing concern that drug companies are able to suppress the publication of unfavourable results even by supposedly independent researchers. I also referred to the practice of letting creative works expire by failure to publish them, as often happens with old recordings and books. I mentioned video games in particular because there is an interesting issue there - fans of the old games for obsolete computers (like the 8-bit Ataris) cannot buy these games, but the software companies won't give up the copyrights. Since there will never be a profiable market for these games, why won't the companies let them go? Often the copyright ends up in the hands of people who are much tighter about it than the creator. I read about a Cambodian musician in the US who is delighted that pirated copies of his music are popular all over Cambodia even though the publisher is furious - but he points out that almost no one in Cambodia could afford the price of an American CD. Scientific journals charge for reprints (PDFs) of our papers which we are happy to distribute for free. And by the way I'd like to thank all of you who sent me copies of my own paper which Springer refused to send me! Bill Silvert PS - A later posting reminded me of the frequent proposal that scientific journals enforce copyright for just a short time, maybe a year or so, but then release papers into the public domain. Sure sounds like a good compromise. But I think the opposite is happening. I recently spent some time at a university where they had Science Direct access to many journals published within the last ten years, but it turned out that if I wanted access to older papers they would have to pay. This makes me pessimistic about winning the firms that control scientific publishing over to some reasonable solution. And given that there is a lot of consolidation in the publishing field, the chances of pressuring individual journals to back off on copyright issues seem dim. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David M. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 2:40 AM Subject: Re: Copyright Law and Science > The problem is not with copyright law, but with scientists who sign > their rights away in the publication agreements with the journals. I > don't know how that system got started, but if scientists organized -- > beginning with journals published by scientific societies it would > change, and copyright law would not be an obstacle to free flow of > information. > > Contracts can be signed granting publishers the rights they need, while > you retain copyright -- and limited rights to reproduce the work on your > own. > > I haven't heard much about copyright being used to supress ideas. Given > the fact that I also work in the creative community, I think I would > have heard more about that if it was as widespread as hinted in the post > below. It is not, and for the most part, it cannot happen WITHOUT the > WRITTEN consent of the creator of the work. (Works made for hire, such > as articles written for a newspaper by its staff, are a common exception.) > > Copyright law is good, and should be your friend. But you have to pay > attention to what you're signing away when you submit an article for > publication.
