On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Marvin Margoshes wrote: > > From: Charles Oppenheim <[email protected]> > > > > 1 author posts unrefereed preprint on web site > > > > 2 author submits same at a later date (maybe five minutes later!) to > > a refereed journal > > > > 3 if/when accepted, author makes amendments to the article > > in the light of the referees' and editor's comments > > > > 4 author signs copyright assignment form of publisher and hand on > > heart confirms that this article has not appeared anywhere before > > > > 5 author then posts note onto preprint, pointing out the sorts of > > areas where corrections might need to be made by a reader to > > improve the text > > > > then the author has done nothing wrong, has broken no law, and has not > > signed a contract (s)he should not have signed. > > It seems to me that step 4 can be illegal.
Can we have some other opinions on this (preferably professional legal ones)? I can think of one ostensively awkward special case: Suppose 3 is IDENTICAL to 1: The referees recommend no changes whatsoever, and the editor accepts as-is. But then it all comes down to what "appeared anywhere before" means. If preprints are circulated to colleagues (on paper) before submission, they have in a sense "appeared" somewhere, but no one would regard that as illegal. Clearly what's meant is PUBLISHED before, and published not just in the trivial sense that a hand-written text circulated to a few people is publication, but published in the same sense that the journal is about to publish it. Could we hear some informed legal opinion about whether PRIOR self-archiving on the Web counts as prior publication in the precise sense that one affirms in a copyright agreement stating that "it has not previously been published"? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: [email protected]
