On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Thomas J. Walker wrote: >sh>Thomas, maybe it's just me, but I still can't determine from the >sh>above: Does or does not ESA allow author self-archiving (of their own >sh>final, accepted draft), without having to pay ESA anything extra? If it >sh>does, then this is a true, benign option, and the most progressive one >sh>I've seen to date, completely in harmony with the mission of a learned >sh>society and the possibilities opened up by the new medium. > > To spell it out, ESA requires its authors to sign away _all_ their rights > to their articles. It _should_ do what APS has done and specifically > permit self-archiving of the content of the refereed version. In ESA's > defense, I am sure ESA's GB would never authorize taking action against an > author who self-archived content. In fact I was told that in a straw vote > in June 1999, ESA's GB voted unanimously that ESA could not expect to > continue to make money selling content. [This vote was not recorded in the > minutes.]
In that case I withdraw my praise of ESA! It's not relevant that they would not in reality prosecute. (No Learned Society would: the conflict of interest would be too blatant and the membership would revolt.) But the PERCEIVED restriction (because of the copyright agreement, and despite the easy, legal Oppenheim-plan for getting around it) is bound to contribute to retarding our passage to the optimal and the inevitable for research and researchers, and that is inexcusable. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
