It would be silly and self-defeating for give-away (refereed research) authors to PREVENT publishers (e.g. JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/ from scanning, OCR'ing and selling their give-away papers for a fee if they wish. But it would be sensible and advisable for these authors to take a copy (now the work of scanning/OCR has been done for them) and self-archive it, along with their current work, in their institutional eprint servers (http://www.eprints.org).
That way no one sues anyone, everyone is happy, and researchers' retrospective work is available free for all online, alongside their current work. Give-away means give-away. The authors of refereed research write for research IMPACT, not for INCOME from access-tolls. Let others charge access-tolls if they like, as long as a draft is publicly archived online for free too. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm Stevan Harnad On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Leslie Chan wrote: > Dear Stevan, > While I am fully aware of the distinction between the "give-away" literature > and the writing-for-fee literature, I can't help but wonder if the US > Supreme Court ruling (see below) will have implications for the scholarly > literature, as publishers have been digitizing back issues of journal > articles that were published before the arrival of electronic publishing and > before there were electronic rights for authors to give away. In other > words, could authors prevent publishers from digitizing the material that > they do not have the electronic rights to, just as some publishers have been > preventing authors from self-archiving? And what would this really mean, if > anything? > > Leslie Chan > > > PUBLISHERS MUST SEEK AUTHORS' PERMISSION FOR ELECTRONIC REPRINTS > The Supreme Court ruled that freelance writers must be compensated > when publishers reprint their works in electronic form. The high > court sided with National Writers' Union President Jonathan > Tasini, ruling that transferring freelance authors' articles to > CD-ROMs and online databases creates totally new editions of > those articles--not revisions, as publishers had argued. American > University professor of law Peter A. Jaszi said, "This decision > seems to be a wonderful reaffirmation of the central importance > of the creative individual in our copyright system." However, > historians Ken Burns and Doris Kearns Goodwin said the ruling > will harm intellectual research if publishers remove freelance > articles from databases. > (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 26 June 2001) >