On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Mark Doyle [American Physical Society] wrote: > Just wondering, Stevan, if you ever got a response from Nature to your > open letter. I don't want to open the whole thing up for debate again, > but I am curious if this was ever clarified by Nature to your > satisfaction.
Dear Mark, Here are some updates (latest one from today) In brief, Nature is still working on clarifying both their concepts and the language in which they are formulated. I am still 100% optimistic, and Nature is still listed in green, on the side of the angels, in the Publisher-Policy Table at the Romeo Project: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm As expected, their legal team are concerned with not using language that can be construed as authorizing re-publication by anyone else, which is fine. I will probably meet with them in May in London and will suggest some language, as well as correcting any misconceptions they may have about nonexistent differences between "open website," "personal website" etc. as well as about servers, disc sectors, metadata and metadata harvesting, etc. The present formal language of the license is in fact just fine. (The problem only came up from their incoherent replies to informal queries and FAQs about the meanings of some of the terms in the formal license.) For the pre-refereeing preprint: http://npg.nature.com/pdf/05_news.pdf "Nature does not wish to hinder communication between scientists. For that reason, different embargo guidelines apply to work that has been discussed at a conference or displayed on a preprint server and picked up by the media as a result. (Neither conferences nor preprint servers constitute prior publication.) "Our guidelines for authors and potential authors in such circumstances are clear-cut in principle: communicate with other researchers as much as you wish, but do not encourage premature publication by discussion with the press (beyond your formal presentation, if at a conference)." For the refereed postprint: http://npg.nature.com/pdf/05_news.pdf [The Author retains the right] To post a copy of the Contribution on the Authors' own web site after publication of the printed edition of the Journal, provided that they also give a hyperlink from the Contribution to the Journal's web site. I think there is no bad faith at all, just incomplete understanding of the online medium. Cheers, Stevan ------------------------------------------------------------------ List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 11:04:00 -0000 From: Philip Campbell <p.campb...@nature.com> Stevan - I am just back from travel abroad. Either I or a publishing colleague will get back to you before long. Phil ------------------------------------------------------------------ List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 10:39:25 -0000 From: Marks Jayne <j.ma...@nature.com> Steve This is proving to be a much more complex issue than we had first thought and some new perspectives on this were raised at a meeting that some of my colleagues attended on Wednesday. I would therefore like to take some more time to think through our options rather than jumping to a quick conclusion either way on this issue. I am sorry that you have had to wait so long for our reply but I want to make sure that this is considered. I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can. Jayne List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:11:00 +0000 (GMT) From: Marks Jayne <j.ma...@nature.com> Thanks for being so patient on this issue. We have had extensive discussions internally and have been looking into the issues in a lot of depth. For the time being we would like our statements on our author licence to stand as they are but we would be very keen to discuss some of these issues with you so that we can be better informed and so that we can discuss some of our concerns which may be unfounded... So I would like to invite you to visit our offices in London. We thought perhaps a round table discussion...