"It seems to me that if what we want to do is make content available to
everyone, there's really no need to take away the author's traditional
rights under copyright law. "
But Blackwell's/Springer are not the authors (nor the funders) of the
research, and yet they ending up with the exclusive rights to the final
version of the research. It's no surprise that the funders who actually
paid for the research (e.g. Wellcome) aren't happy.
If you compare Springer and Blackwell on the one hand, to BioMed
Central and PLoS on the other hand, it seems clear that authors retain
more of their rights with the PLoS/BioMed Central model, no?
Under the Springer model (and I believe for Blackwell too), the author
is required to transfer their copyright to the publisher, and the
*publisher* as a result has exclusive rights over the article, and
controls what the author of the article can and cannot do with the
final version of that article.
Under the PLoS/BioMed Central model, authors retain copyright, but sign
a non-exclusive open access licensing agreement to the publisher (which
allows the publisher to redistribute the article under open access
model).
Under the Springer/Blackwell model, the author has no special rights -
like everyone else, they can download his own personal copy of the
final version of the article from the publishers website (as long as
they agree not to distribute it to anyone).
Under the PLoS/BioMed Central model, the author is free under the terms
of the open access license agreement to redistribute and reuse the
final version of the article to their heart's content, as is the rest
of the scientific community.
As I say, it is difficult to see what additional rights the author is
retaining in the former case. The exclusive rights are being held onto
by the publisher, not the author.
Matt
On 7 Mar 2005, at 21:21, Rick Anderson wrote:
If publishers claim to offer 'Open Access', and are charging
authors for the
privilege, it really does not make sense for them to be reserving for
themselves these exclusive rights.
This is where we get into the question of what "open access" means.
If it means that the general public has a free and unrestricted right
to access an article and use it within the bounds of fair use/fair
dealing, then in fact Blackwell's policy is perfectly consonant with
open access.
If, on the other hand, you agree with the Barcelona, Bethesda and
Berlin statements that access is only "open" when the copyright holder
assigns what would normally be her exclusive rights (redistribution,
reproduction, derivative works, etc.) to the general public, then no,
what Blackwell is offering isn't "open access." But I think that
definition is unnecessarily restrictive. It seems to me that if what
we want to do is make content available to everyone, there's really no
need to take away the author's traditional rights under copyright law.
The latter stance seems to me almost like a conflation of "open
access" with "open source."
----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rick...@unr.edu
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