Charles Oppenheim wrote: "I have never had a problem over the past three decades with publishers when refusing to assign copyright to them  dating from when I was a "mere" junior lecturer."
How lucky you are, Charles, to be heeded by publishers and to have answers from them ! Andrew Adams has already noted his repeated difficulties. I can tell you about mine : I started to do proxy self-archiving on behalf the researchers of my lab in 2002-2003.  At that time, Elsevier's policy on self-archiving was not yet the Green one that we know and that "appeared" (thanks in part to Stevan Harnad's efforts) in May 2004. Please see SPARC Open Access Newsletter #74  http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-04.htm Back then was possible to self-archive post-prints only after asking permission for each article, in each periodical, case by case! I prepared the requests for several articles and these requests were signed by the concerned researchers but we never received any answer (hence no permission) despite my insistence, by renewing my requests! And you no doubt know that there are not many of us to do that! Hélène Bosc ----- Original Message ----- From: CHARLES OPPENHEIM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 4:16 PM Subject: Re: Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum I apologise to Professor Adams if he felt insulted by my comments.   I have never had a problem over the past three decades with publishers when refusing to assign copyright to them  - dating from when I was a "mere" junior lecturer. I do agree though that it is often difficult for junior members of staff in an academic institution to push publishers hard.  That is why should be a condition of employment that employees do NOT assign copyright to publishers for journal articles.  The employee can then say to the publisher "I'm really sorry, but my contract of employment does not allow me to assign copyright to you." All publishers I know of accept such statements. Also, if these contracts really are unfair, then why isn't Professor Adams recommending action in a Court to have them deemed invalid in law?  There is enough legislation, certainly in the EU, on unfair contractual terms to allow for such a case to be made.  That's a far more sensible approach than recommending people to sign a contract and then to breach it. Charles Professor Charles Oppenheim --- On Fri, 7/1/11, CHARLES OPPENHEIM <c.oppenh...@btinternet.com> wrote: From: CHARLES OPPENHEIM <c.oppenh...@btinternet.com> Subject: Re: Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Date: Friday, 7 January, 2011, 9:14 What  interesting advice from a Professor of Business Administration!  Voluntarily enter into a contract with a third party and then ignore its terms and conditions because the third party is unlikely to do anything to enforce it.  Well, if that's the nature of what is taught there, Meiji University is one place I will not be recommending anyone to study at. The solution is clear.  DON'T ENTER INTO THAT CONTRACT IN THE FIRST PLACE!  That approach is both legal and ethical, unlike Professor Adams'. Charles Professor Charles Oppenheim --- On Fri, 7/1/11, Andrew A. Adams <a...@meiji.ac.jp> wrote: From: Andrew A. Adams <a...@meiji.ac.jp> Subject: Re: Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Date: Friday, 7 January, 2011, 2:26 As I say regularly in my talks on OA, don't worry about copyright. The contract between academic authors and publishers of journals is rather suspect anyway, to my mind. he consideration offered of distribution is not necessarily compelling enough for a publisher to even consider it a certain win in a court case. The worst that will happen is a take-down notice, which can be complied with by setting closed access via the email request button. No publisher is going to sue the author of an academic paper for making it available online. Such an act would almost certainly lead to a significant (though not universal) boycott of that journal/publisher by academics. Publishers know the old model is not sustainable and they're just trying to squeeze out as much profit as possible before it dies, while spreading FUD to slow down its decline. Don't worry about copyright. As Stevan says, CS and HE Physicists have been making their papers available for over twenty years without any significant problems. -- Professor Andrew A Adams           a...@meiji.ac.jp Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan     http://www.a-cubed.info/
