Sally Morris wrote: > I find Andrew's experience surprising. When Cox & Cox last looked into this > (in 2008), 53% of publishers requested a copyright transfer, 20.8% asked for > a licence to publish instead, and 6.6% did not require any written > agreement. A further 19.6%, though initially asking for transfer of > copyright, would on request provide a licence document instead. There had > been a steady move away from transfer of copyright since 2003.
What's surprising about the fact that if 50% or so of publishers require a copyright transfer that a personal policy of not transferring copyright would be a problem? In my first case there was a special issue call that was perfect for a paper I was in the process of writing. I asked the editor about anexclusive license to publish instead of a copyright transfer. The (academic) special issue editor passed me to the (academic) main editor who passed me to the (publishing house) production staff who said an unequivocal "no". I passed on the special issue then had to go through three journals to find a suitable publication locus. Particularly when one's work is unusual and interdisciplinary, putting the extra burden of not transferring copyright on oneself limits one's choice of journals significantly and may well require publication in a far less prestigious place. The move may have been away fom copyright transfer, as it should be, but as I said for junior staff or those for whom publication locus is used by anyone as a quality proxy, it's not something one should do individually. -- 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/ _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
