Pippa Smart wrote: “I agree that the licence wording is not as clear as it could be - but the requirement for "exclusive" publication refers to "first" publication - usually journals do not want to publish something that has already been published elsewhere (they want original content), and they also want to ensure that authors are not submitting to several journals at the same time.”
Two comments: 1. It's quite surreal to hear that the license is simply “not as clearly worded as it could be”. The license gives OUP the exclusive (meaning nobody, even the author, can do it) rights not only to "publish the final version of the Article in the above Journal", which is what Ms. Smart refers to by "first publication", but also "to distribute it and/or to communicate it to the public, either within the Journal, on its own, or with other related material throughout the world, in printed, electronic or any other format or medium whether now known or hereafter devised; to make translations and abstracts of the Article and to distribute them to the public; to authorize or grant licenses to third parties to do any of the above; to deposit copies of the Article in online archives maintained by OUP or by third parties" (excerpt from http://entnemdept.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/OUP_License_to_Publish.pdf). Except if you can imagine some use that isn’t mentioned here (I don’t), you’ll easily agree that this is entirely equivalent to a full copyright transfer: The author remains technically the copyright owner, but the exclusive character of the licence forbids her to use her own work. 2. OUP has certainly the right to forbid non-original or duplicate publication. But this is an ethical concern, which has nothing to do with copyright. And it can simply be taken care of by relevant statements in the publishing agreement, without any rights being granted. In fact, All OUP (or any OA publisher) needs, in the case of a CC BY-NC article, is a non-exclusive licence to publish it in the Journal (because the CC license doesn’t allow it), with a statement by the author, in the same publishing agreement, that he or she will comply with the publication conditions, which include no-prior and no-duplicate publication clauses. Furthermore, in the case of a CC BY article, OUP doesn’t even need a specific licence from the author. A statement by the author, in the publishing agreement, that he or she makes its paper available under a CC BY licence is sufficient. This would allow OUP to publish it first, because an author who would use a previously published work or send the same work to another journal would violate the terms of the publishing agreement. Marc Couture
_______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
