Re: Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights
Fytton Rowland wrote: Copyright is, I believe, significantly different in the UK and the USA. In the UK, as Iain says, copyright exists as soon as a text is written by its author, whether it is published or not. In the USA, copyright has to be registered. This has not been true for many years now. See p.3 col. 2 of http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf In Europe there are moral rights (such as the right to be identified as the author of your work) which remain with the author even if the copyright is transferred to another. And a very sensible system this is, which the US should adopt. Giving up ownership need not entail giving up authorship. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ .
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)
Fytton Rowland wrote: There is a head of steam building up against the author pays model now, partly due to these confusions, and partly due to the long-term dislike of authors for page charges. Many authors do not distinguish between charges levied by journals that also charge subscriptions, and charges levied by open-access journals. This may lead to the early death of the new model and the continuation of toll-access and the journals crisis for libraries. Stevan may not mind about that, but his preferred model of institutional open-access repositories depends on someone else doing the refereeing. For authors who don't personally subscribe to a given journal, but read it in the library, there *is* no difference between charges levied by journals that also charge subscriptions, and charges levied by open-access journals (expect that the page charge is often *higher* than the subscription would have been). Page charges like those levied by PLoS and BMC will never be accepted in psychoolgy, which is now among the largest of all academic disciplines (Amer. Psych. Assoc. -- whch is only the largets of several major psych. societies -- has some 150,000 members/affiliates and publishes nearly 50 journals). Stevan disagrees with me about this -- never say never, he says. I forwarded an intersting piece about PLoS to an APA divisonal listserv the other day and the *only* response was (approximately): $1500, are they crazy?! I told them about institutional membership and their ire abated... somewhat. I agree with you that the institutional membership should not be charged to the library budget (or that the library budget should be increased to account for the new service they are providing), but institutional membership is, IMHO, the way to go. Otherwise, the vast majority of authors (who don't really care about this issue one way or another) will simply continue to send their work to traditional journals that charge them nothing to publish and whose issues they can pick off the library shelves (apparently) for free. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)
Stevan Harnad wrote: Never say never. In the meanwhile, if you can't find a suitable open-access journal to publish in (or don't want to have to pay any publishing charges), continue to publish in the journal of your choice -- and self-archive! Of course. Take a look at my article in your own CogPrints archive! Best, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
Re: Journal expenses and publication costs
Manfredi La Manna wrote: The one-size-fits-all syndrome strikes again. Scientific disciplines are vastly different in terms of all the relevant variables here, such as rejection rates, turnaround times, editorial structures, etc. I understand that BMC's figure of $500 article-processing-charge (APC) per published article is based on an average rejection rate of 50%. The same ratio applied to a top economics journal (with a rejection rate of 95%) would yield a prohibitive $5,000 APC. I've been thinking it all through this discussion, but perhaps I should make it explicit here. Charges such as this weil *never* fly in experimental psychology, where the only journals that have page charges are generally considered to be just a hair's beadth above vanity presses. Another business model will haveto be developed if this is to work in psychology. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
New Open-Access Journal
A new open access, peer reviewed scholarly journal (see below). -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ Robert Maxwell Young wrote: Please forward this message to your colleagues. *Introduction Evolutionary Psychology: An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior ISSN 1474-7049 ___ We are pleased to announce the launch of a new peer-reviewed journal, 'Evolutionary Psychology: An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior' The journal enjoys extraordinarily broad support from distinguished members of the international academic community and has been established to promote open access to excellent empirical, theoretical, historical, and philosophical work in this important domain of investigation. We believe that free access to material of the highest quality will nurture informed debate and sustain a broader foundation of interest and inquiry. We will welcome work from any relevant discipline, and will be keen to encourage submissions capable of integrating the proximal, developmental, functional and evolutionary approaches. We are particularly interested in fostering communication between experimental and theoretical work, on the one hand, and historical, conceptual and interdisciplinary writings across the whole range of the biomedical and human sciences, on the other. We also wish to encourage reflective and exploratory contributions and essay reviews on books which merit extensive treatment. Open peer commentary will be available for papers where appropriate. All material accepted for publication will be freely available on the journal's web site, the URL of which will be announced shortly. Our existing web site consistently ranks in the top 3000 most popular sites and will provide an excellent base for the journal. *Open Access In debates about scientific publishing over recent years it has been noted many times that the authors of articles for peer-reviewed journals write primarily for 'research impact'. Unfortunately, established practices, which involve transferring copyright to journal publishers, often achieve precisely the opposite of impact. Many worthy papers appear in small-circulation journals where they languish unnoticed by all but a few who could profit from the ideas they contain. Many specialist journals have fewer than 1000 subscribers, and even very popular journals fewer than 5000. Of course, since the advent of the Internet, and especially the world wide web, access to information has been transformed, but many of the old barriers remain in place. Although many newspapers make their content freely available, the cost of a journal article published online by a traditional publisher can be more than the price of a textbook, and some publishers do not allow access to individual papers without a full subscription to the print journal. Stevan Harnad notes that: 'There are currently at least 20,000 refereed journals across all fields of scholarship, publishing more than 2 million refereed articles each year. The amount collectively paid by those of the world's institutions which can afford the tolls for just one of those refereed papers averages $2,000 per paper. In exchange for that fee, that particular paper is accessible to readers at those, and only those, paying institutions'. However, as Harnad points out, with the advent of online communities served by electronic journals, 'Learned inquiry, always communal and cumulative, will not only be immeasurably better informed, new findings percolating through minds and media almost instantaneously, but it will also become incomparably more interactive'. In his article 'Is your journal really necessary?' Declan Butler of Nature writes: 'The possibilities of sophisticated matching of personalized editorial selections across large swathes of the literature, and the need to lower barriers to access, should in themselves be sufficient to convince scientists tempted to create low-circulation print journals to consider web-only options. Arguments that electronic-only will hinder access of developing countries to science is nonsense. The reality is that a library in Kinshasa would be lucky if it could afford to subscribe to a handful of print journals; the web promises developing countries access to scientific information they could previously only have dreamed of. But the essential function of a journal is to serve a particular community. The next web revolution will be a plethora of next-generation communities linking papers, people and data. So next time you think about launching a print journal, unless you have sufficient readership to survive in a free competitive
Re: ALPSP statement on BOAI
Sally Morris wrote: Publishers acknowledge that authors want to make their work as widely available as possible. However, we are also convinced (and the ALPSP research bears this out) that publishing can add considerable value (rated by authors and readers, not just by publishers!) over and above peer review. We are concerned that moves which undermine the current model for funding that added value before having found a sustainable alternative model may destroy the ability to add that value. Destroy *YOUR* ability to add that value, perhaps. Not *THE* ability, which could easily be held by the scholarly societies themselves (unless you're confusing *monetary* values with *scholarly* value) Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
Albert Henderson wrote: Money is not the only token of value. One of the key fallacies that burdens this forum is the failure to recognize the economic exchanges that course through the research communication process. Publishers exchange recognition and dissemination services for the copyrights of the articles they publish. Every economist I know agrees. Problem is, the *publisher* confers nothing of the kind. The extra value if provided by the scholars who serve as editors, reviewers, etc., and just like the authors, they typically do so at no cost to the pubisher. Nice work if you can get it. -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
NYT E-pub.
There is an article on e-publicaiton in the New York Times that might intereset the readers of this list. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/20/health/20JOUR.html Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such as not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no difference for people who must attempt to publish in American Psychological Assocaition journals in order to advance (or even maintain) their academic careers now. The simple fact (whether legal, political, or even crassly careerist) is that scientific psychologists will not be self-archiving in droves until the problem is resolved. Despite your apparent optimism about the matter, I have seen no indication that APA will see the light given the extraordinary degree of control they currently have. As you know better than most, they have been relatively resistant to even acknowledging the importance of electronic media. Question: Do you know what the current policies are among the few, major non-APA scientific psychology journals? e.g., American Journal of Psycohlogy (U. Illinois), Psychological Science (APS), Cognitive Science (Ablex), and Cognition (Elsevier) come immediately to mind. There must be others as well. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: Here is quick synopsis of the steps/logic involved: (1) Self-archive all pre-refereeing preprints. These precede submission and are not bound by any prior legal agreement. The American Psychological Association (and I assume most other traditional publishers) have explicitly stated that they will not consider submissions that have been previously published elsewhere, and that they consider web-posting to constitute a form of publication. So self-archiving pre-prints would make them ineligible submissions to APA journals. (2) After refereeing, revision, and acceptance, if the copyright transfer agreement asks for a transfer of all rights for the final refereed draft to the publisher, first propose modifying the wording of the agreement: Agree to transfer to the publisher all rights to SELL the paper, on-paper or on-line; retain only your right to self-archive it for free on-line. Fine, but this is completely dependent on the publisher's willingness to cooperate. APA will not. (3) If the modified agreement is accepted by your publisher, self-archive the post-refereeing postprint. (4) If the modified agreement is not accepted by your publisher, sign the original agreement and self-archive only a list of the changes that have to be made in the (already-archived) preprint to transform it into the postprint. Usually these agreements say something like substantively in them to block one from changing a single word (or a few words), and then publishing them elsewhere. Why is it so simple to do this legally? Because copyright is designed to protect intellectual property from theft; your paper is your intellectual property. If you want to give it away, that is your prerogative. Copyright agreements were never designed with give-away work in mind; they were designed for royalty/fee-based work where the author and the publisher have a common stake in the sales, and in preventing theft. Perhaps, but that doesn't keep people (publishers) from exploiting the advantages the law gives them, even if unintentionally. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
New psychology e-journal
I was recently informed of a new e-journal that may interest some of the people on this list. It is named Psychologie et Histoire, and is edited by Serge Nicolas at Université René Descartes, Paris V. It may be found at: http://lpe.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/membres/nicolas/nicolas.francais.html P et H accepts articles in both French and English (although it appears that all those to date have been in French). There is no copyright notice given on the articles themselves, although because the journal is not attached to any visible corporation, it would appear that the authors retain copyright. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: ClinMed NetPrints
ransdell, joseph m. wrote: It would hardly be surprising if what the gatekeepers do not permit to pass through the public gates does not become generally accepted, if the field is one in which the gatekeepers are efficient. What is unknown obviously cannot become commonly accepted. The question, then, is whether scholarly consensus is to be limited to what is found possibly acceptable by the gatekeepers, in the form of editors and their consultants. Gatekeepers tend to think so, needless to say, though dissenters can occasionally be found. In any case, others may smell something amiss in these pretensions. Although it is well-known among psychologists (it may not be so well-known among others), there was actually an empirical study of the reliability of peer review published in Behavioral Brain Science in 1982. The system did not come off very well. To quote the abstract: 12 research articles were resubmitted to the journals that had published them 18-32 mo previously, with ficticious names and institutions substituted for the original ones. Only 3 of the resubmissions were detected, and 8 of the remaining articles were rejected--primarily for serious methodological flaws. Authoreviewer accountability is discussed, and recommendations for improving the peer review system are presented. Commentary on this article is provided by 56 authors along with the original authors'. Peters, Douglas P. Ceci, Stephen J. (1982). Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again. Behavioral Brain Sciences. 1982 Jun Vol 5(2) 187-255 Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: 3. In this regard, C. Green statement that soon we'll simply expect students to have hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g. from the classroom is interesting. I ask: who will pay for them? individuals? the state (that is, taxpayers)? And where? In affluent 1st world countries? In poorer 3rd world countries? This is a question this list needs to address, I think. [...] The fact is that the researcher's case for freeing his own research reports is NOT contingent IN ANY WAY on who pays for hand-held classroom devices, and whether or not they ought to be free. Not should it be. And if you don't and do not take into account the trends in higher education finance in the UK, the US and elsewhere, you face the danger of creating a further information rich / information poor divide. Nothing of the sort. Freeing the research literature online now will have all the spinoff effects you desire, including the (secondary) DRIVING of demand for and provision of the means to access it (for teachers, students, 3rd world). Indeed, just the online freeing of the research literature will be an enormous boon for the disenfranchised 3rd world researcher right now: [...] I assume, in other words, that you actually do want to create an information democracy and not reproduce the current and unjust market-based and property-based (that is, private property based) system in information. I happen to be a socialist; but the research self-archiving movement, its rationale and its objectives, have absolutely nothing to do with that. We do not need to take on capitalism in order to achieve those face-valid objectives! Golly there's an awful lots of idealism and optimism at play here. I hardly know where to start. First, contrary to Stevan, I suspect that much of the third word will indeed be left behind by the increasing computerization of the first world. Although this may drive demand for electronics in the third world (note, however, I suspect the third world has far more pressing demands at present), it certainly won't provide the funds necessary to satisfy that demand. I don't see any obvious solution to that problem, however. Are we (scientists in the first world), REALLY, as Alan seems to suggest, supposed to continue to labor under the yoke of increasingly voracious publishing companies simply in order to satisfy the needs of that tiny fraction of the scientific community that resides in the third world? (Before someone righteously points out to me that the third world is a huge proportion of the earth's population, note that India and China are already making great strides toward computerization, and their best scientists and students won't be left behind. Countries like Zimbabwe, however -- the case Alan mentions specifically -- are of a different order, I think.) In any case, I suspect that *in the broader context,* it would be difficult could than Alan suggests to make a strong ethical case for this (viz. holding back so the third world can catch up). Consider: faster dissemination of scientific literature to scientists means, among other things, more rapid scientific progress (including improved treatment for disease in the third world, better food production and management, better water management, etc.). Is that to be traded away, or should, instead, those who are best off do the everything they can to help solve the problems of the world as a whole? Even if you could make a strong ethical case, do you really think that such an argument would really lead first world scientists to abstain from using one of their most powerful tools (computerized distribution of scientific results) or, do you, like I, expect that those scientists who did would rapidly become second-rate first worlds scientists)? Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Stevan Harnad wrote: On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: Until every desk in every university classroom has its own web-accessible computer (still some way off...), there will be an interest in paper copies by university teachers. Paper copies are indispensable in the form student course packs for study and discussion and debate in class by reference to words in a text that everyone see in front of them. Hard copy is not dead yet for instructional purposes. Actually, we're not that far from having hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g., from in the classroom). Soon we'll simply expect students to have them, just like we now expect them to have calculators. What is more, students will always be able print papers that are available on-line and bring them to class if they prefer. I am currently assembling an archive of classic books and papers in the history of psychology (http://www.yorku.ca/dept/psych/classics/ ). I already assign these electronic editions -- to be read on-line or printed, as students see fit -- rather than having to deal with printshops, reference librarians, and all the other things that typically make assigning primary source material to students a difficult process. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 e-mail: chri...@yorku.ca phone: (416) 736-5115 ext. 66164 fax:(416) 736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo
