Re: Science 4 September on Copyright
On 15 Sep 1998 Arthur Smith apsm...@aps.org wrote: Finally some real numbers... Harnad asks also about growth. With doubling every decade, the number of published articles probably grew a factor of 10 or more (probably significantly more because of the rise of the biological sciences) between 1960 and 1995. Some areas surely grow at this rate. My best estimate of growth of the numbers of articles, based largely on database production records collected by NFAIS and the observations of Derek de Solla Price, would be a growth just over 5X during 1960-95. US academic RD grew at a faster rate 1960-1970 and slowed for a year when Congress cut defense research. Then it picked up again, putting it substantially ahead of world research for the full period. Many databases have been forced to cap their coverage during the last years of this period, excluding many published articles. This unfortunately interferes with the accuracy of future statistics as a measure (as well as the usefulness of resource sharing). In the 1960s, as a result of the embarrassment of Sputnik, support for US academic RD AND libraries surged. Libraries also had the benefit of the Higher Education Act of 1965 Title II-A (college library materials) which focused on collection development for a few years. The period 1970 to 1995 indicates growth of US academic RD by a factor of 2.5, world research 3.2 and the 41 ARL libraries 1.6. Library photocopying, particularly interlibrary borrowing increased substantially -- 132% 1986-1997. Commercial document delivery is not so well tracked as interlibrary borrowing, but we know that foreign sources now supply hundreds of thousands of photocopies to US libraries. This suggests that US sources have dried up. It's well known that the serials crisis has been brought on by the huge growth in the number of scientific articles published - now we have a second reason (a drop in library funding) - the problem is laid squarely back at the door of the researchers and their institutions! In contrast to the spin put out by universities, attempting to shift the blame to publishers, I would say the serials crisis was instigated by cutting library growth. Price noted that libraries and technical publications grew at the same exponential rate, doubling roughly every 15 years. (SCIENCE SINCE BABYLON 1961 enl ed 1975 p. 173) That growth has slowed very about half the rate while research proceeds as before. Here is an extension of the statistics on the average growth of ten 100+ years old library collections (collected by F Rider and cited by Price) with new data published by Association of Research Libraries. 1938 1.2 million vols. 1954 not available 1968 2.7 1983 4.1 1997 5.7 Compare the latter figure with 19.2 million vols. projected if pre-1938 growth, keeping up with the work product of world research activity, had continued. By way of reference, Library of Congress presently reports 24, Harvard 13.6, Yale 10, CISTI 8, NAL 2.3, NLM 2.2, and Smithsonian 1.2 million vols. Now in the next 10 years, if we see another 60-70 percent drop in per-article publication costs, what will libraries do with the savings (if any this time)? The savings goes to administration, not the library; it feeds administrative bloat. I am told that the indirect cost payments for libraries, made in connection with Federal research grants, never get into the hands of the librarian. And what will researchers do? If there are no libraries, no databases and no journals, we return to pre-1665 chaos of all formal communications being nailed to the post, now on the WWW rather than the green. As it is, the libraries are half-empty, collecting half (or less according to studies of monographs) of research published in the last 30 years or so. US libraries have been more likely to retain journals that their faculty are associated with. Citation studies in SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS and AAAS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY YEARBOOK indicate US scientists and engineers cite US authors at an extraordinarily high rate compared with foreign authors. This suggests to me insularity that may well be traced to the decimation of library collections and the absence of foreign authors. Is there a policy of dissemination? I don't think so. The patterns of behavior suggest to me that the plan is to ditch libraries and shift the burden of communications to authors. Unless associations like APS and federal science agencies exercise their influence on policy and their power of accreditation, it will be the death of knowledge. Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 70244.1...@compuserve.com
Re: Science 4 September on Copyright
At 7:25 AM 1998/09/10, Irwin D. Bross harn wrote: Perhaps the only strategy which has any chance of success is to take direct action on the Web to raise the traditional cry: stop thief! Establishments and their allies in the publishing business control most of the avenues to redress (e.g., letters-to-the-editor) but they do not yet control the Web. The key to what actions are feasible is this: None of the traditional lines of protest will work; if the strategies are modified to apply to the Web they may work. I would advocate to individuals the following principles - Do not submit papers to journals - 1. which do not let you retain the rights to electronically distribute copies of the paper or publish it on a web server. 2. that do not enable libraries to distribute electronic copies of the papers from electronic versions of the journal under the fair dealing provisions which apply to paper editions. In addition, for journals which do not observe the two principles above - a) avoid citing papers published by them b) do not subscribe to them and advocate their cancellation from any library with which they use when there are budgetary problems. c) refuse offers to act on referee panels or editorial boards I would suggest to professional bodies that they - * adopt these principles and advocate them to their membership * Apply them to the journals that they produce Its time for the politics of boycott. Tony _ Library Affiliate, Australian National University Library mailto:to...@netinfo.com.au | Ningaui Pty Ltd mailto:m...@tony-barry.emu.id.au| GPO Box 1680 http://purl.oclc.org/NET/Tony.Barry | Canberra ACT 2601 Phone +61 2 6241 7659 |AUSTRALIA
Re: Science 4 September on Copyright
Here are some excerpts from the Science September 4 paper. Please post your comment to the thread (q.v.): Science September 4 on Copyright The following proposal to change copyright argeements and funding practises so that authors can freely archive their work on the Web has just appeared in Science on Sept. 4, followed by a dissenting Editorial: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Bachrach et al. Science 1998 September 4: 1459-1460 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459 EDITORIAL: The Rightness of Copyright. Bloom, F. Science 1998 September 4: 1451. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/281/5382/1451 For the time being, Science is allowing anyone to access both the proposal and the dissenting Editorial by Floyd Bloom (Editor, Science) for free (after some signup procedures) at: http://www.sciencemag.org/ Here are some highlights: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Steven Bachrach, R. Stephen Berry, Martin Blume, Thomas von Foerster, Alexander Fowler, Paul Ginsparg, Stephen Heller, Neil Kestner, Andrew Odlyzko, Ann Okerson, Ron Wigington, Anne Moffat* ...The goals and motivations of scientists writing up their research are very different from those of professional authors, although they may be the same people in different settings. The scientist is concerned with sharing new findings, advancing research inquiry, and influencing the thinking of others. The benefits the scientist receives from publication are indirect; rarely is there direct remuneration for scientific articles. Indeed, scientists frequently pay page charges to publish their articles in journals. The world of the directly paid author is very different. There, the need for close protection of intellectual property follows directly from the need to protect income, making natural allies of the publisher and the professional author, whether a novelist or the author of a chemistry text... ...The suggested policy is this: Federal agencies that fund research should recommend (or even require) as a condition of funding that the copyrights of articles or other works describing research that has been supported by those agencies remain with the author. The author, in turn, can give prospective publishers a wide-ranging nonexclusive license to use the work in a value-added publication, either in traditional or electronic form. The author thus retains the right to distribute informally, such as through a Web server for direct interaction with peers... ...[Some publishers, such as] Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society, have adamantly opposed authors' posting of their own articles on Web pages or e-print servers, whereas others, such as the American Journal of Mathematics, the Journal of Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, and Physical Review, have considered such distribution consistent with, and even advertising for, their own journals... EDITORIAL The Rightness of Copyright: Floyd E. Bloom ...[C]opyright transfer is critical to the process of communicating scientific information accurately. Neither the public nor the scientific community benefits from the potentially no-holds-barred electronic dissemination capability provided by today's Internet tools. Much information on the Internet may be free, but quality information worthy of appreciation requires more effort than most scientists could muster, even if able Questions for Reflection [SH]: (1) Is this a logical or even a practical argument for copyright transfer? (2) Is the only choice really that between free papers, with no quality control, versus quality-controlled papers in exchange for copyright transfer and S/SL/PPV? ...A paper submitted to Science will undergo extensive review and, upon acceptance, extensive revision for clarity, accuracy, and solidity. A paper published in Science will be seen throughout the world by our 160,000 paid subscribers and perhaps two or three times more readers as issues are shared. More than 30,000 readers will be alerted to the new reports within hours of the appearance each week of Science Online (3) How many journals reach 160K subscribers (or even 1/100 % of that)? (4) Free posting on the Web can reach all 160K (and 100 times that). (5) Science magazine is a hybrid trade/refereed journal. It publishes refereed articles, contributed for free, plus commissioned and paid articles by staff writers and others, for fee. Hence it is in most relevant requests not representative of the vast refereed literature of which it (and a few other journals like it, such as Nature) constitutes a minuscule portion. ...This degree
Re: Science 4 September on Copyright
Martin Blume, Editor in Chief, American Physical Society: The issue that has been raised in the Transition from Paper article (Bachrach et al., 1998) is really the right of an author to be free from restraints in circulating his/her ideas. Keeping copyright is just one way of accomplishing this, but it's not the only one. The signatories of the paper believe that an author should not be penalized and should be free to announce results in advance of publishing, to post or update articles on an eprint server, to circulate an article from a web page, and to distribute reprints electronically or otherwise. Since many publishers, Science included (Bloom 1998), prohibit one or another of these desireable rights we have put forward copyright retention for consideration as a solution. The central issues are in my view the rights and not merely copyright. The American Physical Society, of which I am Editor-in-Chief, recognizes those rights explicitly in its copyright form. The author transfers copyright to the Society, but retains the rights enumerated above. The reverse situation, where the author retains copyright but gives a license to the publisher, would be acceptable to us if the license were sufficiently broad to allow us to do, in future, whatever we want to do with the article. We have just put on line all of Physical Review back to 1985 (100,000 articles!), and expect eventually to go back to 1893. We would not have been able to do this if we had a license to publish these earlier works but no mention had been made in that license of electronic distribution. We need to be able to do the unforeseen as well as the foreseen in order to assure the widest possible distribution of the information, which is ultimately the goal of any scholarly publisher. This must be done while we, at the same time, recover our costs for added value. We have to date managed to do this, but must be imaginative in the future as the world changes. One further point that has been introduced into the discussion is the idea that a copyright holder is more likely than a licensee to pursue plagiarists. I do not believe this. Plagiarism is not prosecuted because it is a copyright violation. Any learned society would pursue plagiarists because plagiarism is grossly unethical and strikes at the heart of the scholarly process. Martin Blume bl...@bnl.gov Editor in Chief American Physical Society --- REFERENCES Bachrach, S., Berry, S.R., Blume, M., von Foerster, T., Fowler, A., Ginsparg, P., Heller, S., Kestner, N., Odlyzko, A., Okerson, A., Wigington, R., Moffat, A. (1998) Intellectual Property: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Science 281 (5382): 1459-1460. September 4 1998 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459 Bloom, F. (1998) Editorial: The Rightness of Copyright. Science 281 (5382): 1451. September 4 1998 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/281/5382/1451
Re: Science 4 September on Copyright
The preceding discussions on copyright focus on the respective rights of authors and publishers, but I suspect are largely focused on what one could regard as the traditional models of publishing. I would like to focus on how the concept of copyright might be interpreted for one quite new publishing objects; what I refer to as the model. As a chemist, I strongly believe that we have in the past been limited by the media of text augmented by what we might describe as illustrations. The internet has introduced a new metaphor; the model. For example, if a chemist wishes to describe new ideas originating from a molecule, they might wish to add a model of that model to their description. The model will contain a semantic model (i.e. this model is going to contain symbols of atoms and bonds) along with numeric data describing that model. It could be expressed using older legacy formats, or newer more structured ones such as XML/CML (see http://www.xml-cml.org/ ) This ia ALL that is delivered to the reader. At this point, its the reader that can choose how to interpret this model. They may wish to define the program or plug-in, or in general resource that will render the model on their screen. They have the option of defining the appropriate style (sheet) to apply; a chemist has many ways of visualising a molecular model, ie ball and stick, spacefill, ribbon, etc etc etc. As an author, I have in several recent papers, strongly resisted any attempts to get me to sign over any copyright for my electronic models (and all rights to redistribute them in any form in all future derived works). In any case, I am not sure what of my models actually could be copyrighted; certainly not the data, although perhaps the semantics. Sometimes models can have actions associated with them that are defined by algorithms, or even quite complex code. I certainly do not want to reassign copyright on that! Furthermore, because the models are in effect extensible, one could envisage others adding value to them, re-using them in different contexts etc. That of course is the entire point of making them available. If the copyright on the model were to be owned eg by the publisher, one can imagine problems arising out of such application. Finally of course, in creating a screen model from data, but using styles selected by them, readers of the model could argue they have just a strong case as the author or publisher. It seems to me that much of the discussion on copyright manages to avoid dealing with any of the above issues. For examples of compound models, see http://www.chemsoc.org/gateway/chembyte/cib/rzepa/vrml/index.htm A rather more topical model is at http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/motm/viagra.html
Science 4 September on Copyright
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Who Should Own Scientific Papers? Bachrach et al. Science 1998 September 4: 1459-1460 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459 EDITORIAL: The Rightness of Copyright. Bloom, F. Science 1998 September 4: 1451. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/281/5382/1451 On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 17:24:34 -0400, Mark Doyle do...@aps.org wrote: There are two approaches to copyright: The first is that the author cedes it to someone else who can then turn around an immediately grant back to the author many rights (as the APS currently does). The other is for the author to retain the copyright and just turn over a limited portion of the rights to a publisher (as argued in the Science article). Actually at this point it's useful to look at the legal definitions associated with copyright: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.shtml In particular, any exclusive license, which I believe is required for publishers to cover costs (through reader payments - ie. S/SL/PPV) as well as to avoid duplication issues most scientific publications are leary of (the same paper published in Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters?) is viewed legally as a transfer of copyright ownership. But it does not have to be a transfer of ALL the rights associated with copyright. These rights are summarized in section 106 of the law, and can be owned separately, or each one partially owned (with various conditions etc) by separate parties. The one right that publishers will most likely need exclusively (at least in part) is (3), to distribute copies [...] to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. ie. the right to sell copies of the work. The other rights can be granted through a license from the author without a transfer of ownership. It is also interesting to note that authors may revoke both exclusive and nonexclusive licenses 35-40 years later, and works enter the public domain generally after 75 years (or 50 years after the death of the author, if the author's life or death status has been registered with the copyright office) Anyway, the article in Science by the Transition from Paper group recommended a nonexclusive license which does not constitute transfer of any of the rights associated with copyright. I think there are a lot of potential dangers in going this far, and not just to the publishers. Let's just imagine a world where publishers had no legal means to prevent, and no monetary compensation for, duplicate publication by authors, or third parties publishing subsets (The Best of ...), duplicates, or supersets of articles from well-known journals. Is this what the authors of the article in question wanted? Perhaps members of the transition from paper group can respond on exactly what they meant? I think there is an optimal copyright position for both author and publisher where most of the rights are retained by the author. Some publishers may want more restrictive agreements, some less, and of course it will be up to authors to decide what they are willing to live with. But government mandates on the issue are unlikely to be helpful. Arthur Smith apsm...@aps.org
