The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0291 Wednesday, 14 May 2008
[1] From: John Briggs <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 18:21:05 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 19.0286 A Problem of Access
[2] From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 13:33:23 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 19.0286 A Problem of Access
[3] From: Daniel Traister <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 13:44:36 -0400
Subj: A Problem of Access
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 18:21:05 +0100
Subject: 19.0286 A Problem of Access
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0286 A Problem of Access
Gabriel Egan wrote:
>What can those involved in journal publishing do right now?
>One useful step is to persuade publishers to cease demanding
>that journal contributors sign over their copy-right to the
>publisher,
That should really only be an American problem. (US copyright law
doesn't recognise a copyright in the typographical arrangement, which is
the publisher's copyright in an edition. Having said that, American
publishers and authors seem to regard copyright as only applying to
specific editions anyway, so it may amount to the same thing.) By the
way, there is no hyphen in "copyright".
>and instead have the contributor give the publisher the
>exclusive right to publish. (Later, we can lobby for this
>being a non-exclusive right.)
No, what you should grant are "First serial rights".
John Briggs
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 13:33:23 -0400
Subject: 19.0286 A Problem of Access
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0286 A Problem of Access
>One useful step is to persuade publishers to cease
>demanding that journal contributors sign over their
>copy-right to the publisher, and instead have the
>contributor give the publisher the exclusive right to
>publish.
Huh? A copyright *is* the exclusive right to publish. I suspect that
what Gabriel is getting at is that the journal publisher should not
greedily insist on owning all the rights to exploit an article but
should be able to protect itself from having paid for the right to
publish it in its journal only to find that the author also licensed the
same piece to a competing journal. If that is what he meant, I concur
wholeheartedly. In fact, that is the practice in this country. Very few
periodicals insist on owning, for example, the right to make a motion
picture, a derivative work, or even a book length treatment of an
article when all it has paid for is the right to publish it in its
periodical. I am surprised that UK publishers (including it appears the
ones to whom Gabriel is under contract) are more heavy handed.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Daniel Traister <
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Date: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 13:44:36 -0400
Subject: A Problem of Access
Gabriel Egan writes about "persuad[ing] . . . publishers to cease
demanding that journal contributors sign over their copy-right to the
publisher, and instead have the contributor give the publisher the
exclusive right to publish. (Later, we can lobby for this being a
non-exclusive right.) I'm pleased to report that at the journal
_Shakespeare_ we convinced Taylor and Francis of this, and no
contributor is asked to give away her copy-right."
Some readers of SHAKSPER may not see the point of Mr. Egan's response.
Here is one part of what I take to be his point.
Already a number of European and American educational institutions,
their libraries, and some professional societies, have mounted what are
called "institutional repositories."
IRs make institutionally-produced research freely available in Google-
or otherwise-searchable formats that search engines can find, index, and
permit individuals to read and download. (Professional organizations do
the same for materials in the area of their specialization.) My own
place has such an IR. Others, do, as well. A Google search for
institutional repositories will turn up some basic information for
anyone to whom this is an unfamiliar idea (although some academics may
be surprised to discover their own institutions already doing such a thing).
The "exclusive right" to publish, which Mr. Egan notes as an issue for
future negotiation, is something that can be worked around even at
present. If "pre-prints," "post-prints," non-pdf-formatted versions, and
several other possibilities are excluded from the "publication right"
authors now (too routinely) sign away, then even if publishers retain
the "exclusive" right to publish, other means of making the same
material widely and freely accessible can be found. And have been.
It is not always easy to convince authors to (as it were) give it away.
But Mr. Weiss is not the only person who asks such questions, Mr. Heller
not the only person affected by the generally restrictive answers such
questions usually elicit. And restrictiveness is increasingly not the
only answer they get. Harvard University has adopted a mandate that
*assumes* that all institutionally-produced research will be freely
accessible. Authors must specially opt *out*; otherwise they are assumed
to have opted *in*. And the (US) NIH requires publicly- (that is, NIH-)
funded research to be made publicly accessible: opting out is not an
option.
We live in an era when, increasingly, "intellectual products" are
privatized and sold for a profit. It is *not* their actual producers who
do this but rather those who take them and re-sell them to the very
institutions that pay the salaries of their "producers" -- the faculty
who write the articles and books that get sold back to the libraries at
the institutions that employ their writers.
For monographs, this was rarely a problem; monographs are (relatively)
inexpensive. For journals, price has become an increasingly difficult
issue -- more so in the sciences than in the humanities, but price
pressures in humanities journals are increasing, too. For digital
products, however, price pressures are severe. The costs for such
products in hardware, software, systems staff, training, and ongoing
access ("subscription") fees are extraordinary. Smaller institutions
often find them prohibitive; but even large institutions may find them
severe.
Efforts that, like IRs, try to make research publicly and freely
accessible need knowledgeable support and participation from faculty
acting within their own institutions and their professional organizations.
For those who worry that IRs would result in a considerable loss of the
royalty income their work on Shakespeare currently brings in,
congratulations may be in order. For the majority of those whose
scholarship is rarely remunerative in a direct way, exploration of IRs
at their own institutions -- not as an alternative to traditional
publication forms, but as a supplement to it, *and* a supplement that
uses current text dissemination technologies in ways that print does not
always do -- might be instructive.
Daniel Traister
University of Pennsylvania
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
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