On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Christopher D. Green wrote:
> Please explain this to me one more time. How can we self-archive our
> published papers without breaking our legal contracts with the papers'
> publishers, and without risking being sued by them for breach of contract?
> (Of course, we may be willing to do these things, but your statement seems
> to suggest that we can self-archive without taking such risks.)
There are 22 postings about this on:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
(the 2nd 14 unfortunately on a variant subject-header):
Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts (8 messages)
Legal ways around copyright for one own's giveway texts (14 messages)
See also:
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/help/copyright.html
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.
(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.
(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.
(Ask me about "embargos" and the "Ingelfinger Rule" separately: they
are not even matters of copyright and legality.)
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. (A book author or a CD recording artist or a commercial
software writer would never put his intellectual property up on the
Web, free for all before publishing it.)
The refereed research literature was always an anomaly in this respect;
in the Gutenberg era there was no way to resolve that anomaly; in the
PostGutenberg era there is.
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Stevan Harnad harnad at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad at princeton.edu
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of providing free
access to the refereed journal literature is available at the American
Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
You may join the list at the site above.
Discussion can be posted to:
september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org
