Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy

[Stevan Harnad]

Nature, outpacing even the highly progressive American Physical Society
(APS), has once again led the planet's 20,000 peer-reviewed journals in
introducing the optimal and inevitable copyright policy for the online
era: http://makeashorterlink.com/?I31721703 (Many thanks to APS's Mark
Doyle for pointing this out!)

    "From 14 February 2002 Nature Publishing Group no longer requires
    authors to sign away their copyright. Instead, we are asking for an
    exclusive licence. In return, authors will be free to reuse their
    papers in any of their future printed work, and have the right to
    post a copy of the published paper on their own websites.

    In addition, authors - and the institutions in which they work -
    will be free to use their papers in course packs."

    Sample license form: http://npg.nature.com/pdf/05_news.pdf

It is now time for the other 20,000 journals to follow suit (and 
-- attention Liz Gadd! time for ROMEO to update its records:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/index.html

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02):

    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
                            or
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org 

See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess

the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
    http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm

the SPARC position paper on institutional repositories:
    http://www.unites.uqam.ca/src/sante.htm

the OAI site:
    http://www.openarchives.org

and the free OAI institutional archiving software site:
    http://www.eprints.org/