Re: Copyright and Research: A Devastating Critique

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 14:23:53 +0100 (BST)

On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Harold Thimbleby wrote:

> A landmark publication... in which Andrew Adams says academics do their
> work for free. Hmm.

At the risk of prolonging this topic -- not long ago unceremoniously
voted off this list -- I cannot but caution careful reading: All Adams
says (and quite correctly) is that the authors of peer-reviewed research
journal/conference articles, unlike the authors of, say, books, give
away those writings rather than selling them for royalty or fee. No
one said they were not employed and funded to do the research. But
since their employment and funding is contingent ("publish or perish")
on both the publication and -- increasingly -- the uptake, usage and
impact of their research, they, quite naturally, do not wish to put up
any needless access-barriers to their potential research impact. That is
why they mailed reprints to reprint-requesters in paper days, and that
is why many do (and all should) self-archive those papers, free for all,
in their OA Institutional Repositories, in today's online era. And that
is why their employers and funders should mandate that they all do so.

QED

> At 12:32 pm +0100 2/10/07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >
> > Andrew Adams (2007) has written a powerful, relentless and devastating
> > critique of Kevin Taylor's (2007) "Copyright and research: an academic
> > publisher's perspective." Adams cites other archivangelists in support
> > of
> > his position, but this lucid, timely, rigorous and compelling synthesis
> > is entirely his own. It will be seen and cited as a landmark in the
> > research community's delayed but inexorable transition to Open Access.
> >
> > Taylor, K. (2007) Copyright and research:
> > an academic publisher's perspective. SCRIPT-ed 4(2) 233-236
> > http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-2/taylor.asp
> >
> > Adams, Andrew A, (2007) Copyright and research:
> > an archivangelist's perspective 4(3) SCRIPT-ed 285
> > http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/adams.asp
>
> --
> Prof. Harold Thimbleby
> http://www.cs.swansea.ac.uk/~csharold
>
Received on Tue Oct 02 2007 - 14:26:06 BST

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