2008/1/5, Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:34:24 -0500
> From: Gavin Baker <gavin -- gavinbaker.com>
> > Even the benefits of the NIH's excellent decision to mandate immediate
> > deposit -- thereby offloading the 12-month embargo onto the date of
> > Open-Access-setting rather than the date of the deposit itself -- are
> > lost if the deposit is required to be made directly in PubMed Central,
> > rather than in each author's own Institutional Repository (and thence
> > harvested to PubMed Central): With direct IR deposit, authors can use
> > their own IR's "email eprint request" button to fulfill would-be users'
> > access needs during any embargo).
> > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
>
> If this feature doesn't currently exist in PMC, perhaps it could be
> suggested to PMC's maintainers.
(1) Email eprint request buttons are great.
(2) Fair use allows in the US that a scholar communicates an eprint to
a would-be user.
(3) German copyright law doesn't allow to give away a protected text
to a person to which no personal relationship exists before the
contact. "The communication of a work shall be deemed public if it is
intended for a plurality of persons, unless such persons form a
clearly defined group and are connected by personal relationship with
each other or with the organizer." If German authors have given
exclusive rights to the publisher they have according the law no right
to allow mailing an eprint to a person with whom they haven't close
contacts before.
(4) It is common custom that German scholars doesn't care for this
legal barrier. "Und das ist gut so".
Klaus Graf
Received on Sat Jan 05 2008 - 17:37:38 GMT