There are multiple ways to achieve that same goal. If the society is willing to
give up copyright altogether, that offers one pathway.For authors to give
publishers unrestricted licenses is another. Both represent larger changes from
the present system than for the
publisher to give an unrestricted license to the author. But let's look one
step further: can any reader, anyone who downloads a publication,
distribute that download completely without restriction?
Just to stimulate...
Best to all,
Steve Berry
On Feb 20, 2010, at 2:16 PM, Marc Couture wrote:
Steve Berry wrote:
>
> if the journal that published the article wants to make back
issues available in some
> new format, e.g. some new electronic means, and the authors hold
the copyrights,
> then the journal must get permission from every author to put
their articles in the new
> format.
>
There is another solution, much more author-friendly: instead of
requiring transfer of the full copyright, then giving (back) the
author some specific permissions, the journal could simply require
to be granted a non-exclusive license to do what it wants, that is,
to publish the article in any format. But it appears the APS wants
more than "make back issues available in some new format" (see
below).
>
> ... APS now holds the copyrights but gives authors full permission
to distribute their
> articles with no constraint. This seems to achieve the situation
for authors that we'd like
> to see, yet does not constrain the publisher.
>
It's true that, according to the APS copyright agreement
(
http://forms.aps.org/author/copytrnsfr.pdf), authors may distribute
quite freely, in print and electronic formats, their "postprints",
or revised manuscripts. As publishers copyright agreements go, this
is quite generous.
But restrictions to the uses allowed the author do exist: for
instance, use must not involve a fee; derivative works must contain
less than 50% of the original and at least 10% of new content. This
means that an author could not publish a translation, or a slightly
modified version of his article, as a book chapter, without
permission from the publisher. I think this could also qualifiy as a
situation we (authors) would like to see.
Marc Couture
Received on Sun Feb 21 2010 - 18:00:37 GMT