COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/subvert.html

but before demonizing the University and its motivations in becoming the author's ally in copyright we need more concrete examples. Professor Ransdell wrote:

I still cannot see how this sort of pact with university administration can be said to be "being pursued implicitly by all researchers who submit their preprints and reprints to the Los Alamos Physics Preprint Archive".

Because refereed journal authors and their institutions share a common interest in having their research published; that's why they published in paper in the past; that's why they will publish online in the future. The institution, like the author, and unlike the publisher, wants only maximal PUBLIC access, not toll-gates and fire-walls. As an ally, the university is a much more substantial entity than any single author. An individual author might be intimidated about archiving a paper in xxx; a collective institutional policy would quell anxieties.

Moreover, in parallel with archiving centrally in http:xxx.lanl.gov it is always advisable also to archive on one's home institution's server; here too, the author shares interests (and resources, and visibility) with his institution.

I see both the Koonin/CalTech kind of initiative and the Bachrach et al. proposal in Science

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459

-- both concerned, as they are, with giving only limited copyright to the publisher -- as being motivated by the desire for full, free, public access to the research. Proprietary research (patentable findings, etc.) are in another category and would not have been publicly reported anyway.

The joint copyright could presumably be formalized specifically at the point of publication, and specifically as a counterweight against any attempt (by the publisher) to impose restrictions on public archiving (like the Elsevier restrictions). If there were some reason for not publishing at all, there would be no need for this pact, which I see as simply giving the author more clout.

What is the motivation for free-access denial on the part of an author's institution that you have in mind?

I should add that my point has nothing to do with royalty or fee-based writing or any of that, and that the distinction between refereed and unrefereed publication does not seem to me to have any special bearing on this.

But it ought to. For in the case of patents, royalties, fees, etc., other things are indeed at stake. (If the university had a share in a popular book's copyright, it could take part of the proceeds; that is certainly another kettle of fish.) With the freely given refereed serial literature, nothing like that is at stake.

The point I am trying to make could perhaps be otherwise put by saying that any pact with one's university that, in effect, gives them a power of constraint on publication of one's work -- and conjoint copyright would surely do that unless extraordinary precautions were taken in the legal formulation of it -- is just another Faustian pact, not to be entered into unless necessary, just as in the case of Faustian pacts with publishers.

You are right that a pact is a pact, but what makes it Faustian is conflict of interest and risk of losing one's soul. Perhaps I would understand better if you gave a plausible hypothetical scenario in which publication suppression would be the University's goal, contrary to the author's wishes. But remember to keep it in the refereed-journal domain otherwise it is moot insofar as this discussion is concerned.

There are many reasons why administrative officers of universities might come to believe that it is best if access to a given professor's work not be encouraged, including -- though by no means limited to -- their disapproval of its contents, regardless of whether it has been accepted for refereed publication or not.

We need to hear some of these reasons, to be able to judge whether this line of worry is a far-fetched one. In any case, a simple corrective that would make the xxx pro-publication spirit and motivation of the shared copyright explicit would be that the university's co-ownership is only formalized in the publication agreement/licensing itself (i.e., at point of publication), and that the author's right to archive publicly in perpetuo be a permanent component of all such agreements/licenses.

-- Stevan Harnad, Professor, Southampton University (posted 9/18, 9 a.m., E.D.T.)

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