May 22, 2008

Complaints Force Company to Retreat From Selling Scholarly Papers Online

Surprised. Disappointed. Violated.

Those are some of the words that scholars have used over the past few days when told that their work was being sold online without their knowledge. The scholarly papers and presentations have been available for a fee through All Academic, a Web site hired by academic associations to handle submissions for conferences.

All Academic doesn’t just provide a database service, however. In some cases, it also claims the right to sell papers presented at those meetings online. But now, following complaints by professors, the company says it will discontinue the practice.

“I’m clearly sorry that people weren’t aware that we were charging to defray some of the cost,” said Steve Stolp, one of All Academic’s founders.

From the beginning, according to Mr. Stolp, scholars have had the option not to make their papers available. But more than a dozen scholars contacted by The Chronicle said they had no idea their papers were being sold.

And many, like Matthew B. Johnson, an associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York, were not happy about it. A paper Mr. Johnson co-wrote was presented at last year’s meeting of the American Society of Criminology and, until this week, was available for sale on All Academic.

“I’m troubled by that,” he said. “I’ve been misled. I certainly wouldn’t have given permission if I had known about it.”

One problem, scholars say, is that they don’t receive royalties from the sale of their papers. In addition, there is concern that if the paper is published online, that may interfere with later submission to a journal.

“The fact that, without my knowledge, these papers are not only being made available to the public, but are done so at a price is disturbing to say the least,” Richard N. Pitt, an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, wrote in an e-mail message.

The company charges customers $7 for the first paper they buy and $3 for each additional paper. The fee is an attempt, Mr. Stolp said, to cover storage and bandwith costs. If scholars want their papers taken off the Web site entirely, he said they should contact the company. “We didn’t know that people didn’t know and were upset by it,” he said. “We are trying to create a place where scholars can come and do research.”

All Academic decided on Wednesday to stop selling papers after a message was posted on the Communication, Research and Theory Network e-mail list. The message was from Timothy R. Levine, a professor of communication at Michigan State University who found one of his papers on the site. Mr. Levine said he had talked to about 20 colleagues, none of whom knew that their papers were being offered for sale. —Thomas Bartlett

Comments

1. The solution (without involving lawyers) is simple: When invited to download one’s paper onto the conference website, don’t.

   — Gustave    May 22, 04:14 PM    #

2. If authors are unwilling to make their conference talks available, then they should take them off their CVs. Most of the top reputable researchers provide the ppt slides to interested parties in the audience. It should be an ethics violation to not do so. Just like providing materials so that people can verify your work in a published paper, one should provide one’s slides after a public presentation so that one can verify and substantiate or refutes one claims. Of course, if ALL scholarly societies require this of all authors who present at conferences, we will get a lot less speculation, and more rigorous science, which will really help everyone.

   — Karl    May 22, 04:46 PM    #

3. What is at issue here is not the fear of faculty to make their work available for the general public. As noted in Dr. Levine’s post, this practice was taking place outside the awareness of the author(s). All Academic is used as a portal to help in the submission process for organizational that program large conferences. If you do not submit through the portal the manuscript/presentation cannot be considered. As a result, author(s) have been unaware of how All Academic has been using their submissions after the formal review process has unfolded.

   — pt    May 22, 04:56 PM    #

4. It’s a fairly ambitious leap of logic to equate declining to post one’s conference papers on the Internet—where, as this case shows, one loses all control over one’s intellectual property—with adopting the evidentiary standards of Carol Gilligan. Anyone who wants a copy of my conference presentations can obtain one at any time, and at no cost to him- or herself, by the old-fashioned and courteous method of dropping me a line and asking for it.

   — Gustave    May 22, 06:31 PM    #

5. Wake up, scholars! You have given away your rights to your papers to commercial journal publishers for decades. How is this situation different? Then after you sign away your rights, your institution, through its subscriptions, buys your work back, often at exorbitant prices. And then if you want to use one of your articles in a course pack for recurrent reserve readings, your library pays fees so you can use YOUR work. The responsibility belongs to authors to make sure that their rights (and the ability of others to obtain access to their work) have a place in the scholarly communication and dissemination process. Want to know how? Your librarians can help fill you in on efforts to bring about constructive change. Or just search the Chronicle Web site for “Peter Suber” and Google his name and you’ll have a good start. Scholars have the power to make changes, but only if they exercise that power collectively and individually will that change occur.

   — Jim    May 23, 08:16 AM    #

6. In response to #5, the situation is clearly different from publishing in journals because here, it seems evident, no author signed anything to transfer any rights to All Academic to sell copies of their papers. That is clearly illegal activity, and All Academic could be sued for copyright infringement by any of these authors, unless All Aacedmic can prove that the authors signed a written agreement with their societies transferring rights to the societies, which in turn had an agreement with All Academic to make the papers available in this manner.

   — Sandy Thatcher    May 23, 04:40 PM    #

7. Most researchers want to disseminate the results of their research. There is little point to academic research otherwise. But, that is not what this is about. At issue is a private company who reached an agreement with professional academic associations to sell individual researcher’s intellectual property for profit without the author’s knowledge much less their consent. At least the journals are up front in extorting copyright. I do not like it that work paid for by my university is being sold back to my institution at exorbitant prices, but at least journals get my permission. What allacademic was doing was clearly deceptive and possibly illegal. Most disturbing though is the complicity of the professional associations who made the agreements and hid that information from their members. Shame on them.

   — Tim Levine    May 27, 02:29 PM    #

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