Re: "University as author?"

on 17 Aug 2005 "Denis N. Magnusson" <magnussd[_at_]post.queensu.ca> wrote:

[snip]

> The comment to which Terry replied may have been stimulated more by journal
> policies outside Law. In scientific, engineering and medical disciplines,
> in particular, the leading journals are not university-student projects
> (that model is almost unique to the Law discipline and then only in the U.S.
> and Canada), but are commercial projects of large, powerful, profit-making
> enterprises.

	I don't know of a fresh statistic, but I 
	would estimate that nonprofit associations 
	such as FASEB, AMA, IEEE, and AIP dominate 
	publication of primary scitech research in the US. 
	Commercial firms probably dominate secondary 
	publication -- review articles, comments, notes, 
	translations -- and rapid 'letters' journals. 
	Commercial firms in Europe firmly established 
	themselves as primary publishers before 1945, 
	but hardy to the exclusion of associations. 

	The associations generally believe that their
	institutional subscriptions support the front 
	end costs, enabling them to provide journals
	at marginal cost to members. Profits from 
	publishing provide funds for other educational 
	activities as well as building surpluses of
	cash that can be invested. Associations may 
	further subsidize their profits by charging 
	'page charges' which authors pay with grants 
	and by paying no taxes.

> The profit potential in controlling accessing to leading
> articles in engineering, science and medicine is considerable. A price
> which an academic author(s) must pay, (in those disciplines the typical
> model is of multiple authors of the same piece) for having a piece published
> in one of those non-Law disciplines' "leading" (_re_ tenure, promotion and
> Nobel prizes) journals may often be to sign over much more of the authors'
> copyright than is common in the U.S. Law-discipline model (& Canadian
> Law-discipline model -- the only other country to adopt the U.S. model in
> Law, I believe).

	International collaboration by science and 
	engineering authors runs around 18 percent 
	of all papers, according to the US National 
	Science Board. Publishers' contracts obviously 
	must satisfy the lowest common legal denominator.

	Best wishes,

Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 Contributor HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (ABC-CLIO 2002) <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Thu Aug 18 2005 - 23:29:15 GMT