Albert Henderson dumps (though kindly) on my barrister's flourish of an
observation about copyright ownership practices in non-Law academic journals
with evidence and facts! The nerve of these scientists!!:
>>I don't know of a fresh statistic, but I
would estimate that non-profit 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. >>
In my original post I did not acknowledge the substantial role of non-profit professional societies in publishing scientific, engineering and medical articles (though I might also quibble that societies such as the AMA, like its much smaller equivalent the CMA, might themselves be, or at least represent, ". . . powerful, profit-making enterprises" -- quoting my original post).
That said, the number of faculty employed in these disciplines in the many US universities (apart from foreign academics who seek publication in these distinguished US journals), all of whom are under pressure to 'publish or perish', produce many? more significant contributions than can be published in the non-profit professional societies' journals. If the private enterprise journals are the substantial second tier of publication sites, that is where many good scholars and researchers in these disciplines have to go to get their work published.
Unlike Albert, who trumps my experience with his systematic experience of the scene, my understanding comes from a some incidental experiences -- which did make a large impact on me. I did volunteer work in my university as an advisor, to faculty across the university with concerns about tenure, promotion, grievances, etc. I can recall my astonishment early in this work when, in advising a "scientific" colleague, I realized that I had at least to ask myself the legal question: "can we lawfully make multiple copies of this scholar's numerous publications to submit to university committee members, referees, arbitrators, advisors, etc., etc., in the light of copyright ownership?" Rightly or wrongly, in analogous circumstances in advising a Law colleague who was much published in 'distinguished' Canadian and US law reviews, it would never even have occurred to me to ask the question.
Denis N. Magnusson
Emeritus Professor
Faculty of Law, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario Canada
K7L 2S6
613 542-4671
magnussd[_at_]post.queensu.ca
-----Original Message-----
From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
[mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Albert Henderson
Sent: August 18, 2005 3:29 PM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
Subject: [CNI-(C)] 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>
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