Re: Two bites at the cherry?

Mike Lean <m.lean[_at_]qut.edu.au> wrote:
>
> I came across a situation recently which has me wondering. Our
> university has a number of specialist centres, and apparently it is
> customary for academics in relevant fields to submit papers to the
> centres for refereeing purposes. The centre I have been talking to
> publishes the papers as part of this process, and has quite a backlist
> of them for sale. They tell me that there is a steady demand for even
> the very old ones. They have expressed some concerns that, once the
> refereeing process is over, their authors submit the papers to journals
> for publication, and those that are accepted then create a situation
> where there are two published versions at the same time.
>
> No assignment of copyright is made to the centre, although persons
> submitting papers are aware of what the centre does with them. The
> centre suspects that authors don't make the journal publishers aware of
> the previous publication.
>
> Given that most journal publishers require total assignment of copyright
> before publication, where does that leave the centre? Does the fact that
> they published first help?

Mike,

You need to look closely at the rights granted to the Centre. If those rights are not supported by consideration or there is nothing to support the use of those materials for multiple occurances you may not be able to publish in the future. Previous publication which was clearly authorised (assuming you were authorised by the owner at the time) is another question.

Regards,
Steve White.

White SW Computer Law
Intellectual Property and Information Technology Lawyers Level 24, 459 Collins Street, Melbourne, VICTORIA 3000 AUSTRALIA Telephone: +61 3 9629 3709 Facsimile: +61 3 9629 3217 mailto:wcl[_at_]computerlaw.com.au
Web Site: http://www.computerlaw.com.au/ Received on Mon Apr 27 1998 - 03:38:50 GMT