Re: copyright of science

My experience is that copyright doesn't intrude much into the workaday practice of science. The Texaco decision may muddy the waters, however.

Scientists widely use and reproduce one anothers tabulated data. Some scientists even post tables on the web or make them available through anonymous ftp. If someone else uses the tabulated results of my computations for some subsequent computation, I'm far more likely to consider it "success" than "infringement", as long as a correct citation was given.

The text of a journal article is copyrighted, of course. In my experience it's rare for journal articles to quote directly from other journal articles, though occasional brief quotations do occur.

Photocopying articles from library journals for one's individual files is usually considered fair use. The fact that library journals are widely copied from is perhaps the reason why some publishers charge a much higher rate for library subscriptions than for individual subscriptions. The Texaco case suggests that this interpretation of things may crumble in the future. To my mind, only the dissenting judge in the Texaco case truly understood the conditions scientists work under. Also, if the publisher in the Texaco case already charged the Texaco plant's library a library rate for subscription to those journals, I consider it unfair double dipping for them to try to exact license fees as well.

The figures in a journal article probably come under copyright, so copying figures would technically infringe, though depending on the circumstances copying a figure might be a fair use. But most authors probably prefer to do their own figures anyhow in order to give the article's graphics a consistent visual style (e.g. same font for labelling graph axes throghout.)

The author or publisher of a scientific book must of course deal with copyright in a more direct way, but I think much the same rules apply to the use of books as to the use of journal articles.

If I were in charge, the rules would be include: (1) an individual tabulated datum is as free as the air; (2) tables are free for the taking unless there is something original in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data. But there is also the consideration that being TOO original in selection, coordination, or arrangement might make the table difficult to interpret. (3) figures and text are protected and so may be copied within the limits of fair use; (4) mathematical equations should be considered uncopyrightable.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above doesn't constitute legal advice or establish a lawyer-client relationship. The above observations on scientific copyright stem from my experience in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Different conventions might apply in different fields of science.

Timothy Phillips
University of Oklahoma Department of Physics and Astronomy <phillips[_at_]mail.nhn.ou.edu> Received on Wed Apr 29 1998 - 17:49:31 GMT