Re: Who Should Own Scientific Papers?

On Fri, Sep 25, 1998, Timothy Arnold-Moore <tja[_at_]mds.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Laurie Urquiaga <urquiagal[_at_]lawgate.byu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Bert Boyce <lsboyc[_at_]lsuvm.sncc.lsu.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > This is a fairly long article which those not interested in the
> > > "Who should own scientific papers" thread may wish to delete at
> > > once. However, it is important in that it shows the feelings of
> > > an academic administrator in a significant position who can affect
> > > academic thinking on copyright policy.
> >
> > Personally, I'm glad to see some action on an idea whose time appears
> > to be coming. (I even suggested to my library administration that a
> > copy of http://www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/copyright/trln.txt be
> > forwarded on the to university administration for consideration.
> >
> > As a librarian dealing with the reality of having to (re)purchase
> > research which is "subsidized" in the first place by library
> > collections, I do think the academic publishing model is seriously
> > out of whack. At this point, I'm not sure that it shouldn't be
> > reworked entirely.
> >
> > p.s. While catching up with the debate from last week, the following
> > declaration caught my eye: <<No association that I know of runs its
> > publishing program in the red on purpose.>>
> >
> > Allow me to broaden your circle :-) While perhaps no commercial
> > publisher would do so, non-commercial publishers do it all the time.
> > For example, the _BYU Law Review_ and the other legal journals we
> > publish are always published 'at a loss' to the school (I might even
> > venture to guess that NO law review operates in the black). In fact,
> > new subscriptions are not solicited because they would cost us money.
> > We publish for other reasons than generating income.
>
> This raises a point where I think the legal academic community are
> far ahead of the scientific community. In the scientific community
> it is quite rare for a University to sponsor or publish a particular
> journal. Most are published by professional societies or commercial
> publishing companies. In law a good percentage of the papers are
> published in University Law Reviews. Many law libraries have mutual
> arrangements by which they exchange each others Law Reviews and many
> are now available in full for free on the Web. Its much cheaper for
> a law school to maintain a Web repository than to ship paper around.
> The costs of preparing the papers are similar no matter what format
> you deliver in (paper or Web) and, since most law schools maintain a
> web site anyway, the only additional cost is the cost of the extra
> disk space on their server.
>
> If Universities would start to publish scientific journals in the
> same way, they would short circuit the commercial publishers, who reap
> exhorbitant profits essentially for doing no more than brokering the
> arrangements between academic authors, academic editors (who may or
> may not be paid), academic peer reviewers (often arranged by the
> editors rather than the publisher), printers and distributors. Since
> the academics are doing most of the work already, authoring, reviewing,
> and (often) editing, and since they should know the people in their
> field far better than a publisher, why do we need publishers for
> academic papers?

But aren't many journals connected with universities? What about Semiotica, published by Mouton deGruyter? The journal offices are maintained in the University of Indiana campus where the Editor-in-Chief, Thomas Sebeok, works.

Michael A Scarpitti
Assistant Editor
Materials Evaluation
(800) 222-2768 X207
(614) 274-6003 X207
e-mail mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org Received on Fri Sep 25 1998 - 13:11:11 GMT