Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

On Sun, 27 Sep 1998, Bernard Katz <bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca> wrote:
>
> I would suggest that there is a distinct difference between *journal*
> publication in the humanities, social sciences and sciences than there
> is in other areas of periodical publication -- I mean theat scholars
> and researchers would like the widest possible dissemination of their
> papers and couldn't care the least about other folks copying them. In
> fact they are happy to have this happen! But the distribution system
> for STM&S (scientific, technical, medical & scholarly) journals has become
> more and more limited to fewer and fewer commercial publishers (at least
> in the STM fields).

I agree. Robert K. Merton established pretty well that recognition is a major motivation for all that a scientist does. One major step in recognition, however, is attracting the investment of a publisher who will elevate a researcher and his/her work. "Dissemination" means "recognition" and not just producing and distributing. Without copyright as the foundation for publication, including investments made by nonprofit associations, I suggest no good can come ....

> So why not simply move away from paper dissemination and use the
> internet - with the same checks and balances of peer review, etc.?
> Indeed this has already started to happen and will continue apace.
> Some fields of study are more advanced (eg. mathematics) than others,
> but the increases in cost of paper journals -- WHATEVER the cause --
> together with restrictions on library aquisition increases (here I
> do agree with Mr. Henderson) has resulted in a real crisis. Mr.
> Henderson has already agreed that photocopying "in house" (ie. inside
> the libraries) is not what he sees as the base culprit -- it's the
> Interlibrary Loan photocopying that he earmarks as no.1 bad activity
> w.r.t. the photocopy machine.
>
> Well, I suggest that paper publishing will go the way of the dodo well
> before copyright law drops all the "free" copying that comes with fair
> use (or fair dealing in jurisdictions other than the U.S. - in those
> countries whose copyright law derives from that of the U.K., that is).
> As Karsten Self indicated, scholars really do not need the commercial
> publishers who have been cranking up the costs (again, for whatever
> reasons). The *authors* of the STM&S papers WANT the dissemination to
> be as widespread and freely available as possible.
>
> Would Mr. Henderson agree that for these authors' works there is every
> reason to move away from paper and get into e-publishing with very free
> and open use of the texts, once they are refereed? Shouldn't the
> desire of these authors for this type of dissemination be honoured?

Believe me I have no problem with the technology per se. To paraphrase one of my favorite actors, "technology doesn't kill publishing, people kill publishing." The universities that provide the core market for research publishers jumped the gun and choked the market 30 years before the economies seen in electronic publishing were within reach.

I doubt most publishers would fuss about photocopying if it were not closely associated with the massive cancellation of subscriptions.

Even before passage of the current copyright act, but well after the wide availability of plain paper Xerox photocopiers, Fry and White observed that library budgets failed to rise at the same rate as their host institutions, that declining percentages of libraries' budgets were allocated to collection development, and that libraries were not keeping up with the expansion of publications. Publishers were discouraged from underwriting research publications. [Fry, Bernard M., and Herbert S. White. 1975. Economics and Interaction of the Publisher-  Relationship in the Production and Use of Scholarly and Research Journals. Washington DC: National Science Foundation.]

The transition from paper to electronic demands a period when both media must be produced. The technology is not even quite ready, not fully tested by some other industry segment. The transition period costs more, both to universities and to publishers who must experiment.

I have a real concern with the vision of Steven Harnad, who preaches author page charges will support electronic publishing. (I take it this means libraries are out of his picture of the future. No wonder provost drool.) The reality that my experience suggests is that author page charges are being phased out by many of the publishers that have used them.

I have a more basic concern with universities that have sought ways to evade their responsibility to conserve and disseminate new knowedge. If that is not what they want to do, they should come clean and explain it forthrightly -- not sneak about with misleading statements. Here the Pew Higher Education Roundtable states, "For two decades the leaders of America's univerisities and colleges have sought relief from the growing costs of providing access to an ever-expanding volume of scholarly output." [Policy Perspectives 7,4 March 1998] While acknowledging an imbalance between library budgets and research growth, the report focuses on publishers' prices and profits, misstates the history of commercial publishing, and talks about regaining the initiative through control of copyrights and decoupling publication from the tenure process. Why not restore balance to library / research financial growth?

Most important, most administrative visions of the application of new technology fail to take on the costs sustained by the reader (including the value of time reading). Readers' costs exceed those of authors, publishers, and libraries in 1977 [Donald W. King et al. SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS IN THE U.S. Dowden Hutchinson Ross. 1981 p. 220]:

     12% Authors 
     14% Publishers 
     10% Libraries and (A&I) secondary organizations  
     64% Users 

As I understand it, the proposal aims to shift costs from libraries and publishers to authors and users. The distribution would become something like:

     25% authors
     75% readers!

Authors and readers who lacked financial capacity to meet threshhold costs would be out of luck.

On the other hand, administrators of research universities would be able to divvy up the $1.5 billion that they now spend on libraries to pay for new administrative solutions.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Mon Sep 28 1998 - 23:38:17 GMT