From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 08:34:35 +0100

Moral rights exist everywhere. That's why they are 'moral' rights.
They may not be called that, or waived, or legally covered outside
copyright.

But aside from that, the rule of which country applies? The author's
or the publisher's? And if the author's, in case there are more than
one author, each from a different country, which author's country? And
if the publisher's, the country of the publisher's incorporation? Or
of the subsidiary who publishes the journal? Or, for a truly
international publisher, the country where it pays most of its
corporate taxes?

Can an author from, say, France, even legally waive his moral rights
if he publishes his article in an English journal the publisher of
which requests such a waiver?

Having different rules in different countries doesn't make it easier
for authors to realise what they sign away.

Jan Velterop


On 20 May 2012, at 23:49, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 16:28:43 +0100
>
> Jan says 'moral rights are not transferable'
>
> Not entirely true.  In the UK some (though not all) MRs can be waived, and I
> think some publishers do ask authors to do so.  In most of Europe they
> can't.  In the USA they don't even exist
>
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 17 May 2012 11:26:24 +0100
>
> These are indeed excellent questions, going to the core of the business. My
> comments interleaved.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> On 16 May 2012, at 03:51, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
>
>> I have no ax to grind in this matter, but would ask the following
> questions:
>>
>> 1) If authors only give nonexclusive rights to publishers, publishers
>> will then not have legal standing to sue for infringement, and it will
>> be the individual author's responsibility to take action and pay all
>> expenses pertaining thereto. Is that a burden authors wish to bear?
>> (There are at least some kinds of infringement that authors need to be
>> concerned about, to protect the integrity of their work.)
>
> If we limit this question to journal articles, I wonder how many authors
> worry about copyright infringement at all. My guess would be:
> close to nil. So it won't be a burden to bear. That is not to say that they
> wouldn't care about the integrity of their work and things like plagiarism.
> But those are moral rights matters, not copyright matters, and moral rights
> are not transferable.
>
>> 2) What does "by default" mean? Copyright law defines the owner of
> copyright to be the author (or, in the case of a work made for hire, the
> employer). There can be no "default" giving any other parties joint
> ownership unless a specific written agreement is signed to that effect.
>
> This would indeed require a fundamental change of copyright, globally, of
> course, due to the global nature of science.
>
>> 3) If subscription costs are held flat for five years, does that mean
>> that journals cannot expand in length over that period of time? (I
>> understand that the increase in size of journals is one of the factors
>> that has contributed to driving up subscription prices.)
>
> I guess that for some larger publishers the buffer of very comfortable
> profit levels would allow - at the expense of these profit levels - journals
> expansion for a relatively short period (I reckon 5 years is short). But
> this issue lays bare the fundamental difficulty of a subscription system for
> ever-expanding scholarly needs to publish (although in theory growth must
> tail off at one point, but no signs of that yet). The imperative to publish
> is much stronger than the imperative to read. It's primarily
> 'publish-or-perish' and much less 'read-or-rot'. Similarly, the imperative
> to be read/cited is much stronger than the imperative to receive yet more
> papers to read.
> Publishing in scholarly journals has a lot of characteristics in common with
> advertising. The author 'advertises' his/her scientific prowess and vies for
> attention. (Indeed, some journals apparently say that the articles in them
> are advertisements, though that is a ploy to qualify for lower postal rates,
> I understand.) An author-side paid, open access system relates much more to
> the fundamental drivers of scholarly publishing than a subscription system,
> now that the technological environment is ripe for it (the internet).
>
>> 4) How is the "excellence" of a journal to be assessed? Are journals
> reviewed anywhere (except, occasionally, in the Times Higher Education
> Supplement)? Who is to tell a publisher which journals to drop?
>
> This is an issue, indeed. Personally I don't think it is excellence that
> needs to be established, but rather scientific robustness (in the way that
> PLoS One is doing) and therefore some measure of credibility.
> If there is excellence, it's more likely a quality of an individual article
> than of a journal. People are thinking about criteria:
> http://www.aup.nl/do.php?a=show_visitor_nieuws&item=3538