From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 00:10:20 +0100

There are now a lot of OA journals with good impact factors and
academic authors in most fields if they can extract the money from
funders can in many if not most fields submit to one of them. Does
Kevin not agree? Of course there is the special case of Nature and
Science but there will soon be ELife. I cannot think of a niche which
does not have a number of OA journals.

I have not even mentioned all those subscription based learned society
journals on HighWire. There is choice.

 I do not accept incidentally that publishers seek to sue. I was in
publishing for many more years than Kevin has been a librarian and I
have never sued anyone

Sent from my iPad

On 22 May 2012, at 23:16, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 00:51:59 +0000
>
> I actually didn't think I was saying anything very controversial, but
> perhaps I was naive.
>
> It is also naive, or disingenuous, to suggest that authors can just
> "choose another publisher" if they don't like a contract. Academic
> authors do not choose publishers, they choose journals.  They may
> select the journal they want to publish in based on its disciplinary
> niche and impact, but never, at least in the journal world, because of
> which conglomerate publishes it (except, as in the case of the
> Elsevier boycott, negatively). And their choices are usually severely
> limited, especially if they work in a specialized field.rh
>
> I certainly do believe that there would be fewer enforcement actions
> over plagiarism/infringement if only the author's wishes, and not also
> a publisher's desire to protect a profit, were involved, but there
> would certainly be some.  And publishers could still send cease and
> desist letters, even as non-exclusive licensees, as Mr. Watkinson
> acknowledges.
>
> It is worth remembering that copyright is not an all-or-nothing
> proposition, but an infinitely divisible bundle of rights.  A
> well-drafted license could certainly apportion rights in a way that
> allowed for appropriate enforcement when mutually agreeable, as well
> as for downstream licensing and permissions.
>
> Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
> Director of Scholarly Communication
> Duke University
> Perkins Library
> Durham, NC 27708
>
>