From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 00:21:05 -0500

It is not universally true that revenues from reprint and other
subsidiary rights sales are not shared with authors of journal
articles.  In this respect, at Penn State University Press, we treated
our journal authors in the same way as we treated our book authors,
sharing income from most subsidiary rights 50/50. We are not the only
publisher that pursued this practice either. It is not clear to me why
most publishers decided not to treat journal and book authors the same
way. Perhaps some other publisher can explain the rationale for the
difference in treatment.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:56:39 +0100
>
> I have been away and only just seen this David. Yes of course you are being
> mischievous and yes it is a fair point and yes reprint revenue rarely goes
> to authors. As far as I can remember I have never published a journal where
> a share of this income goes to authors but it does quite frequently go to
> learned society owners. It is usually part of the partnership deal.
>
> However as you know from your time in publishing that publishers do take a
> lot of interest in what academics want because they did think they were
> dependent on the views of academics as authors. If authors as editors,
> reviewers or contributors rejected subscription based journals the journals
> would fold. The assumption was (as you will recall) that academics would
> vote by taking their articles elsewhere - to open access journals. Now they
> have realised that they are in large part dependent on funders of research.
> The funders of research know what they do is right (listen to Wellcome
> speakers) and they could not care less whether the people who do the
> research they fund want. They hold the money.
>
> Anthony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 22:44:31 +0100
>
> As Anthony suspects, I was being a little mischievous.  But what interests
> me is that a publisher should ask authors for their views on the potential
> exploitation of their work for commercial gain, without asking for their
> views on the actual exploitation that is already taking place, managed by
> the publisher.  And Taylor & Francis say that the results of the survey have
> influenced their licensing decisions - so they have gone for a non-commecial
> license for open access papers as authors don't like commercial exploitation
> while continuing to retain the right to commercially exploit papers from
> authors who sign over copyright.  This looks like authors are being listened
> to slightly selectively.
>
> (As an aside, it is one of the many oddities of the journal publishing
> market that reprint sales are viewed (almost always) as exclusively
> publisher revenues and not author revenues.)
>
> David