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

> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 5:32 PM -0400 5/15/12, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>> From: Bernard Rentier - IMAP <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 08:32:32 +0200
>>
>> To answer Alicia Wise's query, 6 proposals of positive things from
>> publishers that should be encouraged :
>>
>> Allow systematically and under no condition and at no cost depositing
>> the peer-reviewed postprint - either the author's refereed, revised
>> final draft or - even better for the Publishers publicity - the
>> publisher's version of record in the author's institutional
>> repository.
>>
>> Remove from authors' contracts the need to sign away their rights and
>> transform it into a "non exclusive license" of their rights.
>>
>> Agree that by default, part of the rights on an article belong to the
>> author's Institution if public and/or to the Funding organization, if
>> public.
>>
>> Reduce significantly (or at least freeze for 5 years) the purchasing
>> cost of periodicals, then increase at the real inflation rate,
>> officially measured in Western countries (1-3 % per year).
>>
>> Reduce significantly the number of periodical titles published, aiming
>> for excellence and getting rid of the mediocre title which are bundled
>> in Elsevier's "Big Deals" and similar "deals" by other publishers.
>> This would reduce their monopolistic position.
>>
>> Reward Institutions for the work provided by reviewers, editors andŠ
>> authors, either directly or indirectly through lower subscription
>> costs.
>>
>> Bernard Rentier