From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 19:20:41 -0500

On the question of uniformity of language across journal contracts,
I'd be surprised if there is a publisher of multiple journals that
does not strive for such uniformity, which is important for reasons of
both efficiency and legality.  Having every author want to negotiate
special language and additional clauses (such as the "author's
addendum" that was pushed by various library and other academic
groups) adds hugely to publishing costs, and smaller publishers
especially would find it difficult to operate in this manner.

Turning over rights to a publisher is, again, important for both
practical and legal reasons. Practically, if every request for a
subsidiary rights license had to be sent to an author, the whole
system would become much more complicated and slow, and centralized
facilities like the CCC would not be able to provide the service they
do.  Also, if publishers received only nonexclusive rights, they would
have no legal standing to sue for infringements that occurred, and
authors would have to bear that burden alone.

I think Jim needs to start hanging out with some more smart publishers
instead . . .

Sandy Thatcher



At 7:35 PM -0400 4/1/14, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 17:07:42 -0400
>
> The response to my posting the Cambridge license for articles in
> Speculum puts me back to my early days renting apartments and reading
> leases.  It struck me forcibly that the best and most generous such
> document I read had still been written by a landlord and all the
> defaults tipped at the end of the day in his favor.  Granted that this
> CUP version has various generous things in it, I would still observe:
>
> 1.  It is very much a CUP boilerplate document, not journal-specific:
> I've looked (try your search engine) at four different journals in
> different fields published by CUP, and they all use this document,
> swapping in the name and address of the journal and otherwise making
> no changes I could detect.  There are other publishers who do better
> (certainly with respect to #3 below).  University presses and journals
> housed so completely in the academic community could aspire to be
> among them.
>
> 2.  I take the point that there are many typical elements to this
> form:  but that's a palliative rather than a positive argument at a
> time when we're trying to understand and advance authors' and readers'
> rights.
>
> 3.  End of the day, the process still transfers ownership of my
> property away from me.
>
> 4.  The actual form (the first page) is for me to sign, making
> commitments to them.  On the third and fourth pages, there are
> assertions of generosity by CUP, but those are not actually part of
> the form that will go in their files, and nobody signs for CUP.  The
> last lines contain the e-mail addresses of the current holders of the
> permissions jobs in UK and US, in case my "reuse is not covered by the
> above," but a year or five from now, those addresses will likely be
> dead.
>
> I may just hang out with too many smart librarians to know what's good
> for me . . .
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown U.