From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2016 01:01:03 -0600

My overall position is actually relatively simple: I believe that OA
is ultimately the most desirable future for scholarly publishing, but
until we can succeed in working out business models that are
sustainable in that new environment, I believe that copyright
protection is essential to maintaining the viability and integrity of
the traditional publishing model. If copyright is eroded too much
under present circumstances, university presses will not survive long
enough to become OA publishers. So, I'm for copyright now, but expect
its role to become less important for publishers (if not authors, who
will still need to be concerned about protecting the integrity of
their work) as we move into an OA future.

Sandy Thatcher



> From: Marcus A Banks <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 21:57:14 +0000
>
> Hello Sandy. Thank you for pointing me to your useful and valuable article.
>
> I do not disagree that the changes I am proposing would be deeply
> disruptive to established publishing practices (and to library
> practices as well, for that matter).
>
> But I would say that your effective advocacy of the publisher's
> prerogatives assumes that publication business models developed prior
> to the Web should carry over indefinitely into a post-Web era. Like
> many others I believe we are in a period of epochal change for
> academic libraries and scholarly publishers, which will take decades
> to sort itself out. And unlike some other open access advocates I feel
> that publishers will always have a valuable role in this sorting out.
>
> We part ways on whether publishers will indefinitely require
> copyright, as the entire copyright regime assumes that access to
> content must be controlled. I think that publishers 50 years from now
> will be thriving in other ways.
>
> For more, please see this article -- particularly the "Opportunities
> Ahead" section:
>
> http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0018.306?view=text;rgn=main
>
> Marcus Banks
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 22:54:11 -0600
>
> I guess the best way for me to reply is to refer you to my article
> titled "On the Author's Addendum," which originally appeared in
> Against the Grain (June 2008):
>
> https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/files/9880vr511.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>>  From: Marcus A Banks <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 22:45:05 +0000
>>
>>  Sandy, I am referring to the articles published in bioscience journals
>>  like Science or Cell, for which the authors transfer their copyright
>>  as a condition of publication.
>>
>>  Obviously such a transfer grants a publisher legal entitlement to
>>  copyright, but we could see a different scenario in which authors
>>  retain their copyright and license publication.
>>
>>  In the current scenario the individual(s) who do the intellectual
>>  labor no longer control the rights to their own work. In my view this
>>  grants a publisher legal copyright but not "moral authority." This is
>>  why I perceive an intractable conflict between author rights and
>>  copyright retention for publishers. I am very interested in why you do
>>  not see it this way.
>>
>>  This entire conversation assumes that publication in a traditional
>>  journal is required for disseminating an idea or research output --
>>  which it certainly is in a "publish or perish" sense, but not
>>  technically. Elsevier's power against SciHub ultimately rests on the
>>  fact that scholars are still wedded to a publication model that
>>  pre-dates the Web. Thinking beyond the PDF and monograph, my hope is
>>  that publishers and librarians can work together to build and promote
>>  services for Web-enabled scholarship.
>>
>>  Marcus Banks
>>  Blaisdell Medical Library, UC Davis
>>
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 23:23:43 -0600
>>
>>  Please explain what you mean by querying whether publishers'  IP is
>>  legitimate. I have been a strong advocate of OA for more than two
>
>  > decades, but i also have been a member of the Copyright Committee of
>>
>>  the Association of American Publishers since 1974. I do not see any
>>  contradiction in being both.
>>
>>  Sandy Thatcher