LIBLICENSE-L Archives

LibLicense-L Discussion Forum

LIBLICENSE-L@LISTSERV.CRL.EDU

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
LibLicense-L Discussion Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 8 Mar 2016 18:55:52 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (49 lines)
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 07:31:35 +0000

They may not have got to the stage of going to court, but academic
publishers have used copyright to limit authors from distributing
their own work:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/17/elsevier-versus-open-access

David



On 7 Mar 2016, at 22:32, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 00:42:14 -0600
Subject: Re: SciHub
"Relieved" of copyright protection, seriously?  I've never met a
scholar who published with a university press that would speak in
those terms.  That smacks of coercion which, if actually present,
would invalidate a contract.

The truth of the matter is that very few academic authors want to be
bothered with all the details that are involved in negotiating and
selling licenses for subsidiary uses. And few care to become experts
in knowing what kind of fees to set, what clauses to include in
licenses, how to defend themselves when license terms are violated,
etc. That is why, in academic publishing generally, "all rights"
transfers have been standard. Academic publishers have taken on the
burden of fulfilling the functions that in trade publishing are
handled by literary agents. Every academic contract I have seen
provides for splitting the income from subsidiary rights with authors,
usually 50/50 and, for some rights, 75/25 in favor of the author.
Authors are not forced to sign these contracts; they do so because
they don't want the responsibilities that come with handling
subsidiary rights.

Also, in the relatively few cases where authors express an interest in
handling a specific subsidiary right, say, a translation into a
foreign language about which the author has some expertise, the
publisher generally cedes that right back to the author so that the
author can handle the transaction separately.

You talk about copyright protection being wielded against authors. Can
you cite any examples of academic publishers suing their authors for
infringement of copyright?

Sandy Thatcher

ATOM RSS1 RSS2