Re: Journal Article Royalties: Reanimating the "Faustian Bargain"

From: Franck Ramus <ramus_at_LSCP.EHESS.FR>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 12:09:52 +0200

>> I agree strongly with you that the incentives for authors to, for
>> example, "pick free online journals over established ones" are very
>> low.

For the moment, i would say that the reasonable choice is rather between
established journals that allow public archiving and those that don't. I
find it remarkable that so little information is directly available about
journals' policies regarding public archiving. Most of the time, this
information is not present in the "instruction for authors" section of
journals.

I would find it very useful to have access to a site repertoriating all the
major journals of my field (cognitive science), along with their general
policy regarding copyright, public archiving on one's web site, public
archiving on a centralized web site (like cogprints), and possibly a copy
of the copyright transfer agreement (which very often you only get in the
end of the publication process).

Of course all this information is available to all authors upon request from
each journal, but it could be part of a project like Cogprints to centralize
it, order it, update it regularly, and make it available to all authors,
inciting them to choose journals that serve best their interest. That
authors be able to directly compare the respective policies of already
established journals of comparable quality would, i think, put some pressure
on these journals to make their policy more liberal.


Franck Ramus
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique
54 boulevard Raspail
75006 Paris
France
tel: (33)(0)1 49 54 24 98
fax: (33)(0)1 45 44 98 35
http://www.ehess.fr/centres/lscp/persons/ramus/index.htm
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 19:17:43 GMT

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