Re: Journals, copyright and open access archiving

From: Donat Agosti <agosti_at_AMNH.ORG>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 23:05:41 +0100

This "happy end" shows two things and one conclusion: how very important
human contacts are, and how important it is to be well known to have
influence - just most fall not in this latter category.

This case is actually a very powerful argument for open access: oa is the
real way to go to void such exclusive favorism schemes.

Donat


-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of Subbiah Arunachalam
Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2006 5:17 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Journals, copyright and open access archiving

Thank you very much Dana, Peter and Beverly. All is
well that ends well.

Arun


--- Dana Roth <dzrlib_at_LIBRARY.CALTECH.EDU> wrote:

> As a former Library Advisor to the Indian Institute
> of Technology, Kanpur, I felt compelled to
> intercede.
>
> My contacts at Taylor and Francis quickly recognized
> the importance of this project and have informed me
> that C.V. Raman's papers will be made available as
> requested.
>
> Dana Roth
> Caltech
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf
> of Subbiah Arunachalam
> Sent: Thu 12/7/2006 4:45 AM
> To:
>
AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Journals, copyright and open access
> archiving
>
> Friends:
>
> Here is a message I received from another list. It
> tells you about the difficulties faced by developing
> country librarians who want to bring the complete
> works of great scientists into public domain through
> open access repositories. Surprisingly, some
> publishers - in this case Taylor & Francis - are
> unwilling to grant permission to place papers
> published in their journals several decades ago in
> an institutional open access archive. While one may
> find a way out and get these papers accessible to
> anyone who wants to read them, the true face of such
> publishers are exposed by such incidents.
>
> -----
>
> Dear all,
>
> We are very keen to make open access not only the
> papers of C.V. Raman
> but also any other articles/talks by him or on him.
> We have already made
> available on our digital repository the newspaper
> clippings on him. All
> the 6 volumes of his collected papers have been
> scanned and we have the
> pdf files ready. Now only the publishers permission
> is needed to make
> them open access. We have written to all of them but
> getting all their
> permission is not assured. Already Taylor & Francis
> have declined to
> give permission to make their articles open access.
>
> Publisher's copyright policies may in fact be the
> biggest barrier to
> making this entire collection open access. However,
> the Indian Academy
> of Sciences and the American Physical Society have
> given us permission to
> begin with. Our plan in these circumstances is to
> make articles open
> access wherever permission is clearly given and to
> make the rest
> restricted access. At least the metadata will then
> be freely available
> for all. Anyone interested can email us for a copy.
>
> I am sure that those who have established
> repositories are facing
> similar problems. But we are doing our best.
>
> With best wishes,
> Girija Srinivasan
>
> Raman Research Institute Library, Tel:+91 80 2361
> 0122 / Extn 250---------
>
> For those of you who may not know Sir C V Raman, he
> was a leading physicist of his generation and the
> only Indian to have won a science Nobel Prize.
> [Prof. Amartya Sen won in Economics, and Mother
> Teresa for Peace. Prof. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
> and Prof. Har Gobind Khorana were US citizens when
> they won the Nobel Prize.] Prof. Raman was Director
> of the Indian Institute of Science, Founder-Director
> of the Raman Research Institute and the
> Founder-President of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
> He passed away in November 1970 at the age of 82.
>
> Scientists should refrain from signing publishers'
> agreements without reading them carefully. They
> should never surrender copyright to their creative
> works - resaerch papers. Many journals agree to make
> changes in the standard copyright transfer form they
> use. Over 90% of about 9,000 journals surveyed allow
> archiving of papers published in them. The rest of
> the journals should be persuaded to fall in line,
> and if they refuse scientists around the world
> should boycott them - they shoud refrain from
> publishing in them, should not act as referees for
> those journals and should not be members of their
> editorial boards.
>
> As most research is performed with public support -
> research grants from governments and other donors -
> it is not proper on the part of researchers to sign
> away copyright to journal publishers. One can only
> give first (or even exclusive) right to publish the
> papers. Authors and their institutions should retain
> all rights to use the material subsequently in
> whatever way they want to.
>
> If journals can claim copyright to articles simply
> because they publish, should not the funding
> agencies claim copyright to work produced with their
> money and should not the authors retain the
> copyright simply because the paper is their creative
> work?
>
> Subbiah Arunachalam
>


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Received on Sun Dec 10 2006 - 23:28:34 GMT

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