Re: Authors "Victorious" in UnCover Copyright Suit

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 07:55:54 +0100

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Albert Henderson wrote:

> on 10 Aug 2000 Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> sh> I am not missing the point. I am stressing a crucial distinction, so as
> sh> to prevent the refereed journal literature from continuing to have its
> sh> fate linked to the non-give-away literature, whose writers write for
> sh> fees or royalties. My recommendations having nothing to do with the
> sh> latter, and everything to do with the former; the distinction must be
> sh> made, and what is right for the one is not right for the other.
>
> sh> (I normally repeat ritually, like a mantra "the non-give-away literature
> sh> = books and magazine articles written for royalty or fee" but I used a
> sh> short-hand this time and said only books!)
>
> sh> But I am fairly sure that Al Henderson is not just referring to the
> sh> royalty/fee literature...
>
>ah> To clarify, I was emphasizing refereed journal
>ah> articles, monographs, etc. when I said that
>ah> authors give nothing away. They exchange rights
>ah> for recognition and dissemination. Self-archiving
>ah> lacks distinction at best and, at worst, may confuse
>ah> a work with all the amateur stuff unleashed on the
>ah> web with all the best intentions.

So my inference was correct. But Al Henderson has still paid no
attention whatever to the abundantly repeated point that the
Quality-Control/Certification (QC/C) expenses for the "distinction"
are no longer an excuse for holding this give-away literature hostage to
S/L/P access tolls, as if it were the same as the non-give-away
literature: The QC/C expenses can be paid for by the author-institution
up-front, out of a small portion of the annual institutional S/L/P
savings, and open archiving can take care of the rest
(http://eprints.org).

And self-archiving is not self-publication! The proposal is, and always
has been, to self-archive both the pre-refereeing preprints AND the
post-refereeing, QC-certified (= published) postprints (or, if a
restrictive copyright agreement is forced on the author, self-archive
the "corrigenda" file listing what changes need to be made in the
archived preprint file to turn it into the QC postprint).

Al Henderson simply keeps repeating the Gutenberg formula, in which
both the non-give-away and the give-away literature had to be treated
in exactly the same non-give-away way, even though we are now in the
PostGutenberg Galaxy, where this is no longer true. For Al Henderson,
nothing has changed (except that the libraries are under-funded!)...

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad harnad_at_cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad_at_princeton.edu
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
             Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

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Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT

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