Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy

From: Ingemar Bohlin <ingemar.bohlin_at_sts.gu.se>
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 10:14:36 +0100

In a message of 10 June 2002, Stevan Harnad commented on:

>> Klaus Graf: success in attempting to re-negotiate copyright agreements
>>> with publishers for themselves....
>>> ...certain publishers (eg: Nature)
>>> would be extremely unwilling to review their copyright positions.
>
>No need to worry about re-negotiating -- or getting anyone else to
>re-negotiate -- any copyright agreements in order to go ahead and open
>access to the entire refereed journal literature (of 20,000+ journals and
>2,000,000+ articles annually)
>http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0448.html
>http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0498.html

Whatever the importance of the copyright policy of journals like Nature, it
may be of interest to readers of this list that that particular journal now
seems to have changed its policy. In a news item that appeared in a Swedish
paper a couple of weeks ago, Philip Campbell, Nature's editor-in-chief, is
reported as saying that his journal recently decided to allow authors to
retain the copyright to their articles. While the restrictions on
distribution of material before publication remain in force, the
dissemination of postprints is now left to the authors' discretion.

If anyone has seen this new policy announced in Nature, it would be
interesting to have the reference.

Ingemar Bohlin

_______________________________
Ingemar Bohlin
Section of Science & Technology Studies
Gothenburg University
P.O. Box 700
405 30 Gothenburg
Sweden
Tel +46 31 773 44 74
Email Ingemar.Bohlin_at_sts.gu.se
www.sts.gu.se
Received on Tue Jun 11 2002 - 10:14:36 BST

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