Apologies for the belated response
THe question of what 'publication' does or does not mean in the fluid
context of electronic communication was exactly the topic which the AAAS/STM
working group attempted to address in 1999, as reported in our paper
'Defining and Certifying Electronic Publication in Science ' (Learned
Publishing Vol 13 No 4, pp 251-8).
However, I would guess that the views of everyone involved in that work have
probably developed since then - perhaps it's time to revisit the question?
Sally
Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Phone: 01903 871686 Fax: 01903 871457 E-mail: sec-gen_at_alpsp.org
ALPSP Website
http://www.alpsp.org
Learned Publishing is now online, free of charge, at
www.learned-publishing.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Velterop" <jan_at_BIOMEDCENTRAL.COM>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not
Prior Publication"
> This only serves to show that 'publishing' and 'publication' (and probably
> also 'communication') are leftovers from the past and in this day and age
> quite probably the wrong notions in this debate. The notion at issue is
> recognition and career advancement by means of the acquisition of
> 'brownie-points' (or even 'bragging-points' for those who have 'arrived')
> via the attachment of a (quality, relevance) 'label' to the article in
> question, usually the title of a (respected) journal. Copyright is
> irrelevant and even moral rights (the latter not recognised in Anglo-Saxon
> legal systems, I gather) are of marginal importance.
>
> In the past, publication and labelling were part of the same process --
they
> rarely occurred separately -- but the internet has fundamentally changed
> that, of course. Unfortunately the term 'publishing' has remained.
> Understanding that it isn't really 'publishing' is important if new
economic
> models for the activity of 'labelling' are to have any chance at all. For
> the 'labelling' we still need something like journals (as a concept); for
> publishing (dissemination) we don't.
>
> The economic model BioMed Central employs is to charge (if at all possible
> the author's institution) only for the organisational efforts of creating,
> maintaining, and attaching 'labels' (journal titles) to the article and
> those of assisting with efficient maximum dissemination and embedding in
the
> network of scholarly literature. This model naturally results in open
> access. No money comes from the recipient of the peer-reviewed research
> articles, the reader. The conventional revenue models (reader pays) are
the
> main cause of the difficulty, as publishers need to defend this revenue
> which is, or at least may be, threatened by prior or uncontrolled
> dissemination (even without 'label'), and they rely on copyright to do it.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk]
> > Sent: 02 September 2002 16:28
> > To: Joseph Pietro Riolo
> > Cc: Multiple recipients of list; Digital Copyright;
> > american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org; Gene Garfield ISI
> > Subject: Re: Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not
> > Prior Publication"
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Joseph Pietro Riolo wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, 31 Aug 2002, Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > These two papers by Eugene Garfield -- founder of the
> > Institute for
> > > > Scientific Information, Current Contents, Science Citation Index,
> > > > and originator of the Citation Impact Factor -- might be
> > of interest to
> > > > the Open Access community:
> > > >
> > > > "I believe that posting and sharing one's preliminary
> > publications
> > > > [is] an important part of the peer... review process and does
> > > > not justify an embargo by publishers on the grounds of 'prior
> > > > publication'. It was not the case before the
> > Internet, and except
> > > > for unusual clinical situations, has not changed
> > because of the
> > > > convenience of the Internet." (Garfield, 2000)
> > >
> > http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1999/June/comm_99
> > 0607.html
> > >
> > > Apparently, both Stevan Harnad and Eugene Garfield are ignorant of
> > > the definition of "publication" in the U.S. Copyright Law:
> > >
> > > "Publication" is the distribution of copies or
> > > phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other
> > > transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.
> > > The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a
> > > group of persons for purposes of further distribution,
> > > public performance, or public display, constitutes
> > > publication. A public performance or display of a work
> > > does not of itself constitute publication.
> > >
> > > (Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 101.)
> > >
> > > Before Internet, submitting an article to a review committee is
> > > not considered as a publication because the author does not intend
> > > for the public to see the article and does not allow the committee
> > > to further distribute copies. However, when an author puts his
> > > article on Internet without any control over who can see his article
> > > and distribute copies of his article, his article is considered as
> > > a publication.
> >
> > This is a red herring, conflating researchers' criteria for
> > what counts as a formal publication with trade criteria for
> > protecting toll-revenues.
> >
> > First (but irrelevantly) there are glaring logical incoherences in
> > the above definition of "publication" in U.S. Copyright Law when it
> > comes to online digital works. I will not bother pointing out all the
> > counterexamples and non-fitting cases that this quoted definition
> > obviously cannot handle, because there is a far more pertinent reason
> > why all of this is irrelevant to the literature that Gene Garfield and
> > I are talking about here -- refereed research publications.
> >
> > When it comes to the definition of "publication" in the only
> > sense that
> > is relevant to the authors of this special literature -- "publishing"
> > as in "publish or perish" -- no promotion committee or grant-funding
> > panel will count vanity-press self-publication as "publication,"
> > regardless of whether the author has self-published one copy
> > on a piece
> > of paper shown to one colleague or has spammed the entire
> > internet with
> > it: Self-publication is not publication insofar as
> > researchers' careers
> > and reward systems are concerned (with one prominent
> > exception, namely,
> > the establishment of priority as to who actually made a finding first
> > -- but for that, even one copy whose date of creation can be
> > objectively
> > authenticated is enough).
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.4
> >
> > The reason is simple: Far, far too much research is done, and
> > it varies
> > far too wildly in quality, for researchers to be able to
> > trust unfiltered
> > self-reports, or to evaluate it all for themselves in each
> > instance, in
> > deciding what to read, believe, use. To count as publications in
> > academia's formal publish-or-perish sense -- the only sense that
> > matters for research -- research-reports have to successfully pass the
> > self-corrective "filter" of peer-review, and be duly certified by the
> > publisher's imprimatur as having done so, through being accepted for
> > publication (sic) by a peer-reviewed journal (preferably an
> > established
> > one of known quality standards).
> >
> > Until they have done so, all papers are just unrefereed, unpublished
> > preprints (and, if cited in a published work, must be clearly
> > identified
> > as such), whether they have been seen only by one pair of eyes or have
> > been advertised far and wide in infomercials on international TV.
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm#preprint
> >
> > THIS is the sense of publication that Gene is talking about and this
> > should already have been obvious from the fact that he uses the word
> > "publication" in both senses in the very same sentence above, in
> > answering (in the negative) his own question, namely, "Is Acknowledged
> > Self-Archiving Prior Publication?" And he is addressing this question
> > to fellow-researchers -- authors, referees, and editors --
> > not to drafters
> > of copyright law.
> >
> > WHY was this question not addressing copyright law or copyright
> > lawyers? Because, if you will look carefully at every one of
> > the criteria
> > invoked in the legal "definition" of publication above --
> > "sale, transfer
> > of ownership, rental, lease, lending" -- every single one of them is
> > utterly irrelevant to the special, anomalous literature which
> > is the only
> > one of which we are speaking here. For refereed research
> > publications are
> > all author give-aways: Their authors do not seek to sell, rent, lease,
> > lend or otherwise transfer their ownership. Their "moral ownership" --
> > i.e., the fact that it is they who wrote them and not someone else --
> > is of course retained by these special authors, as by all authors. But
> > the texts themselves are all given away; not a penny of royalties or
> > fees or other form of income from their sale/rental/lease/lending is
> > received or sought by their authors.
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5
> >
> > Hence these authors, and the users of this special literature (namely,
> > other researchers, their institutions, and their research-funding
> > agencies) have no interest whatsoever in copyright "protection" for
> > sale/rental/lease/lending. Apart from copyright protection of their
> > authorship -- which they can already assert on the one copy
> > they submit
> > to be considered for publication (sic) by a refereed journal -- these
> > authors are not in need of copyright law's elaborate measures to
> > toll-gate access to copies of their work. And that includes
> > any definition
> > of "publication" that is formulated in the service of protecting the
> > toll-gating itself -- as it is for the much larger corpus of
> > non-give-away
> > literature, for which copyright law was formulated, and to which it
> > is applicable.
> >
> > So let the tradesmen concern themselves with how to define
> > "publication"
> > in order to protect their toll-revenues, but let the
> > give-away researchers
> > define "publication" in terms of what it really means in their
> > peer-reviewed, publish/perish world -- the only world to which Gene's
> > recommendations about the self-archiving of unrefereed, unpublished
> > research was addressed.
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
> > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> > the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):
> >
> > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> > or
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> >
> > Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
> >
> > See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
> > http://www.soros.org/openaccess
> >
> > and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
Received on Wed Oct 02 2002 - 14:03:35 BST