Withdrawal from Open Access

From: Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_OZEMAIL.COM.AU>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:46:35 +1100

I have recently come across two cases of an author asking for their
paper to be withdrawn from the proceedings (online, OA) of a
conference.

 

I am pursing these cases as I can to find out why. I assume that the
conferences did not have an appropriate license agreement allowing
them to make the paper OA, though few authors would pay much
attention to that anyway.

 

There are a variety of possible reasons; perhaps reader of this list
can suggest others:

1.       The authors want to publish their paper in a journal as well
to get double counted value in their cv from their research.

2.       Conferences don't count for anything in their field, but
journal articles do.

3.       As above in 1 and 2, and the authors have been scared by
publisher's words about `prior publication' invalidating submission.

4.       The work is plagiarized, fraudulent, or is a case of
multiple papers spread over one research nugget, and the authors do
not want to be found out.

5.       The authors do not believe the Internet is suitable for
scientific publication and discovery.

6.       The authors are in their 60s or 70s and set in their ways
(not Internet-savvy).

...

It is worthwhile trying to understand these counter-intuitive
actions. There may be lessons to be learnt.

 

Arthur Sale

University of Tasmania
Received on Tue Oct 28 2008 - 00:36:24 GMT