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paper to be withdrawn from the proceedings (online, OA) of a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