Comments on: Journals and the Web

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 08 Sep 2003 07:29:51 +0000

These comments have been really interesting. Much thanks to all the contributors so far. (And keep info coming!) It seems that I’ve been much more cautious than I need have been with my posting policies, at least if the standards of the rest of academia are to be followed.

By: zizka

zizka — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 19:22:02 +0000

I am far from a technophile—much closer to a Luddite—but it has to be said that e-publication is in many respects far superior to print publication. Which is better: a.)to finish a piece of writing, post it, and email anyone you think might be interested,or b.) send it in the mail (with floppy) to a journal, which prints it from your floppy (i.e., transforms the e-form into print), prints it, and mails it out—with a delay altogether of a year or more? The worth of printed journals is entirely in validation and criticism—but this can be done on the net too. Internet first-publication presently has an odor of crankiness and self-publication (me, incidentally), but an edited e-journal can be as good as an edited paper journal. In my communications with journals they seemed to have no feeling of proprietorship regarding the later fate of the pieces they publish as long as acknowledgement is made. It would strike me as boggling if they did, since they never pay anyone. (Knowing what I do about the way the music industry treats creative musicians, I am skeptical about current trends in intellectual property rights anyway). Since most print journals neither pay royalties nor make a profit, it would make sense to look into free e-publication at a smaller loss. This would be especially valuable for highly specialized journals which have a global readership of only a few hundred people. Especially nowadays when universities are feeling the pinch. There would be a problem with archiving—things don’t stay on the net forever the way they sit on library shelves. Something like the Variorum series, which publishes print versions authors’ collected papers would partly fill this gap. Informal e-anthologies of papers thought useful by an editor would also keep things alive. There would be a risk that if some interesting article was completely forgotten (by everyone whatsoever) for 20-30 years, it might disappear entirely. But how often does that happen? Perhaps, also, some of the amazing proliferation of publication deserves to be forgotten. We’re really not talking about the lost plays of Aeschylus here.

By: Kragen Sitaker

Kragen Sitaker — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 09:15:57 +0000

I’m speaking ex recto here, since I’m not published in any peer-reviewed journals—- I’m primarily a consumer of academic work, not a producer. But the academic work I consume is almost invariably the online version. I never look things up in paper form in libraries unless they aren’t available online, because the online version is so much easier to find, scan through, store for later perusal, and follow references in. (Usually I just cut and paste from the bibliography into Google or Citeseer.) I think this approach is typical of the computer science researchers I know, and it will become typical in every academic field, if it isn’t already. So if your duty is to promote the growth of knowledge, then you are failing in your duty if you deliberately post uncorrected papers to the Web. The version on the Web is the one people will read, save, and cite, and it’s quite likely the only version that will survive into the next century.

By: williard

williard — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 08:57:30 +0000

What if you post a revolutionary idea in the comments section of a blog and somebody steals it?

By: rps

rps — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 04:09:02 +0000

A scholar's duty is to share information, not to prop up somebody's business. I can't help but think there has to be a better way to do so than the current practice of turning over control of information to some journal, which seeks to restrict access to information (often created with public funds) for its own profit. There's an attempt in the life sciences to publish a free, first-rate, prestigious journal online. There's a link to it here and an article about this issue here I don't think the PLoS approach is perfect, but I've rambled enough for now.

By: Kai von Fintel

Kai von Fintel — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 03:56:09 +0000

I agree with Joe Liu that it should be clear from the publication agreement what you can do with your work on your own website. In the case of my own most recently published paper, MIT Press had me sign an agreement, according to which authors retain the right to “distribute the article for classroom or research purposes in paper or electronic form”. Making an electronic copy available via my website to colleagues who are interested in my work appears therefore fine. (I didn’t think, however, that I should make the offprint available through the Semantics Archive, which might have constituted giving the paper to a secondary publisher). I would encourage everyone to carefully read the publishing contracts that you sign, to make sure that you retain at least some rights to your own work. And in many cases, you may be able to amend the agreement to give you the right to post the work on your on website. There are some links to relevant webpages in my blog entry at http://semantics-online.org/blog/2003/05/von_fintel_iatridou_on_epistemic_containment

By: Dan Drezner

Dan Drezner — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 03:45:34 +0000

In poli sci, journals aren’t just de facto allowing authors to publish articles on their website—they’re de jure allowing it. Over the past few years, the copyright forms I’ve signed permit me to put my articles on my web site. Which is why I violate all the norms Brian mentions above.

By: Zack

Zack — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 00:11:01 +0000

In my area (Computer science/Electrical Engineering), usually you are allowed to post a preprint version online before it has been published with a notice that it has been submitted to the journal/conference etc. After publication also, both IEEE and ACM I think ask that you put their copyright notice if you put your paper online and it has to be the published version.

By: EKR

EKR — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 22:37:20 +0000

In CS, at least, conferences and journals typically allow you to post PDFs to your web ste provided that you indicate that the paper first appeared in the conference/journal.

By: Joe Liu

Joe Liu — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 22:10:21 +0000

Actually, it’s not at all clear that scholarly articles are “works made for hire” and therefore owned by the university. True, such articles appear to fall within the definition of works for hire. However, several federal courts have recognized a “teacher’s exception,” under which faculty members retain the copyright. Perhaps not coincidentally, the two main modern cases on this point are written by Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, two former law professors. On the broader point, the copyright issues should be settled, at least in theory, by the publishing agreement you signed with the journal. In my experience, agreements can differ quite dramatically with respect to the rights retained by the original author. As to whether there are any moral obligations beyond the four corners of the legal agreement, my guess is that it probably depends a lot on the particular field.

By: Eric Rasmusen

Eric Rasmusen — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 21:00:20 +0000

Here’s another twist: legally, the journals probably don’t own the copyright. To be sure, the author signed it away to them. But the author didn’t own it either. If he is a university employee (as opposed to a student) then his article meets the usual criteria of “work for hire”. His job requires him to do it, it affects his pay, the university claims research as its achievement, etc. So the journal’s title to the article is questionable. It is the employer, the university, who owns it. The counterargument is that universities customarily allow professors to keep book royalties, etc., so by common convention the universities have lost their rights to the copyrights. I don’t know which argument would win.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 20:23:10 +0000

Very interesting subject. I had an article commisioned and then accepted by a journal many months ago – I have no idea when they’re going to publish it. I have to strain every nerve in order not to publish it on Butterflies and Wheels. [sigh]

By: KF

KF — Sat, 06 Sep 2003 19:58:59 +0000

Interesting post, considering quite a quandary. I’m piping up here only to steer you toward Rory’s ponderings of such ethical issues surrounding scholarly publishing, copyright, and the web, which I find both enlightening and useful: http://speedysnail.com/2003/07.html#496