Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished? 349
Dr_Ken writes to mention recent coverage of a Harvard Cyber-Law study on Techdirt that analyzes the uses of copyright in the academic world. Some are claiming that the applications of copyright in academia are stifling and that we should perhaps go so far as to abolish copyright in the academic world entirely. "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone."
Public domain sans copyright = bad idea (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Informative)
Because the scientists generally get paid for their results (or even just for doing the research regardless of the results), which are not copyrighted; the copyright on the papers is ancillary (except for where it prevents plagiarism and other academic dishonesty).
Other creative fields get paid based on individual copies of what they've created- books, music, etc. The model is entirely different.
I wonder how MIT's "Open Journal" handles this (Score:5, Informative)
However a faculty can opt out a paper if a journal absolutely refuses making a paper open as some do. A more common compromise is the journal has electronic rights for 12 months with faculty rights after that. All in the name of financing the journal.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Most scientific journals that I have experience with to not pay authors in any way. This is certainly the case with all IEEE journals and several other scientific journals. Signing over the copyright is the cost of entry if you want your work published. There are probably exceptions to this, possibly for work that is easily identified as ground breaking. But my experience has always been that there is nothing paid when the copyright is transfered. In fact, most journals still ask for printing charges. This are usually optional (and I opt out) except when color figures are included in the manuscript. If there are journals paying authors I would like to know.
Moral but not necessarily practical problem (Score:5, Informative)
I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim.
They can cite them, i.e. "we have previously found [REF]", without infringing anything, so I think you have gotten mixed up there. What they cannot necessary do without infringing is reproduce data/figures without gaining copyright exemption. It can be handled two ways, both involve citing the earlier work along with the reproduction to be absolutely sure that you are nobody thinks you are plagiarising yourself, and if you want to be proper about it then you can get a copyright exemption (which happens all the time for review articles). It will almost always be granted, but it is just a bit of a hassle to get sometimes. These points don't negate any discussion about the moral or ethical repercussions of being forced to sign over copyright - that is different - but practically there are no great repercussions.
I have had to sign away copyright on work I have done, and it does feel wrong. But on the other hand the journals are relatively relaxed about the situation, and you don't see legalise copyright warnings being posted to anyone. If journals annoy authors then said authors don't publish in those journals so they have to be careful. If academic establishments stopped paying subscriptions to journals then it might also be different - as at that point all of the copyrighted works the publishers hold become a rather more active asset to exploit since they may not be making any money from subscriptions (in some open access models for example).
Re:Cite? (Score:5, Informative)
I was always under the impression that you could, say cite the other work in your work and make comparison's and contrasts to the other work.
It's odd that the summary and article claim that without actually citing any examples. The article just says "I've heard of..." Makes me wonder if it's not an overstatement, a misstatement, a severe miscommunication, or an absurdly bad publication that told a researcher an outright lie which he believed. Citing your own work, saying "I found this and published it here" can't possibly be barred by any publication. For one thing, citing an article increases the impact factor of the article, it's worth. A journal that is trying to decrease it's impact factor by saying you can't cite your own work is a journal that is shooting itself in the foot about three different ways.
I think what might be more likely is that the author of the article heard about a researcher who wanted to republish a figure he had published in another journal, and that journal wouldn't let him. And that's something that SHOULD be barred, you can't republish the same data twice, nor do you need to. BOTH journals would have problems with that, as would other researchers in the field. It's basically getting credit twice.
One exception to that would be if a researcher was publishing a review type article and wanted to include a figure or diagram from the original paper, making it clear though that it was not a new result but was old data included in a summary of the literature on a subject. That again is a journal shooting itself in the foot and would be ridiculous if it happened. I've often seen figures from other publications in review articles, journals that published the original data seem willing to work out an agreement with whoever is publishing the review. I've never published one, so I'm guessing, it again goes back to the impact factor. If you run a journal and an important result was published in it, you want people to know it was both an important result and was published in your journal.
This really seems like something that can't occour often to me. I could easily be wrong for other non-biological fields that I have no experience in though.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Informative)
You should be able to access the journals/websites from your library.
I know at my school, Iowa State University, that I can directly access the restricted journal content if I'm anywhere on campus. If I'm at home I can still access it through the library website, and logging in to their proxy. YMMV, but everywhere I've been the library computers are cleared to access the "restricted" content.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
That is the way it works. If you include colour graphics, then many journals require payment before publishing your paper. In that case, you need to pay for the conference, and pay for the paper. In return the journal keeps your copyright, and stops you from reprinting your own paper.
To prevent some of these excesses, the ACM now has a rule that explicitly allows authors to include ACM papers on the author's own website. As far as I know, the ACM is the only association that permits this.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm. No, requiring someone else to be allowed to copy it would be "no copyright protection." (or "no copyright." If I have no legal ability to prosecute someone that's copying my works (and presuming I don't own any guns), I have on way of stopping someone... therefore, I am being more or less "required" to let that happen. You're right, people copy anything they please. Is someone being required to copy it? No. But by NOT protecting my "art," and presuming I can't personally protect it, you're requiring me to let it be copied.
Confused about rights-to-physical-property bit. Are you saying that is the current state of affairs? If so, I don't think that is the case. If I write a piece of music and "copyright" it, whether formally or informally, as far as I know, no one can copy that music, put their name on it, and sell it as if they wrote it. Well, yes they can, but I could sue them - and if I were able to prove that I have a copy that predates theirs and has MY name on it, it more or less "proves" - in terms of courts - that I was the one that had it first, thus my name should be on it. As far as copying-for-redistribution goes, I don't know. It kinda depends on if we're talking about right-ot-distribute or right-to-claim-that-I-originated-this-art.
As for selling w/o copyright law, yes, I could. Who would buy it, I have on idea. I probably wouldn't. And someone else could sell it for cheaper, I'm sure. And without copyright laws, I presume someone could just tack their name on it and sell it as theirs. In that case, I not only have rights over distribution (or at least selling-for-profit), but I now can't even - to the common person - easily explain that I wrote it. Especially if the other person has enough money to pump it through a lot of presses and proliferate "their" version.
A Look at Nature Publishing Group Strategy (Score:5, Informative)
License to publish [nature.com] at Nature Publishing Group (publishing house of "Nature" series of journals, really big payer in the field of natural sciences) draws my favorable attention. The point is that the aurhor isn't required to give out the copyright of their published contributions, instead authors grant NPG a license to publish their paper. As it comes to reusing parts of published papers in future work, prior publishers' permission isn't mandatory. This doesn't work in case of review papers, which are commissioned by the publisher, where NPG is granted full copyright.
Does license to publish do any difference? Yes, because six months after publication the author has right to archive the manuscript in a free-access repository, even on NPG's server.
There's one more thing, which however applies only to biological sciences. Since 2008 those papers in Nature which publish organisms' genome for the first time are copyrighted under Creative Commons attribution-non commercial-share alike unported licence.
To conclude, it's worth noting that the academic world is pushing publishers towards less strict publishing policies, thats a big example.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
It might be interesting to know whether this constitutes a valid contract. In English law, at least, you need "consideration" (both parties benefit), and you have situations whereby someone with a property which is effectively worth negative amounts (e.g. a house which would cost more to repair that it could be sold for once repaired) has to sell for a token amount (usually one pound) because giving it away wouldn't actually transfer ownership. Does having your paper published qualify as consideration?
Re:Public domain sans copyright = bad idea (Score:3, Informative)
for works in the public domain (shakespeare, the bible, mickey mouse, etc...), could someone republish them, in their entirety, only changing the author to "by Anonymous Coward"? is there anything legally wrong with that? I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as I can't even think how to google for that...
You want to google for Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003).