In LawMeme, James Grimmelmann summarizes the presentations at last week's DRM Conference in Berkeley. Here's his summary of Hal Abelson's presentation on the author-rights policies of major scientific journals. "In general, authors sign over copyright to the journal for 'limited-time forever;' the journals give back some rights out of their magnanimity. For example, CS journals give authors the right to post their papers on their personal web sites. But CS journals are generous: Chemists can send copies to 'not more than 50' colleagues; the New England Journal of Medicine gives nothing back to the authors. As Abelson puts it, 'This is the world that the Statute of Anne ushered out.' It’s a world of private stationers, cartels that control publishing. Copyright was supposed to prevent publishing monopolies by giving control back to authors; DRM’s enormous network effects may very well recreate such monopolies." (Thanks to
The Filter.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/15/2003 12:53:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
