Peter Harvey, Medical publishers: a charity worth supporting?, The Lancet 363(9407), 492 (7 February 2004.) A doctor relates an anecdote where he was asked to write a chapter for a "commercial book on clinical negligence, designed for lawyers but written by doctors." Harvey tells how he was told he must surrender copyright and even negotiate rights to and pay for any figures from other works that he may wish to use. When he tried to negotiate compensation for his work, he was denied. "I enquired among my academic friends whether publishing houses normally fleeced the medical profession like this, and was told that this was perfectly normal practice." The writer probably wouldn't care for the author-pays model, either.
Posted by
Garrett at 3/18/2004 02:07:00 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.
