
The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics - aj
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090625/0342445360.shtml
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rg
If academics will just insist on not assigning copyright, they may get
further; publications need authors, and to demand copyright assignment will
become a competitive disadvantage.

"The ACM copyright form now explicitly says that authors can post a copy on
their personal websites" --scott_s

Actually, ACM can be pushed further than that. When ACM solicited an article
from me for their Communications magazine, I (nicely) refused to execute their
copyright assignment, even with the personal website permission. So ACM
proposed instead a simple licence to publish (royalty-free, worldwide, non-
expiring, any medium, non-exclusive) which I was happy to sign while
preserving my copyright ownership, and which gave them everything they need.
But recently IEEE has refused a similar licence arrangement, insisting on a
copyright assignment or no publication (which was what I chose). I expect ACM
to prosper over IEEE.

~~~
scott_s
Right now, I need the ACM more than the ACM needs me.

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pmichaud
I really don't think the journal model works well anymore.

It used to be that distributing papers was burdensome, so they compiled them
into journals and professionals paid for a subscription. Built into the cost
was peer review -- they couldn't just publish ALL the articles, because there
was limited space, so they had to have professional reviewers filter out all
but the "best."

So now that distribution has been solved, the only value-add that a journal
can claim is that filtering process, which ostensibly is costly.

It all hinges on the question of whether peer review can happen without
compensation. I think it's pretty well-established now that peer review
without compensation happens constantly. Welcome to the internet, right?

So the correct new model is something like a digg/HN system that aggregates
articles from various fields, and allows peers to review, respond to, and
upvote important papers. I think it'd need to be more complex because of voter
credibility concerns, but it seems workable. I can't say the same for the
current journal model.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_I think it's pretty well-established now that peer review without
compensation happens constantly. Welcome to the internet, right?_

As far as I know, even before the internet era, you never got paid for referee
reports. I've certainly never been paid for one, though I've only been writing
them since 2006.

~~~
ggchappell
That is correct. Academic journal article peer review has always been unpaid.

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scott_s
The ACM copyright form now explicitly says that authors can post a copy on
their personal websites: <http://www.acm.org/publications/copyright_form/>

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yummyfajitas
Creative commons and the arxiv give you a very simple solution.

1\. Upload to the arxiv under a creative commons license.

2\. Submit, and post to your webpage.

3\. If the journal ever demands you take the paper down, do so. Then download
the creative commons version from the arxiv and post that (or just link to
it).

~~~
davidblair
Many journals will not consider an article if it has been previously
published.

Publishing to your own web page may not count but it will surely not make the
journal happy, especially if you hope to get published in the same journal
again.

~~~
yummyfajitas
As far as I know, submitting to the arxiv does not qualify as publication.

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furyg3
Simple solution: a requirement of receiving public funds should be that
authors are required to make their work available for free online (possibly
via a community license).

This way the journals don't get a choice as to what copyright scheme they'd
like to use.

