John Cox:
When publishers set individual and institutional subscription prices, there are conditions attached.
Conditions which I would guess are not even looked at by individual subscribers.
It is the same as when you load a new piece of software, you click yes to agree to the TOC's without even looking at them.
The idea that you shouldn't share the electronic access is something that is more recognised now when I've had discussions with people about this sort of subject but it is still seen that when you have the physical copy in front of you it's yours. You can do what you like with it.
If I told people they couldn't do what they wanted with their own copy of a journal they'd laugh (just as they do when you tell them the % of a book they can legally photocopy, that the copyright on their work belongs to the company not to them and that you shouldn't send official pdf's to people that ask for them).
Looking at the BMJ's terms and conditions for example (http://group.bmj.com/group/about/legal/online-sales-terms-and-conditions) does not explicitly state that you cannot share your print copy with anyone, not in plain language. There is lots on not allowing access to electronic content though.
The closest it seems to get is saying 'No subscriptions may be purchased by an individual at the individual prices for an institution.'
But if you are a scientist buying it for yourself then once you have finished with it giving it away it COULD be said that's not what you are doing. (and I have heard this used as an excuse in the past).
If a subscription was being taken out specifically so that the Library would have it, done in order to avoid paying the higher fees that is obviously wrong. Even worse if the individual subscription was being repaid by the employers/library.
I would also say that it depends on the journal. If you can buy it from WH Smiths (Nature, Scientific American Mind) then you have not entered into any sort of contract with the publisher unlike with a subscription.
What I would be really interested to know is have any publishers actually done any of the three options mentioned? (Write to individual, suspend journal, write to Library). Same with people sending the official pdf's or putting them up on their websites.
I'm sure we've all seen massive pages full of pdf's on some university webpages which are obviously not supposed to be there. Whether they be the official ones against the terms and conditions of the institutions contract with the publisher or ones scanned from the original journal in breach of copyright. Does anybody know if any publisher actually started proceedings in the UK against a university? Against a professor at MIT? Against someone bittorrenting the latest Trauma Medicine ebook by Elsevier?
I've always expected to see lots of reports of such things but so far not seen any, have they passed me by?
Kevin
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