On 2011-01-07, at 4:14 AM, CHARLES OPPENHEIM wrote:
> What interesting advice from a Professor of Business Administration! Voluntarily enter into a contract with a third party and then ignore its terms and conditions because the third party is unlikely to do anything to enforce it. Well, if that's the nature of what is taught there, Meiji University is one place I will not be recommending anyone to study at.
>
> The solution is clear. DON'T ENTER INTO THAT CONTRACT IN THE FIRST PLACE! That approach is both legal and ethical, unlike Professor Adams'.
I do not think it serves any useful purpose to call the approach of those who have another interpretation of formal statements, and another procedure for dealing with their ambiguity, "unethical," let alone "illegal."
No one (including copyright experts, who disagree hugely amongst themselves) has a monopoly on either truth or rectitude in the imprecise and evolving area of digital rights.
The contingent course of action that is being recommended (and followed) by Professor Adams -- as well as by myself, and by many, many other researchers, expert and inexpert, including tens of thousands of computer scientists and physicists, for close to 20 years, is to post unrefereed drafts, as well us updated refereed drafts of their research publications, on the good-faith assumption that it is legal, and to deal with take-down notices if and when they are received (and credible).
No take-down notices have been forthcoming, as 20 years' worth of intact, self-archived preprints and postprints -- at least several million documents in Citeseerx and Arxiv -- clearly attest.
There is nothing whatsoever that is wrong or unethical about that. The language of even the most restrictive of copyright agreements is sufficiently ambiguous. But here we are even speaking about copyright agreements that explicitly state that authors retain "the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes".
To call "illegal and unethical" the approach of Professor Adams, and myself, and hundreds of thousands of other researchers who have been getting on with their research and the sharing of its results by posting them online rather than waiting for decades of attempts by experts to sort out technical ambiguities that no one seems to have any clear, coherent notion of, and on which there is vast disagreement even among experts -- is, in my view, and with all due respect, preposterous.
Charles has a preferred strategy, to which he is certainly entitled: Resolve the ambiguities by rewriting your copyright transfer agreement.
What Charles does not take into account is the likelihood that the "experts" on the publisher end will not accept the copyright change, or that most busy, active researchers have far more important things to do with their time than to risk a delay (or denial) in the publication of their results, and an even greater delay (decades' worth) in making their findings OA for all, if they enter the morass of digital rights definition and revision instead of just doing and posting their research.
So the alternative to Charles's preferred strategy is the strategy adopted by Professor Adams, myself, and hundreds of thousands of other busy, active researchers: Post, and if there is ever a (credible) "take-down notice, [it] can be complied with by setting closed access..."
Moreover, I agree completely with Professor Adams that a take-down notice whose stated grounds are that according to your signed contract, you retain "the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes" except if your institution has a "mandate
for systematic postings" would be a take-down notice that lacks coherence or credibility, and I would most definitely ignore it. (A right to do something, but only if I do it by free choice rather than by obligation is beyond the pale, and would require something better than a brain scan to prove!)
I suppose it is not illegal, but I do find it unethical to publicly accuse people of being unethical for not happening to share one's own view (however expert) on this rather esoteric, equivocal and evolving topic.
Stevan Harnad
> --- On Fri, 7/1/11, Andrew A. Adams <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Andrew A. Adams <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Friday, 7 January, 2011, 2:26
>
> As I say regularly in my talks on OA, don't worry about copyright. The
> contract between academic authors and publishers of journals is rather
> suspect anyway, to my mind. he consideration offered of distribution is not
> necessarily compelling enough for a publisher to even consider it a certain
> win in a court case. The worst that will happen is a take-down notice, which
> can be complied with by setting closed access via the email request button.
> No publisher is going to sue the author of an academic paper for making it
> available online. Such an act would almost certainly lead to a significant
> (though not universal) boycott of that journal/publisher by academics.
> Publishers know the old model is not sustainable and they're just trying to
> squeeze out as much profit as possible before it dies, while spreading FUD to
> slow down its decline. Don't worry about copyright. As Stevan says, CS and HE
> Physicists have been making their papers available for over twenty years
> without any significant problems.
>
>
> --
> Professor Andrew A Adams [log in to unmask]
> Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
> Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
> Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/
>
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