>One of the important issues raised was author licences. If you don't
>require a full copyright assignment (and more and more I think copyright
>assignment a less attractive option for HE), then the material offered is
>presumably published undersome sort of licence, exclusive or
>non-exclusive. So what should be the terms of those licences? I think we
>need a lot more debate on this, and the related issues of legal liability.
With a dual journal, copyright is determined by the lowest common
denominator, ie the printed form. But we did come across something
that broke the rules recently. I had submitted an article corresponding to
a conference recently, to a publisher that must remain known
as XXXXXXXX. The article corresponded to new
technologies for e-journals, and a web-based version of the article
illustrated these technologies with working examples. XXXXXXXX
wished to transfer all these working examples to their own site.
These included java applets etc. The request was not accompanied
by any copyright clarification. Normally, copyright transfer is a mandatory
part of publishing with them. So I asked clarification. With a Java
applet in particular, we have a different animal to deal with. The
publisher responded with a confused message that said naturally they
were not claiming copyright on working programs, but that they did
have to be on their site to "count". They re-affirmed that they really
had no guidelines at all to deal with this situation. They would get
back to me. I still wait.
The bottom line is that copyright for "supplemental" material
must reside with authors. However, no-one knows how to
define supplemental material any more.
>Another question is whether a (non-parallel) EJ should be entirely and only
>on-line, or whether there should be some sort of archival or hard copy form.
>The Electronic Stacks project (whose field is logic) have found authors
>reluctant to write for on-line only EJs - they either do an annual print run
>or an annual CD-ROM. Clearly a print run cannot do justice to the added
>value and mixed media nature of on-line EJs. The CLIC project ran an
>electronic conference (ECTOC-1). They found that Chemical Abstracts refused
>to index the papers while only in on-line form, but agreed when they created
>a CD-ROM. There is no particular logic in either of these positions, but
>they do respond to a human real desire - to own in some more tangible form
>the product of one's labours. So, do we need some sort of archival form of
>our EJs? Or should we show our faith in our medium by refusing such
>crutches? There is risk and cost in both of these possibilities.
I favour e.g. CD ROM format, not only because of permanency,
but b) because it is a way of limiting liability and maintenance
(ie broken hyperlinks need to be maintained, but on a CD ROM
that maintenance is limited) and c) as a mechanism for giving
those customers that wish it privacy.
Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
[log in to unmask]; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804.
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0)
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