In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
"Chris Pegler" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What an interesting discussion.
{...}
> 3 Along with Fred I feel incensed to be asked to pay for using
> articles written by our own academics when the journals
> themselves do not pay for the publication rights in the first
> place. These papers are written in time paid for by the
> University and according to the norms of the Copyright Act the
> University should own the copyright anyway. If as Ian says the
> author sees little of the CLA fee then the University sees even
> less! There certainly isn't any CLA discount for the University
> where the author works.
Or, under the mainstream of the Berne Convention rather than the
Anglo-Saxon aberration, to the authors themselves. Copyright is
a property right [S.1, (C)D&P Act 1988], but mainstream Authors' Rights
are a human right.
But yes, academic publishing is a really bizarre piece of economics.
If you suggested, in any other area of the economy that I can think
of, that people _pay_ (page and, in the case of the more reputable
journals, illustration charges) to have someone else take all rights
in their work... you'd stand a small but finite risk of being
locked up.
Academic publishing is therefore, economically speaking, advertising
-- the target audience being grant-givers. (Except that the advertising
agency ends up with something it can sell, which is where we came in.)
Anyone interested in seeing and commenting on an unpublished
Devil's Advocate article suggesting (in Modest Proposal spirit)
that academic research be paid for by charging for citations,
please email me. (This is, of course, merely an _ad adsurdam_
of Ted Nelson's Xanadu idea.)
> 4 Given the above I think that the issue is one of the underfunded
> Universities being expected to carry publishers - or more
> specifically the copyright licensing bodies. The amounts of
> money swallowed up in the administration of these various
> copyright systems is I suspect something of an open drain.
The worst of the _creator-controlled_ rights collection agencies
is, I am told, the Performing Rights Society -- I have heard the
figure of 40% mentioned, probably slanderously. The Authors'
Licensing and Collecting Society gets by on much, much less...
Since ALCS distributed £9million in photocopying and TV repeat
fees in the last financial year, and has a staff of about a
dozen, <10% is not implausible. In the USA, the Publications
Rights Clearinghouse, initiated by the National Writers' Union,
clears rights for document supply by fax for 4.6% to 5.8%of the
supply charge.
You may be interested in the full breakdown:
UnCover charge to the customer: $ 8.50
PRC copyright fee: $ 2.55
Total charge to the customer: $11.05
PRC admin. $ .51 ($ .64 to non-members)
Royalty to writer: $ 2.04 ($1.91 -"- )
Note that, before striking the deal with PRC, UnCover was
charging $11.50 per article!
Fully-automatic rights clearance in
Academic authors who have signed away their rights, of course,
get nothing: I presume (but must check) that the publishers
keep a sum not unadjacent to $2.50, through a separate deal
with UnCover.
This fact about academia, if I may be forgiven for saying so,
causes a serious distortion in discussion of authors' rights
among academics.
Mike Holderness
(C) 1996; moral rights asserted :-)
http://www.poptel.org.uk/nuj/mike
The relevant information to which I have realised I don't yet
have a link is at http://www.imprimatur.alcs.co.uk/
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