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On Nov 10, 2008, at 8:11 AM, Daniel Harms wrote: > ders. This can be extremely problematic, as the companies usually > charge a 7% markup per year, often change database contents or > format without informing their customers, and don’t provide for > institutions who cancel to have any access to back issues. We’re > in the process of renegotiating one of SUNY’s major databases right > now, and if we can’t afford it, it won’t matter what the > departments want. Not exactly a "mature industry." It was the frustration of trying to breach those walls that led Fritz Muntean and me to seek a real publisher for Pomegranate in 2002, raising it from zine status to academic journal. > > Overall, I don’t see any compelling reason to deny authors > copyright for their works. Returning to book publishers – they > usually grant the author copyright, then arrange for a license to > print the book for a period of time in a variety of formats. I see > no reason why a journal publisher couldn’t negotiate a contract > saying, “You’ve got the copyright, and we can keep this in print > and in our databases for perpetuity, but you can take it to other > venues – republish it, submit it to anthologies, put it up online – > after two years.” This protects their revenue stream and keeps > the article available while giving the author the freedom to allow > it to reach a wider audience. That would seem to be the best of > both worlds. Maybe so, although in practice most journal publishers seem to have no big issue with letting contributors reprint papers in anthologies, etc. (Of course, the mantra in publishing is, "anthologies don't sell." ) You want copyright hassles, try reprinting something by a Famous Dead Author, as Graham Harvey and I discovered when assembling THE PAGANISM READER for Routledge. Kipling about killed our permissions budget. Chas