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Klaus Krippendorff wrote: > while i agree with ranulph's sentiment. things are more complicated > > many publishers ask authors to sign a copyrights agreement as a condition > for publishing. if you don't sign it, your paper will not be published and > doesn't gain the circulation we authors hope for. I'd like to suggest that this discussion is lagging a long way behind the current debates on academic publishing. You can find a lot of publications and debate if you search for "open access academic publishing" "Budapest open access initiative" or similar. The sherpa.ac.uk website has some good resources and advice for academics on this matter and it's worth looking out for anything written by Stevan Harnad of Southampton university who has been one of the pioneers in this field, advocating and developing resources for self-archiving. Harnad and others argue that you should just refuse to sign the copyright agreement or modify it to allow you to retain the right to archive and share copies of the work on the internet. If you haven't tried it don't assume it's not possible. I did a summary of some of the issues a few years ago for a workshop at the European Academy of Design Barcelona Conference, you can find a copy here: http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/2003/04/30/rich-media-open-access-publishing/ The "briefing" document is partly a proposal for something that didn't happen and maybe should not have happened, but it contains an overview of some key ideas and sources about open access. best wishes from sunny Sheffield Chris