Roger et. al.
 
Fascinating discussion.  Roger, will this -- i.e., the notion of  a hybrid 
system evolving toward open source -- be a discussion topic at the  NEOLEO 
conference in Santa Fe next year?  It seems crucial to the future of  Leonardo as a 
journal and an institution. 
 
Perhaps Leonardo can develop a pioneering model that other academic  journals 
might emulate? 
 
Marcia Tanner
[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) 
 
 
 
In a message dated 4/29/2008 6:50:25 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, 
[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])  writes:

Danny,  Armin

Yes Leonardo journals are under the MIT Press system ( I wish  they
were a multinational, might solve our budget deficit and allow us  to
pay authors and reviewers !!) and authors retain rights to their own  texts
with some lexibility as long as we can archive the texts and  disseminate
them in the systems that MIT Press has set up.

We have  managed with MIT press to make sure that all 40 years
and 6000 articles of  leonardo are now available on line= but this
access is tied to institutions  and individuals that have subscriptions
( for individuals a subscription is  the cost of two good bottles of wine
a year). Most authors also put their  articles openly available on their
own web sites.

We havent figured  out how to migrate to a sustainable model
that is not subscription based.  Ironically the thing we do now that
sells the best is books !!!!

One  experiment we are trying is Leonardo Transactions= Editor in
Chief Ernest  Edmonds. Leonardo Transactions will soon have an
"open " pre print server  when all texts submitted to Leonardo Transactions
are immediately available  for free on the pre print server. The model
here is what happens in my  field of astronomy where all researchers
deposit their texts into the  astro-ph open system while their texts
go through review into the archival  journals.

For what its worth nothing is for free on the internet.  Someone is paying
for the internet infrastructure and operating costs, and  the time of people
to keep the system up and running. The model transfers  these costs in
different ways to different users than in the old  subscription publication
models, and tax monies are involved in funding a  lot of r and d. ( I work
in a french government lab and the french tax  payer is paying to keep
the system running; private individuals pay  individually for keeping a
system going in their home )

We  clearly are evolving to a different system where indeed every author
should  have all their texts on their own web site or deposited anywhere
they can  without direct cost to themselves. The problem then for the author
is how  to get people to read their texts, and get people to pay attention
to what  they are doing. Clearly the interesting work is rarely appearing
in the top  10,000 clips on u tube !! New kinds of tools for this are
proliferating  (one forgets that it took decades if not centuries after the 
invention  of
print for the systems of books, journal and associated IP to develop; it  will
presumably take decades after the invention of the internet before  semi
stable formats and functional IP systems are developed to be  consistent with
the new situation; The index at the back of a book took for  ever to be 
invented)

What a system like Leonardo does at the moment is  help bring attention to
the work of people who choose to publish in our  books our journals or web 
sites.
( over 100,000 article downloads a year).  So the authors who give some kind
of rights to Leonardo/MIT Press as part  of the current business model ensure
that their texts are archived  indefinitely in the scholarly on line
archives,
that their texts get  some attention from an intellectual community
internationally
to the  extent the Leonardo system attracts readers focused on  the
art/science/technology
interface.

I guess the open/closed  discussion always reminds me that none of the
approaches we are discussing  are in extreme situations and we are in a 
hybrid system
that is  evolving
.

roger


Hi

Just a note to say that I had  an article published in Leonardo where they
were prepared to accept a  non-exclusive license agreement to publish, rather
than transfer of  copyright. My experience is that many journals owned by the
multinationals  will do this if you agitate hard enough for it. The article
also appears  for free on my website, and has been republished in a book.

Of course,  access to knowledge is a critical issue, but I think there are a
lot of  different types of publishing economies out there, and many of  us
participate in them in different ways at different times. The  "old"
copyright regime still drives the publishing industry and will for a  while
yet...

Cheers,

Danny


On 29/04/2008, at 7:28  PM, Armin Medosch wrote:

Hi list

the problem is, I can never  submit a paper to anything done by Leonardo
because they adhere to the old  copyright regime. I have made a decision,
that everything i write is  published freely and should be available on
the internet without charge.  now has this anything to do with  FOSS?

regards
Armin





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