Re: Electronic Publishing

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Heinz Hilbrecht posted:

>In other fields (e.g. physics) the distribution of preprints is routine.
>The Max Planck Institution of Radioastronomy, for example, has a dedicated
>pre-print server (http://babbage.sissa.it/). Doesn't this save a lot of
>trees and money, and isn't this more democratic? Everybody can have
>preprints from this server - not only people who are lucky to get the
>expensive (and usually bad) copy on paper. I see disadvantages only when I
>see the few WWW sites outside industrialised countries.

 and Norm MacLeod said:
>
>My own view is that electronic publishing is here to stay. Let's get busy
>solving the problems its existence poses and making sure paleontology
>benefits from access to this tool rather than wondering whether electronic
>publishing its a good/bad thing to have occurred. Like motor cars,
>airplanes, light bulbs, and (yes) computers, its already happened. The only
>thing left for us to do is deal with it.
>

There is a whole lot out there, for sure.  Medical journals are going
online fast, as well as others.  But there are lots of other
considerations, many of which are brought out in some of the following
references.

FYI, Physics Today has a nice piece on "Electronic publishing of scientific
journals" in its Jan 96 issue (v. 49: 42-47) with these sections in it:
WWW, Electronic Publishing (what it is), Progress (reviews where science
publ. is in this medium), Possible Approaches (ways in which the Amer.
Astronomical Soc. and Amer. Inst. Physics have tried to develop; all remain
experimental), Property Rights (see below, because this is very
interesting), A Paradigm Shift (new effects on sci. organizations--both
decreases and increases efforts and costs), Impediments to Progress
(established jour. publishers slow to adopt electronic pub, but at their
own risk; sheer size of endeavor; editing mss for posting a big, big
problem), Who Will Pay?  (how to charge users; savings from postage, ms
preparation by authors, printing are offset by additional cost of copy
editing mss on-line; plus still a strong demand for paper copies; and
more).

More on Property Rights:  Not very clear yet, legally.  I.e, shareware,
freeware type programs.   In the US, the copyright law of 1976 established
that all documents are automatically copyrighted as soon as they are
written.  CR belongs to the author or to whomever contracted the author to
do the work.  Posting a document on the Internet is equivalent to
publication.  If you post a document which is copyrighted by another
person, you violate CR law.  "Anyone who develops a WWW home page is, in
effect, a publisher".  Thus, the owner of the WWW hp must legally obtain
permission from the CR holder.  Interestingly, "this is true . . . for
email messages" as well.

Most of us are probably unaware of these legalities.    If you post a
manuscript accepted (in some cases, maybe even submitted, depending on
wording) by a copyrighted journal or have signed a contract for chapters in
a book, you are in violation of copyright unless you have permission to do
so.  Some examples:  Elsevier journals explicitely state that upon
acceptance, authors are asked to transfer CR.  Science (5 Jan 96; 271: 93)
understands that  authors agree to transfer CR (including electronic
rights) to Science when the paper is accepted.  Jour. Paleo. copyrights
each issue but has no statement of when the CR is transferred.
Paleobiology is the same, except that it adds that in return for
publication, PB has exclusive rights, including computer-assisted storage
and readout, and it copyrights all articles.  Palaios says nothing.  The
major legal difference between the circulation of copies for private use
(preprints) and posting on the Internet (even by email) is that posting
constitutes a violation of copyright!  Publishers can get you!  Probably
scientific society journals would not make a big deal out of it, but
University and commercial publishers could easily bring suit.

The issue of email is frought with all kinds of horrors.  We usually write
email as though it were conversation.  In some organizations, usually
corporations, email gets backed up and saved along with other computer
stuff.  These emails can and have been used in court cases in the US
involving all kinds of issues.  One example in the newspaper dealt with the
transmission of a joke (something derogatory about women) by email within a
corporation that was used to demonstrate that the company was sexist.  The
Corp. lost the case and paid lots of money.  In any organization, emails
could be requested legally for use.  How do you protect yourself and your
organization--don't be conversational on email, don't gossip, don't write
or relay anything that can be interpreted as violating any employment
regulations or any other of a multitude of issues.  You are not simply
talking electronically, you are distributing your opinions and views to
others in a permanent medium.  You might do lots of deletions, but keep in
mind that even then computer jocks can reconstruct messages off your hard
disks, unless you run a radomization program over it.

Now, emails are also copyrighted in the US by 1976 law, so we should not be
passing them around either, as many of us do with the easy forward or
redirect commands on our software.

The lawyers in the US will use anything they can to get a case, and email
is an increasingly favorite target because so many people do not know its
legal status.  I'm not even sure I have it right in the above, but if
anything, I'd bet I don't know the half of it.  Be damn careful on the
Internet!!

Jere



Jere H. Lipps,  Director
Museum of Paleontology
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720 USA

Voice:  510-642-9006.  Fax:  510-642-1822
Internet:  jlipps@ucmp1.berkeley.edu
WWW:  http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu