Electronic publishing

[Mark Purnell <map2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Of relevance to the ongoing discussion of publication on the www:
I have recently been corresponding with Elsevier about the possibility 
of incorporating information from a published paper into a web 
document, in much the same way that information would be incorperated 
into a review paper.  They were quite cagey about this, and their 
response gives some idea of how at least one major commercial 
scientific publisher is dealing with this issue.  Their transfer of 
copyright form now specifically prohibits authors from distributing 
electronic copies of published papers in a systematic way (e.g.via an 
e-mail list or public file server).  In some cases they have allowed 
authors to post abstracts of papers on their home pages some time 
(several months) after publication.  Interestingly, they address 
specifically the issue that originally sparked this debate in stating 
that authors must agree that preprints of work that have been posted 
to a www server will not be updated so as to make them identical to 
the final published version (I am paraphrasing here so as to avoid 
possible copyright problems!)  Not surprisingly, it seems that the big 
boys with a clear vested interest in printed paper are already one 
step ahead!



Dr Mark A. Purnell

Department of Geology, University of Leicester
University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, U.K
tel: 0116 2523645  fax: 0116 2523918