Re: OA monographs

[JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

Not a direct answer, but possibly some reasons why:

Journal articles are in the main subject to 'publish or perish'. 
Monographs not. The ideal copyright line for a journal author is: 
"(c) Me. Please copy this article as often as possible and 
distribute it as widely as possible. Just make sure you 
acknowledge that it's mine."

That makes open access superbly suitable for journal articles -- 
primary research articles. That should make such journal articles 
also quite naturally follow the model of advertising (despite the 
differences): originator-side payment.

This *may* apply to monographs (there are monographs that are 
published with subsidies -- if the subsidy is sufficient, those 
could easily be published online with open access instead); it 
*does* apply to research journals.

Another difference is that the decision to publish is the 
editors' for journal articles, but the publishers' for 
monographs, making a 'financial firewall' and therefore a 'vanity 
publishing barrier' rather more difficult.

Jan Velterop


----- Original Message ----
From: Brian Simboli <brs4@lehigh.edu>
To: SPARC-OAForum@arl.org; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Tuesday, 18 July, 2006 11:11:24 PM
Subject: OA monographs

(cross-posted)

A question that I posed to another listserv, but that might be 
germane to soaf and liblicense.

Is there is an OA movement, akin to the "green rights movement" 
with respect to journals, to beseech publishers to allow authors 
to post a copy of their monographs on the web?  If not, why 
hasn't this been an emphasis?

The difference here would be that green rights are rights to 
self-archive some version of already publisher-published ejournal 
articles, whereas this would be a case of authors gaining rights 
to publish electronically monographs that are sometimes available 
from the publisher only in paper and sometimes also 
electronically available.

Brian Simboli
Science Librarian
Library & Technology Services
E.W. Fairchild Martindale
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015-3170
E-mail: brs4@lehigh.edu