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Sally Morris
No doubt publishers have paid their own tributes to Sally Morris
on her retirement as Chief Executive of ALPSP, but this tribute
comes from one who holds great respect for Sally's work in
constructive dialogues with the academic and library communities.
Sally's contribution in two for a demonstrated her wish to
approach difficult topics in a way which would produce solutions
rather than problems, understanding rather than confrontation. In
the late 1990s Sally played a major role in the JISC/PA
discussions in the UK, discussions which tackled difficult topics
such as the place of fair dealing in an electronic environment
and which were held under "Chatham House" rules, i.e. we could
express views openly without being reported. This environment
helped those of us from the academic and library communities to
explore and understand the publishers' viewpoint and I hope
enabled publishers to explore and understand our viewpoint. The
JISC/PA discussions also had a practical outcome in the form of a
Model Licence which Sally had a big hand in drafting.
This approach was followed in the discussions in the Zwolle Group
set up by SURF to enable a dialogue on copyright between all
stakeholders, and again Sally played a vital role in that
dialogue. We managed to get away from the controversial issue of
who should own copyright, partly going back to principles and
partly considering practical questions of particular rights
important to the various stakeholders. I am not going to pretend
that all differences were resolved. We still disagreed -
sometimes fundamentally - on some matters in both the JISC/PA
discussions and in the Zwolle Group, but for most of the time
these were constructive discussions from which we all learned a
great deal. Sally's contribution helped this process along in a
way which was very positive, and I thank her for it. We still
face many difficult issues in the changes taking place in
scholarly communication and I hope that we can talk about those
issues in the constructive way we talked about the difficult
issues of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Sally, I thank you and wish you a happy retirement!
Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk