Author's Rights: Going Too Far - Or Industry Standard?

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Is Author's Rights going too far, as a couple of recent 
commenters have suggested - or, are liberal author's rights 
rapidly becoming an industry standard?

The recent statement on the topic by the STM / PSP / ALPSP groups 
suggests the latter, that the emerging standard in the industry 
is liberal copyright which leaves most rights with the author.

 From the Statement:

Standard journal agreements typically allow authors:

* To use their published paper in their own teaching and generally
within their institution for educational purposes
* To send copies to their research colleagues
* To re-use portions of their paper in further works or book
chapters, and
* To post some version of the paper on a pre-print server, their
Institutional Repository or a personal web site (though sometimes not
for the weekly news-oriented science or medical magazines, for public
health and similar reasons)

It is also noteworthy that the language refers to grants of 
copyright or publishing agreements, an accurate reflection of 
this moment in the transition to open access, when many, but not 
all, publishers have moved to a "license to publish" and away 
from the older and unnecessary copyright transfer agreement.

This is not open access, but definitely a step in the right 
direction!  (Even if the sentence starting though sometimes 
not...is just a little obscure).

The STM/PSP/ALPSP position statement was recently posted to 
Liblicense, at: 
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0803/msg00035.html

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com