Re: Authors rights: Going too far

[Beth Weil <bweil@library.berkeley.edu>]

Expectations in a web world of scholarly communication are
rapidly changing and citing old works about researchers'
traditional value system isn't particularly relevant today. 
Today's realities are that Harvard Arts and Sciences faculty
voted unanimously to adopt an open access mandate for its faculty
members' research publications. A University of California study
on Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly
Communication found that 22% of respondents said they had
published in an open an access publication and 23% expected to do
more in the coming year.

The bottom line is that if funders like Welcome Trust, HHMI and
NIH want material to be open access or available publicly in
PubMed Central researchers will do it and institutions (including
librarians) should do what they can to facilitate this.
Including authors' rights in license agreements can smooth the
path for authors complying with their funders' mandates or
increase the impact of their work by making it more widely
available. Of course, it's clear that there are significant
differences between disciplines, which might lead to the wide
ranging opinions on this topic.

Beth Weil
Marian Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library
University of California, Berkeley

Phil Davis wrote:

Upon hindsight, I must first admit that the words I chose in my
previous post, 'livid' and 'ridiculous' are somewhat hyperbolic.
To those who base their retort on the choice of these words, I'm
happy to substitute 'concerned' and 'problematic.'

Surveys and interviews of authors repeatedly confirm that
author-rights are not very important to academics in their choice
where to publish. To argue that authors don't understand what
they are signing essentially confirms that they are ambivalent
about author rights and put more weight on other journal
characteristics, namely: prestige, timeliness, peer review, etc.

Contrary to the storybook version of science, in which scientists tirelessly 
and selflessly toil to advance knowledge and the
welfare of society, we must accept a more realistic view in which
the scientists are principally motivated by their desire to
obtain recognition from their peers. The formal publication
process represents this exchange of information (manuscripts) for
social recognition [1]. Geog Franck describes scientific
communication as a 'vanity fair.' [2]

What initially irked me about Heather Morrison's post was the
real notion that librarians may be basing their collection
decisions on the values *they* believe are important, as opposed
to the values authors and readers believe are important. Garvey's
seminal book in which he coined the well-known phrase
'communication is the essence of science' [3] did something
amazing for the field of librarianship, he *actually recognized*
librarians as peers in the communication process -- not glorified
secretaries and clerks, but peers! It therefore concerns me when
the ethos of librarianship (or perhaps the disproportionate
voices of a few), changes the role of the librarian from helping
to *facilitate* the scholarly communication process to
controlling it. Or to be more explicit, exerting their own values
into a model that has been developed to serve those who are not
librarians. This is the basis of my earlier reference to my
mother making me eat my greens.

While I acknowledge the other side of the argument (librarians as
fiscal managers, librarians as social welfare maximizers,
librarians as championing the rights of the disenfranchised), we
are essentially arguing from different value frames. I see the
role of librarians as facilitators of the formal scholarly
communication process [4]. This is a position of great
responsibility and something not to dismiss lightly. I don't
imagine that these values will ingratiate me with a list devoted
to librarianship, although I feel they need to be expressed since
they underscore the rationale of my previous post.

--Phil Davis

Notes:

[1] Hagstrom, W. O. (1965). The scientific community. New York: Basic
Books.

[2] Franck, G. (1999). Scientific Communication--A Vanity Fair?
Science, 286(5437), 53-55.

[3] Garvey, W. D. (1979). Communication, the essence of science :
facilitating information exchange among librarians, scientists,
engineers, and students. New York: Pergamon Press.

[4] I want to distinguish the formal publication process as a small
part of the whole scholarly communication process. Most of the
communication of science is informal.