Why do some academic journals websites bother with saying articles are “only available in print edition?
Possibly so, because most authors of academic journal articles do not hold the copyright to the article itself. Yet, probably not, because authors who republish their journal articles may be exercising a clause in their contracts with journals which permit this kind of redistribution. Does this mean your bootleg journal Web site would run afoul of the publisher of the journal. I say no. Libraries effectively provide the same kind of service through Web based indices for their patrons. Thus a huge majority of the audience for these works can get it for free with little work already. You sound as though you wish to address the small minority of independent, unaffiliated researchers and scholars who otherwise would need to buy an individual subscription or go to the library themselves. Who knows what this means? Independent researchers, however, would thank you. The North Carolina State University Libraries has a nice Web site on scholarly copyri
Libraries generally don’t have any special license BUT subscriptions to journals cost more for “institutional” subscriptions than personal ones. Many journals that libraries buy come as part of a bundled package… you get the journal, plus the electronic version, plus some other journals that aren’t as good, for one low price. As a result, it can be tough to say what a lot of scholarly journals actually cost. In terms of articles, there are a lot of kinds of permission forms you sign when you write for scholarly journals. Since most of these writing gigs don’t reallly pay [they know you are doing it for your vita/resume or to get tenure] generally you can get a waiver to use your article “for personal use.” The article I finished this weekend, for example, will be owned by the publisher but I can republish it on my website, and my website only. If you linked to it, hey, that’s just the way the Internet works, isn’t it?
A lot of journals are published by professional associations on a more-or-less break-even basis. In mathematics, at least, this is untrue. Most of the journals are produced by mammoth publishing houses (Academic Press, Elsevier, Springer-Verlag). Subscriptions to the print versions run into the the mid-thousands of dollars per year. They also benefit from the peer-review process: people accept it as part of the job to referee papers for free. If i built a web page with links to all these articles would i be in copyright violation? I can’t imagine how this would be true. It’s on the web, you can link to it. This is how the web works. You’re not the one placing the material online, and presumably the author has signed the copyright-waiver agreement and either (a) made sure it allowed him/her to post the article, or (b) posted it anyway. By the way, I’ve been told that authors are free to cross out any provisions in those copyright agreements that they disagree with (e.g., items limiting
Just to amplify Xenophobe’s point: Elsevier and Pergammon are very prolific publishers too, but the big boys are run by the professional societies. The Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS and its progeny) is the premiere chemical journal. Physical Review (A-E), PRL, etc… from the APS is the ne plus ultra for physics. The AMA dominates health science publishing. None of these societies have any plans to open their content. Indeed, the ACS, in particular, commands the highest prices for their journals. The ACS (and others) really, really don’t like researchers posting published articles on-line. Every journal of which I am aware requires that you assign copyright to them before they’ll publish. Heck, in Canada, I had to assign exclusive copyright for my thesis to the National Library. I can’t even make copies of that available—you have to buy them from the library.
Mileage varies farther than that by field. In poli-sci, there are relatively few journals, and all the good ones are run by associations. Even the ones with a “real” publisher — the AJPS is printed by Blackwell for the MidwestPSA — are cheap ($242 /year for a library, included with membership for individuals). So while I might post up a copy of a recent article on my web page, I wouldn’t want everybody and their brother linking to it, really, since I wouldn’t want to disincent people / schools from getting the journal. Besides, just about every journal in poli-sci that matters is up on jstor, though the windows vary in length, and most libraries have other electronic access to the most recent year or two that’s not jstor’ed yet. It’s also part of a different culture of publication — fewer publications that are harder to get and a bigger deal. You can get tenure in poli-sci with as little as six to ten articles, but each of our articles runs 30–50
Related Questions
- Do articles published on the internet have the same legal and academic status as articles published in journals? Can such articles be included on a c.v.?
- Why do some academic journals websites bother with saying articles are "only available in print edition?
- Why bother keeping the print journals at all?
