Last year I wished you all a Happy Open Access day and wondered if I should accept an invitation to write an article for a toll-access publication. The few comments I got on the blog and in person basically said go ahead and get my stuff out there, which I did, now all I have to do is wait. And wait. You can read the blog post about OAI-ORE that inspired the offer, though.
This year I was asked to write an article for another publisher. The paper has been written and submitted and accepted. As they charmingly put it:
A final disposition of “Accept” has been registered for the above-mentioned manuscript.
I have been invited to complete a few administrative tasks, including agreeing to the Journal Publishing Agreement. Basically this gives the publisher my copyright. I get the right to use my version for scholarly purposes, which means that I can post it here and stick it in ePrints at USQ and put it in a thesis, and even turn it into a book if I follow some conditions. Fair enough, I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to write the thing. I have to do it Elsevier’s way to get the prestige that goes with their brand.
Hang on! Elsevier?
The same Elsevier which published fake journals?
Will they use my, sorry their, paper to sell drugs? Or Microsoft Word?
I’m inclined to go ahead and click the button, because this is a chance for me to go through the process and see what it’s like. See how much value the editors add. See what the final product looks like. Use what I learn to work on Journal 2.0.
I don’t expect that toll-access journals are going to be at all relevant to the kind of work I do before too long, so this will be something to tell the grandkids about, how I wrote something for nothing and then gave the exploitation rights to a large corporation.
On the other hand, maybe I should stage a sit-in.
So, should I or should I not click the button that says Accept Agreement? Comments open below.
They do have a detailed explanation about why they need exclusive rights which is all about how people trust them. Right.
I think that the model where academia pays multiple times for their own work is so patently absurd, and the alternatives are working so well that this way of doing business will die.
Since I piped up last time, I’ll do it again: before you agree to a publisher copyright transfer, you could try one of the various Author Addenda to get them to agree to a better deal:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml
scholars.sciencecommons.org/
tillje.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/how-to-select-an-author-addendum/
That might solve some of the copyright issues and give you an even better look at the process.
(This might be a second submission, I truncated the urls because I suspect the first attempt was eaten by a spamfilter…)
I agree with Bill, change their agreement so that you license them rather than giving them your copyright and getting a partial licence back. Try it and see (don’t ask, change their licence, sign it and send back). Every time I’ve tried, no one the other end has noticed.
The robustness with which you can play this game depends on the extent that your promotion, tenure, institutional funding etc depends on publishing in journals like the one you have chosen.
Whatever happens, reserve the right to do what you will with your own work. Give them an embargo period if they really need it (they do have a business to pay for, after all). But after a reasonable time, you need to be able to put it up on your IR, blog it, present on it, use it for teaching, etc. And so do your mates.
[Trying this a second time...]
I agree with Chris and Bill: no harm in trying. From what you’ve written, their agreement probably lets you do what you want, so the only really objectionable thing in it is the transfer of copyright itself. So it’s worth seeing if they’ll agree to you licensing them rather than the other way around.
But even if they don’t agree, I’d say click that button anyway. See it as a learning experience and use the information gained to help undermine their business model. (And blog every step so that the rest of us can share the goodness.)
And I think you’re entitled to at least one experience of basking in the doomed, fading glory of commercial journal publishing. A bit like visiting a stinky old factory and buying a souvenir before it gets bulldozed and turned into a park…
So nobody said I should boycott the journal and commenters encouraged me to negotiate license terms. I didn’t get around to that but I got a reminder from the publisher that they will go ahead and publish and assume that I agree unless I tell the otherwise. So I replied with this.