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websites, ftp, and copyright


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Dear Colleagues:
   As many of you know, with the increasing use of web- and ftp-sites for
depositing papers, there is a problem about copyright and legal issues about
who owns the rights to your papers and if you can distribute electronic copies
(particularly after they have been published). I am thinking mainly of
Journals but certainly the same question exists for other types of published
material. This came to note recently at McGill when a statistician 
was ordered by Academic Press to remove something from his website, for 
copyright violation (see the web-site of Keith Worsley, 
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/~keith
(see his article 1995 by Worsley,Marrett, Neelin, Evans--when
you click on it the letter from AP will appear) ). Independently of this 
particular case, the issue is obviously of increasing importance, given
universal use of electronic sites at universities as well as shrinking 
library budgets.  There are many issues, from questions of how to keep in 
business traditional, high-quality journals (indeed, if they will--or should--
continue to exist in these days of web-publishing and electronic journals), 
to practical questions of what kind of publications will count towards tenure,
promotion, research grants, etc. Viewpoints of academics vary considerably, 
from those who wish to continue the stability of traditional journals to 
those who wish to have non-commercial electronic publishing. I suspect
economics will ultimately rule, but rational discussion with publishers
has begun. 

On a practical note,during  recent e-mail discussions with some colleagues
(M. Barr, P. Freyd, A. Meyer, M. Mislove, J. Mitchell, A. Nerode, A. Scedrov),
it was pointed out repeatedly that authors should keep their electronic 
rights, either by explicitly writing such on the copyright form mailed
to them by publishers, or use some kind of general form.  Andre Scedrov
and John Mitchell kindly supplied the Stanford form, which I enclose below.
I should also point out that many professional academic organizations
(American and Canadian Math. Soc, Association of Symbolic Logic, etc.)
and several commercial publishers do allow authors to keep electronic copies
of their articles on public e-mail sites. 

			Your comments much appreciated.

			Cheers,

			Philip Scott
			
			(phil@csi.uottawa.ca)

==========================================================

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 11:28:22 -0400
From: scedrov@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Andre Scedrov)
Posted-Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 11:28:22 -0400
Subject: Re: copyright, academics, and websites
Status: R
I have been using the following form, which comes from Stanford, without
any problems with hardcopy journals. I have not tried it yet with electronic
journals.

Some hardcopy journals, like the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, maintain freely
available electronic files of their published papers in their websites.

  Best,

  Andre

*******************************************************
ATTACHMENT FOR PUBLISHER AGREEMENTS

Note: this form should be attached to the publisher copyright form
when the material you are submitting for publication is in whole, or
in substantial part, available through the _____________ University
Electronic Library.

I,                              , have granted ____________ University
nonexclusive rights to perform, display, and distribute
all/ a substantial part/ of an earlier version of
(name of article)__________________________________________________

to be published in
(name ofpublication)_______________________________________________

_____________ University has the right to make this information available
through electronic distribution and through its printed technical reports
series.