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It's worth noting that STC's "requirement to transfer copyright for
symposium papers" is neither unusual nor greedy. It is, in fact, the
standard practice adopted by most "not for profit" academic publishers
(journals in general and STC in this particular case). Since these
publishers barely make enough money to cover their costs, they can't
afford to pay authors.
Please note that I don't extend the courtesy of this understanding to
the for-profit publishers, who by and large are a bunch of monopolistic
pirates. But that's another rant.
Because of the way copyright law is interpreted in the U.S., it's far
easier for such publishers to ask for a full copyright transfer than to
negotiate one-time publication rights or something more complicated.
If, for example, the contents of a journal or symposium proceedings
will be included in an abstracting journal (e.g., Biology Abstracts) or
similar publication (e.g., Current Contents), or is archived at a
national library (e.g., Library of Congress), it would be prohibitively
difficult to keep contacting the author to ask for permission each
time.
I'm not fully convinced of this logic, since a good lawyer (ahem <g>)
should be able to write a "permission to publish" agreement in such a
way as to leave the copyright in the author's hands without tying the
publisher's hands, but since the "all rights" transfer is the standard
(and I say this having worked with journals for nearly 20 years), I
have to assume that the lawyers know something I don't.
This is a very different situation from the often-piratical practice of
newspaper syndicates and magazines, some of whom try to steal every
right they can get away with and not pay for it.
The key thing to note here is that STC "will grant a non-exclusive,
royalty-free license or will reassign the copyright back to the author"
on request. This is more than fair; many commercial publishers will go
to just about any length to avoid letting you republish your own work.
If you object to this practice, the simplest solution is to publish
your article on your own Web site before you submit it to a conference
proceedings or journal, thereby securing copyright to the specific
version that you published. In my experience*, most proceedings and
journal editors are quite happy to accept "2nd publication rights", or
rights to the version of the article they publish. That way, everyone's
happy.
* 8 years signing copyright releases for the Canadian federal
government and 10 more for my former employer.
Chuck Martin observed: <<And I'll bet this policy keeps many popular
and well-known industry writers from presenting at the STC
conference.>>
This is indeed true, at least based on the anecdotal evidence that I
have heard. But on the other hand, it doesn't stop many exceedingly
well known authors (Saul Carliner, for instance) from publishing in
journals. The decision comes down to your goals for publishing: if you
publish solely for money, you go to paying markets (not non-profits)
and try to keep whatever rights you can; if you're publishing as a
public good, you keep the right to republish your own material, but
don't get paid for publishing. Speaking as someone with more than 250
publication credits, both are satisfying strategies.
--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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