Copyright and author credits

[Susanne Schulmeister]

Hi,

 --- Guido Mathieu <gmathieu at WEBFABRIEK.BE> schrieb: > When fine-tuning
the copyright rules for digital publications I think it
> should be good to concern first descriptions as a kind of exception.
> There are some arguments for it...
>
> 1. Copyright was created to guarantee the earnings of the original
> author. If an alternative publication would have the result of
> diminishing the
> authors' income, that would be theft. The example of Napster was a
> good one...
> But I wonder how many authors make money on their first
> descriptions...?

Even though, in our profession, most authors do not have a commercial
interest in their publication and appreciate "use" of their
publications as long as it is appropriatly cited, we should not forget
that there IS a commercial interest tied to these publications -- that
of the PUBLISHER. The publishers need to make money with their journals
and if the articles were freely available on the net, hardly any
library would pay for them anymore. That is why you usually only get
free access to those journals for which your library pays money for the
print version. (Other journals allow free access to everyone, but only
to articles older than 6 months  or so.) Of course, this does not apply
to all journals, e.g. some journals that are published by Societies,
paid for with membership fees, but it applies to many of the more
prominent journals. And often the membership fees aren't enough to
cover the cost of the journal, so that the publisher still depends on
selling it to libraries..


 > 3. There is no sort of publication were more credits are given to
the
> original author as in first descriptions, because the authors' name
> in an
> integral part of the new taxon name.

I have read this several times before.
But in most papers, even though the name of the author of the first
description is given in the Material and Methods section (or at the
first mentioning of the species), the citation of that article is not
provided in the references section. Hence, it will not go into the
citation record of that author.
So, what is this credit worth? Nothing, except for an idealistic value,
as far as I can see. But correct me if I'm wrong.

Susanne


=====
New journal: ODE - Organisms, Diversity and Evolution
by the Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik.
http://www.urbanfischer.de/journals/ode

Susanne Schulmeister
Institute of Zoology and Anthropology
University of Göttingen, Germany

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