SLA and copyright
SLA has announced a Call for Papers to be presented at its 2005 Conference in Toronto. Among the requirements:
The author (and any co-authors) also must be willing to sign a copyright assignment that will permit SLA to use the paper in various formats.
Authors must sign the same form for articles to appear in Information Outlook.
SLA's copyright assignment form is here. And the first sentence says it all: "I hereby transfer and assign the copyright in the above article to Special Libraries Association."
Unfortunately, there's no provision for copyright licensing akin to ALA's licensing for its journals and other pubs. T'is a pity, that.
Comments
Wow. I know that I was a tad hard on the ALA in my paper, but this is even worse. I wonder what would happen if you contacted them and asked if it was possible to use an alternate copyright form (like, oh....a Creative Commons license?).
Posted by: Jason | September 21, 2004 12:21 PM
I don't know. I suspect they'd put a stake in my heart, cut off my head, stuff my throat with garlic and bury me at a crossroads.
My questions are:
1) has anyone ever balked at their terms (my hunch is no)?
2) what is the justification (or even if they have one beyond 'this is the way we've always done it and no one's complained before') for not having any additional options for author's copyright?
Luckily, the Executive Director is in town this week, so perhaps she'll have some answers for me. Yay.
Posted by: misseli | September 21, 2004 01:11 PM
Excellent. I'd love to know what she says...I'd guess that you're right, no one has ever suggested alternatives. That's our job now, suggesting alternatives that no one has thought of...the perils of the newly minted librarian. (Or, in my case, the newly minted librarian who is currently pretending to be a web designer).
Posted by: Jason | September 22, 2004 08:46 AM