Nature lets authors keep copyright

oever writes "In the latest issue of Nature, it says that the copyright for all articles published by the Nature Publishing Group will remain with the article's authors. (I guess I'll have to publish in Nature from now on.) However, to publish an article in Nature, you still have to agree on some limitations with respect to publishing the article in other media. For example, you can put a PDF on you webpage but it's not allowed to add the article to an archive (Google cache?)."

Comments

Finally

[Xner]

Good to see that a major publication realised the threat that collaborative efforts would pose to its business model in the long run, and decided to take pro-active steps to decrease the discontent among its contributors.

I think it is a wonderful example not only for other journals (Nature is pretty much The Jounal, and if Nature can do it, other publishers are going to seriously consider it), but also for other industries that, when new developments threaten their business model, react in ways that are much more defensive and, ultimately, irritating for all concerned.

Re:Finally

[guerby]

The Nature grant of some rights is a joke, see below from the FAQ. You have no right to reuse your own article excepted in printed paper form, yeah. The way is still long until science and public interest recovers from these thieves...

How can I show my article to my colleagues?

By sending a link to the paper on your website. You may not distribute the PDF by email, on listservs or on open archives. Please remember that although the content of the article is your copyright, its presentation (i.e. its typographical layout as a printed page) remains our copyright.

Re:Finally

[Zocalo]

I think you missed a point (or I have) as the "distribute the PDF by email..." bit is a bit vague - what does "the PDF" mean, exactly? The text of the article submitted as a PDF, or a PDF of the pages actually in the printed Magazine? There's a big difference.

What I think Nature is saying is that you retain copyright of the article, and presumably any illustrations you submitted, but Nature retains copyright of the layout and any illustations they added. This seems perfectly fair to me, provided that it does indeed mean that I could post the ASCII representation, or even my own layout, of my article to all and sundry.

There is also the "fair use" issue of photocopying articles in publications of course, but that's another point, and the restrictions there are pretty well known.

Interpretation.

[Xner]

You have no right to reuse your own article excepted in printed paper form, yeah.

It might be me, but I see nothing of the kind in the license. What I do see however are the magic words "Ownership of Copyright remains with the authors", provided that when reproducing the contrubution the journal is acknowldged and referenced.

It is not entirely clear to me why the Authors should need to retain any "non-exclusive rights" since they are still the owners of the copyright. My guess is that they left it in from the previous version for clarity.

The restrictions on the reproduction of the original PDF and printed paper stem from the fact that the typesetting constitutes a derivative work by the Nature Publishing Group. You are however free to distribute your contribution to the paper (without nature's formatting, e.g. re-latexing it) in whatever way you please. As far as I can tell, it is completely unencumbered.

Re:Interpretation.

[Snowhare]

No - it is SEVERELY encumbered. The very first paragraph of the license basically says "You give us the exclusive right for any existing or future paper, electronic, or undiscovered forms of distribution of this article until the copyright expires. Oh yeah - ditto for all derivative works (translations, summaries, etc)."

The second para then says, "But you can print it on paper or post it on your own website or use it in teaching at your university."

And this is different from giving Nature the copyright and them then granting the original author an extremely restricted license exactly how?

This smells more like Nature is scared that someone is going to figure out a way to say "Nature - you don't own the electronic rights on papers published in your magazine - and never did. Too Bad." Something like the LEXUS-NEXUS fiasco where the courts held that LEXUS-NEXUS has improperly stolen authors works by redistributing them electronically beyond the original paper publication. And so they have come up with a creative way of trying to put contract law on their side while still spinning it as "We are good guys! Really!"

"no archive"

[g4dget]

Publishing has a notion of "archival publication". Traditionally, if several libraries held copies, it was archival. Today, that function is also fulfilled by services like Arxiv.ORG. An archival publication can be cited as such. Nature probably wants to avoid that there are multiple archival copies of a paper.

I'm not sure I like the restriction, but at least I can understand why a traditional publisher or librarian might want to impose it.

The Google cache shouldn't be a problem, and Citeseer shouldn't be a problem either (it doesn't try to be archival, as far as I can tell).

Google cache is not an archive

[ivan256]

When a page goes away, it expires from the google cache some finite period of time afterward. It's not an archive, it's a cache.

IANAL, however...

[Spock the Baptist]

After reading the NPG's License to Publish I believe that the author/s of articles submitted to NPG do not give up the copyright to the words, figures, and tables which were submitted by the author/s, but merely the copyright of the layout of the article published by NPG.

In other words you can take the words, figures, and tables that you submit, and rearrange them and then republish them, and be in the clear as far as NPG is concerned.

Nurture lets authors keep copyright...

[Hubert_Shrump]

Parenting declared illegal by Jack Valenti.