From the monthly archives: November 2007

If I cite the source I am using, can it still be copyright infringement? (weekly widget)

On November 30, 2007 By

Citation is a cure for plagiarism, which is a different, but related, problem from copyright infringement. Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of the work of another — falsely claiming or creating the impression that you are the creator of someone else’s work. It is possible to plagiarize a work even if it is not protected [...]

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What makes a journal valuable?

On November 28, 2007 By

For almost 90 years, librarians, faculty authors, tenure review committees and publishers themselves have relied on a single measure – the impact factor – to determine the relative quality of different scholarly journals. Impact factors are based on the number of times articles from a particular journal are cited in other scholarly articles. The citations [...]

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By any other name?

On November 26, 2007 By

Last week Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries (and formerly Provost) at the University of Michigan, posted a thoughtful blog entry on “Why I hate the phrase scholarly communications.” He is kind enough to say some nice things about this blog in his post, for which we are grateful, but I don’t want to [...]

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Should I register my copyright? (weekly widget)

On November 21, 2007 By

It is no longer necessary to register in order to have copyright protection, just as it is not required anymore to have the symbol (c) attached to a work in order to protect it. Copyright protection is automatic, starting as soon as a work is fixed in tangible form. But registration is still important in [...]

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Desperate ploy, or copyright coup?

On November 19, 2007 By

In the digital age, it is hard to imagine that personal photocopying still poses much of a worry for copyright owners. Isn’t the real problem, after all, the ability to make perfect copies and to share them instantly with thousands of others? Traditional photocopying poses neither of these dangers, and personal copying is a long [...]

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So what is in the public domain? (weekly widget)

On November 15, 2007 By

The public domain, according to Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, “is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon.” In the United States, anything that was published before 1923 is in the public domain. [...]

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P2P and New Business Models

On November 14, 2007 By

Peer-to-peer file sharing is usually not a scholarly communications issue in itself. Most such activity involves the infringing reproduction and distribution of music and video files, and it is more of a problem for colleges and universities than a benefit. Nevertheless, there are legitimate forms of file-sharing that happen at universities (and between them), [...]

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How long does copyright last? (weekly widget, a little late)

On November 11, 2007 By

The original term of copyright protection in England was 14 years. In the US it began, in 1790, at, potentially, 28 years (a 14 year term that could be renewed once), then went to a system of two terms of 28 years, so that a renewed copyright lasted for 56 years. In 1976 we changed [...]

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To Assign or Not To Assign?

On November 6, 2007 By

The International Association of Scientific, technical and Medical Publishers issued a statement last month on the benefits to authors of assigning copyright to publishers. The thrust of the statement is that publishers are better placed than authors to defend against plagiarism and copyright infringement, to ensure broad dissemination of the articles in question, [...]

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Second thoughts

On November 5, 2007 By

On Google — the New Yorker has a learned and fascinating article on the Google Library project this month, by historian Anthony Grafton. The Google project has gotten inordinate praise in some quarters, as well as its share of criticism (see here, for my contribution to the latter). But Grafton’s article is [...]

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