Re: Conference copyright policy versus the web and scientific progress [was Re: CfP Web Semantics (WebS) 2010]

David and Daniel

thanks a lot for this  important prompt

I feel very close to this issue because I have experienced in person the
difference that access to academic knowledge makes

While I have been writing on and off most of my life, it is only when I
worked on a university campus that all the pdf's would automatically open
when i clicked on them from the ACM and IEEE (should I say dereference uris?
forgive heresy)
  that's when I started gathering enough insight into issues and had enough
knowledge input to become a researcher myself. I those 3 years I spent on
campus as a lecturer, I read hundreds and hundred of papers, and eventually
started publishing myself

I  occasionally chair, and if there are no restrictions I obviously publish
the papers online, but the most prestigious academic publications retain
copyright.  I also sometimes surrender copyright when someone offers a
monetary compensation for my work,  which in the absence of other funding I
must accept.

I welcome your invitation to start taking responsibilty for this, and will
forward this suggestion to the IEEE events I am involved with hoping to
encourage it further. Not everyone may be in your position to threatene to
withdraw (yet) but its worth putting in a word (is there a petition
anywhere)

i think the tacit strategy is to publish near camera ready drafts in the
open,  I found more and more recently doint that

Even more interesting, encourage the diffusion of units of knowledge (such
as knols)

I take the opportunity to plug a recent initiative by Harvard Business
School, Global Knowledge Exchange, which everyone is welcome to join in
which such important issue is pursued and addressed in the form of open
debates
http://www.globalknowledgeexchange.net/about

and forthcoming related talks
http://www.globalknowledgeexchange.net/events
11 March, Accidental Innovation

And Lee Dirks archived talk at Berkman's
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/09/dirks




best

PDM






On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Daniel Schwabe <dschwabe@inf.puc-rio.br>wrote:

>  I fully agree with David's remarks...
> I was able to negotiate with Springer that SWSA be able to make the papers
> of the entire ISWC conference series (from 2006 onwards) freely available on
> the web (while still maintaining Springer's paid service, SpringerLink).
> These can be accessed as Linked Data on data.semanticweb.org.
> A similar policy has been in place for even longer for the WWW conference
> series.
>  I encourage everybody who is organizing events around the Semantic Web
> (and not only...) to use this service - the nickname for this site, for
> those who don't yet know, is "Dogfood Server", guess why ;-).
>
> It was not easy, but after a firm threat to move the ICWS conference to
> IEEE CS press (which DID allow that, apparently different from the parent
> IEEE Press, which is separate), they agreed. As conference/workshop chairs,
> we should take a stronger stand on these issues.
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
>
> On 19/02/10 17:13  - 19/02/10, David Booth wrote:
>
>
> The workshop sounds interesting, but the IEEE copyright terms are a
> throw-back to the pre-web era.  I personally find it quite annoying when
> scientific publications are locked behind pay-to-view policies.  I would
> not expect you to be able to change the policies for this workshop, but
> I hope that future events will permit authors to make their works freely
> available on the web, as that is what best advances science.
>
> Perhaps the credo:
>   "If it isn't on the web, it doesn't exist"
> should be elaborated further as:
>   "If it isn't freely accessible on the web, it doesn't exist"
>                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> My reaction may be due in part to the coincidental announcement of the
> Panton Principles that immediately preceded your message:http://www.pantonprinciples.org/
> Those principles nicely acknowledge the importance of freely available
> information to scientific progress.
>
> I fully recognize that the costs of running conferences and reviewing
> and publishing scientific information must be born somehow.  But
> "pay-as-you-view" is not the right model for scientific information.
>
> Thanks,
> David Booth
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>   Daniel Schwabe
> Tel:+55-21-3527 1500 r. 4356
> Fax: +55-21-3527 1530
> http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~dschwabe<http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/%7Edschwabe> Dept.
> de Informatica, PUC-Rio
> R. M. de S. Vicente, 225
> Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22453-900, Brasil
>



-- 
Paola Di Maio
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“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein
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