Re: Copyright expiration for journals?

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Martin J. Osborne wrote:

> Hi Stevan.  Do you know if copyright for journal articles expires at
> some point, as it does for books?

Hi Martin,

That's a good question, and I don't know. I am forwarding your question to
the
three copyright lists. I add only that with 92% of journals giving authors
the
green light to self-archive, the question is largely moot. (Once the
percentage of
the peer-reviewed journal literature that is Open Access through
self-archiving
approaches 100%, there is no turning back, ever.)

    http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/greenroad.html

The copyright issue differs in this domain -- the author give-away domain --
from
other domains (books, music, software, videos). As soon as policy and
practice
are reformed, the situation is corrected forever.

    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1

For the retrospective (legacy) literature, there is still a problem (and it
is
perhaps that problem that you have in mind with your question. My own guess
would be that reaching 100% OA for the current and future literature will
clear
the way for the legacy literature too, especially as the lion's share of it's
sales value has been often been reported lately as exhausted within 6-12
months
of publication.

Best wishes,

Stevan

Stevan Harnad
Chaire de recherche du Canada
Centre de neuroscience de la cognition (CNC)
Universiti du Quibec ` Montrial
Montrial, Quibec,  Canada  H3C 3P8
tel: 1-514-987-3000 2461#
fax: 1-514-987-8952
harnad@xxxxxxx
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/

> Martin
>
> --
> Martin J. Osborne
> Department of Economics
> 150 St. George Street
> University of Toronto
> Toronto
> M5S 3G7
> Canada
> http://www.economics.utoronto.ca
>
> martin.osborne@xxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne