Self-Interest in Publishing

When I posted yesterday on the Springer contract, I did not mean to be suggesting an altruistic action, mine or anybody else's. Thus, I felt a bit abashed when "Anon. grad student" wrote: "I really admire your willingness to pass up a publication opportunity to make some progress in remedying the terrible copyright situation." That wasn't my intention at all.

Let me be clearer. I am at a stage of my career when my motivation to publish is simply to get my ideas out in the most effective possible way. As such, I face a very different set of incentives than a graduate student or untenured assistant professor. When I decided that I wasn't going to sign Springer's contract, my motives were completely selfish, and I did not mean to recommend my course of action to anybody else. At this stage of my career, self-archiving is important to me. That was my first thought. Secondly, my piece was a comment on somebody else's (Frances Egan's) work. (And I feel bad that I am inconveniencing her.) Had it been an original piece—as was my 2010 Philosophical Studies piece—I would probably have swallowed my bile and pressed on (though I would have resolved not to submit to Springer ever again). The point is that with regard to the 2010 piece, I didn't even read the contract, and didn't realize that I was imposing these limits on myself.

That said, let me make three further points.

First, if people in my position were to become reluctant to give away their intellectual property, the situation might improve. Journals might be less willing to sign themselves over to for-profit publishers, for example.

Second, if other institutions would join the University of California (see Aldo Antonelli's comment) and others in insisting on archiving faculty members' work, that would be progress (though the situation there is still imperfect, in that the author is still giving away her intellectual property). A better situation would be if the ban on self-archiving were to last a year (as is the case for most self-owned journals, such as Philosophy of Science or the Canadian Journal of Philosophy or the Philosophical Review).

Finally, and most importantly, it would be good for all to know exactly which publishers have similar policies. In comments, Mike Otsuka linked to Wiley-Blackwell's admirably clear statement of a policy that is marginally worse than Springer's (or perhaps just more clear). I won't be submitting to Wiley-Blackwell journals either, at least not when some alternative is available.

READERS PLEASE PROVIDE MORE EXAMPLES, AND I WILL CONSOLIDATE THESE IN A LIST IN DUE COURSE.

We are all being screwed one way or another by the rapacity of these publishers. Most of us, including me, have no reasonable alternative but to submit, at least on some occasions. But at least we should know what our alternatives are, and be capable at all times of acting according to our own self-interest.

UPDATE: As Joel Smith reminds us at comment 8, the information about your rights with various presses is available here.