Losing the copyright when publishing a research article?

[CGR_JAMA]

Losing the copyright when publishing a research article??!

I have recently finished a research article about a theory that geometrically integrates General Relativity with other gauge fields, Electromagnetism included.

The next step was of course to publish it so I went on looking for what were the submission conditions on the corresponding specialized online-publishers and found that it was required the copyright to be transferred to them on acceptance for publication.

This sounded crazy to me since all profits coming from the purchase of the article were going to the publishers. What was then the benefit for the author? You will say: "If the article is accepted it will be seen by all potential buyers who are looking for the topic and trust the publisher's evaluation team on doing a good peer-review job. To the author is left the prestige gain if the content is well recognized by the readers".

I understand this filters all what is being submitted and leaves inside what is technically correct (that is the "good stuff"). By this way the publisher makes its reputation...but also takes all the money? This is contrary to what happens with the publication of a fiction novel on the regular market for example.

Since making a research article on theoretical physics like this demands much more effort than writing a novel then how this comes to be generally accepted?

Can anyone explain this? Is there any publishing service with qualified reviewers on General Relativity and Gravitation which does not operate under such "extreme" conditions?

 

[JustinLevy]

Wait, you expected to earn money directly from publishing something?

I think you have a very strange view of publishing in science. Since you are starting from such an incredibly different angle, I don't think anyone will be able to "explain" this to you. It literally is nothing more than people having a different intention/expectation of the publication process. So you might as well just accept this, and "agree to disagree" with everyone else's approach to scientific publishing.

 

[nicksauce]

Authors make money from selling books.

Physicists make money from Universities who pay them to do research and publish the results.

 

[xepma]

Welcome to the messed up system. I completely agree with you that way too much power is in the hands of the publisher. Ofcourse, a publisher has to make their income somewhere and for the whole process of publishing some decent amount of money to cover overhead costs has to be charged.

But publishers sell their subscriptions in large packages (as in: many journals boundled as a single subscription) for ridiculous amounts of money (Elsevier is notorious for this, they sell packages of over 14 000 dollar a year). Universities cannot choose which journal they want to subscribe to; they have to buy them in packages.

Copyright is another thing. Suppose some journal invites you to write a review paper on a particular subject. You spend a lot of time and effort on this, and in the end the article might actually be good enough to publish as a book. Well, too bad, you will have to pay large amounts of fees in order to obtain publishing rights of your own scientific work.

Also, realize that a peer review is performed by an editor of the journal first, and by some peer reviewer later on. But the peer reviewer is not employed by the journal -- they are researchers themself -- and they do not get paid by the publisher. The publisher is not involved in the process of research, and also hardly does any work when it comes to peer reviewing. Yet they make huge amounts of profits. For example, the revenues of Elsevier coming from scientific journals is a whopping 1.5 billion dollar. Why does so much money of the scientific community flow to a company which has nothing to do with the scientific process?

Let alone the fact that (non-private) universities are funded through tax money. Yet the tax payer is not able to view the scientific work published in the articles.

For a university it's very, very hard to stand up against the publishers. Scientists are so dependent on published work that their negotiation position is incredibly fragile. A researcher simply can't do without published work, and so publishers are able to keep raising their subscriptions costs. This is why open access is a very welcome development, e.g. arxiv.org. Let's hope this concept can be incorporated with a peer review process.

The way I see it governments will have to impose laws which forces scientists to publish all their work through some open acces system. A country such as Sweden has already undertaken steps towards this (I think all published work must also be submitted to some open access database, but I am not sure).

 

[Dale]

There is basically no money in scientific publishing (the volumes are too low). You are not losing any remuneration by assigning copyright.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

Authors make money from selling books.

Physicists make money from Universities who pay them to do research and publish the results.

That’s true.

Apart from professional physicists can you imagine someone else being creative enough for doing a relevant contribution to science? The magic spark for visualizing the correct solution to a problem may take a long time to shine, even a century can elapse until a curious and enough prepared head makes the right connection. Career physicists are those who have the greater probabilities and possibilities on being "the one" to solve a specific problem, but no one can guarantee that won't happen on the head of any other person.

A good career in physics will give us the best tools and training for the game, but the final score may depend on a particular visualization of the necesary concepts or even on the mere arbitrary path someone follows when thinking on a possible solution.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

Wait, you expected to earn money directly from publishing something?

I think you have a very strange view of publishing in science. Since you are starting from such an incredibly different angle, I don't think anyone will be able to "explain" this to you. It literally is nothing more than people having a different intention/expectation of the publication process. So you might as well just accept this, and "agree to disagree" with everyone else's approach to scientific publishing.

Thanks Justin for you sincere opinion.

I was already advice by experienced authors on the topic that these were the accepted conditions regarding the intention. But this is well understood for professionals who are on their career when doing the research. Usually they are expected and/or required to expose the results of their investigations on a regular (visible) basis when supported by an institution so that is the primary goal.

Sure I "agree on disagree" since I'm not a professional physicist and I'm not doing a career on this, just exposing my work on the topic. It was done because I found it interesting but the time an effort on doing it is as valid as for any other men. Copyright is there for something. It’s valid to retain it when talking about a physics book, right? Why not then for a research article?

What I see is that under similar conditions some people may be discouraged on doing an interesting contribution to science due to the lack of return to their work and ideas. There should be a way to consider "non-standard" contributors.

 

[turbo]

If you are a scientist and want to make money on a publication, you might want to consider publishing a popular-level book on the subject. That can work OK. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals is not going to make you any money. Unless your work is pretty impressive, it's not going to earn you an invitation to a new position, either.

 

[Fredrik]

Copyright is another thing. Suppose some journal invites you to write a review paper on a particular subject. You spend a lot of time and effort on this, and in the end the article might actually be good enough to publish as a book. Well, too bad, you will have to pay large amounts of fees in order to obtain publishing rights of your own scientific work.

This part is very hard to believe. Perhaps you can clarify what you meant. I'm assuming you didn't mean that if I publish a proof of a mathematical theorem in a journal, I would have to pay the publishers of the journal to include the proof in a book? Nobody would be able to publish books if this was true.

What if you e.g. invent a complete cure for dandruff and publish it in a journal? Are you saying that you wouldn't be able to start a company that sells the cure? That doesn't make any sense either.

For example, the revenues of Elsevier coming from scientific journals is a whopping 1.5 billion dollar.

This is also very hard to believe. Even at 14K a year per subscription, they'd have to sell over 100K subscriptions.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

There is basically no money in scientific publishing (the volumes are too low). You are not losing any remuneration by assigning copyright.

You mean that authors "actually" are getting no money from publishers when submitting a scientific paper and I have already seen that's the way it is.

If we are talking about U$D 5, U$D 50 or U$D 500 that's not the point. What seems odd to me is how authors are left out of the equation. I would like to know how many of them would say "no thanks" to some extra income coming from their personal work no matter how scarse it is.

 

[shoehorn]

I have recently finished a research article about a theory that geometrically integrates General Relativity with other gauge fields, Electromagnetism included.

Could you tell us how your work differs from existent work on the subject?

The next step was of course to publish it so I went on looking for what were the submission conditions on the corresponding specialized online-publishers and found that it was required the copyright to be transferred to them on acceptance for publication.

This sounded crazy to me since all profits coming from the purchase of the article were going to the publishers. What was then the benefit for the author?

The benefit to the author is the attention the work receives due to having been published.

Copyright is another thing. Suppose some journal invites you to write a review paper on a particular subject. You spend a lot of time and effort on this, and in the end the article might actually be good enough to publish as a book. Well, too bad, you will have to pay large amounts of fees in order to obtain publishing rights of your own scientific work.

Generally speaking, this isn't true at all in physics. For one thing, review articles for journals are usually an order of magnitude or more shorter than what would be required even of a monograph, let alone a book. Moreover, in my experience publishers will bend over backwards to help you if you want to incorporate into a new piece some work published in a journal over which they hold the copyright; this almost always happens without any payment for copyright and in those cases where payment does take place, it's usually a nominal fee once proper attribution to the original published work is given.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

If you are a scientist and want to make money on a publication, you might want to consider publishing a popular-level book on the subject. That can work OK. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals is not going to make you any money. Unless your work is pretty impressive, it's not going to earn you an invitation to a new position, either.

Thanks for the advice.

I have read popular-level books on rough topics and appreciated the way authors find to explain in common words difficult-to-grasp concepts. But I think that was not the way how those concepts or theories were published the first time. That worked for them after the topic had gained some relevance on the scientific community and thoughts, awakening the curiosity from the rest of the people about it and creating a valid demand on easy-to-grasp explanations. For a very technical paper as in this case no simplifications are possible beyond what was written without showing the hard stuff. Also I wouldn't compromise time on writing a book on new science which was not first validated by qualified people. I would prefer to use that time in something more productive like doing more research.

About earning invitations to new positions...that would be a miracle!... since I don't have specific studies or associated position relative to the corresponding careers on theoretical physics. I have no expectations about that. My first expectation is to communicate this work and get it reviewed accordingly.

What I don't want is to end with the feeling that "I made the boat and everyone went sailing and having fun on it... while I was left on the shore, looking". That’s why the idea of retaining the copyright becomes that relevant. Now its symbolic but in the future it may open the door to writing the book you are suggesting.

 

[Al68]

I have recently finished a research article about a theory that geometrically integrates General Relativity with other gauge fields, Electromagnetism included... Is there any publishing service with qualified reviewers on General Relativity and Gravitation which does not operate under such "extreme" conditions?

You can publish it in a variety of places, including online, even on physicsforums.com Independent research forum. It doesn't cost a thing and you keep the copyright.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

You can publish it in a variety of places, including online, even on physicsforums.com Independent research forum. It doesn't cost a thing and you keep the copyright.

Thanks for the data! I will be checking those sites.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Might the arXiv preprint server be a good place to publish this type of work (http://arxiv.org/)? I don't know about their copyright policies (certainly, you won't make any profit from publishing there), but it might be something to look into.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

Might the arXiv preprint server be a good place to publish this type of work (http://arxiv.org/)? I don't know about their copyright policies (certainly, you won't make any profit from publishing there), but it might be something to look into.

Thanks Ygggdrasil, I will be checking that too.

 

[TMFKAN64]

As with most prices, they are set by supply and demand. In this situation, there are many people who are so desperate to publish that journals have their pick of articles for free. If there wasn't so much pressure on scientists to publish, journals might have to pay to attract articles... but that's just not how it is.

 

[shoehorn]

I will repeat my request for information on how your model differs from those extant.

For what it's worth, a lack of familiarity with the ArXiv should already be setting off alarm bells in people's heads regarding the seriousness of this thread.

 

[xepma]

This part is very hard to believe. Perhaps you can clarify what you meant. I'm assuming you didn't mean that if I publish a proof of a mathematical theorem in a journal, I would have to pay the publishers of the journal to include the proof in a book? Nobody would be able to publish books if this was true.

What if you e.g. invent a complete cure for dandruff and publish it in a journal? Are you saying that you wouldn't be able to start a company that sells the cure? That doesn't make any sense either.

Alright, I wasn't too clear in my phrasing. I'm not talking about a certain proof of a theorem. or a paragraph of the article. You also cannot lose a patent over a published article (i.e. the formula is free for you to use, although once you publish something you cannot patent for it -- you have to patent something before you publish it)

What I mean is simply the larger part of an article. Yes, I'm being vague here, but that's because this is open for interpretation. But suppose you want to publish a book which contains your work of over the past ten years. Are you allowed to use your articles? Not without paying the journal / publisher that now holds your rights over your work.

I've seen it happen by the way. Some professor at my university was invited to publish a large review article on some subject (100 pages). He spend a huge amount of time on creating this article. He, ofcourse, didn't receive any money for it. This is perfectly ok by the way! A review article is very important, in order to give a field a new boost. And as an expert of the field it's also important to learn others about your field (e.g. a review article, or a workshop, etc)

However, after publishing he decided it would be good to publish the article as a book as it was in very popular demand. But that wasn't allowed. He ended up paying a couple of thousand of dollars for copyrights on publishing his own work.

This is also very hard to believe. Even at 14K a year per subscription, they'd have to sell over 100K subscriptions.

You don't think they do? Think of all the hospitals, all the universities in the world. They are all forced to buy these subscriptions. They can't do without. Ever came across an article from sciencedirect.com ? That's them!

Their (Elsevier) revenues were 1.7 billion in 2008 by the way.

http://www.reedelsevier.com/annualreport08/Review/Pages/elsevier.aspx


By the way, as for the opening post, you might want to keep in mind that if you do not publish in a peer reviewed journal then no scientist is going to take your work seriously.

 

[xepma]

PS let me make part of my point clear by the way: I don't think a scientist should make monry of his publications. I don't even find it weird he needs to pay 20-30 dollar in order to let article be peer reviewed. What I'm having trouble with, is that after this peer review process some journal "steals" your article, and will charge anyone else that wants to view this work. A publisher is making tremendous amounts money of your work and the work of the peer reviewer. And the article isn't even open access anymore. Articles that were published over 20 years ago are still in the hands of these journals.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

I would like to know how many of them would say "no thanks" to some extra income coming from their personal work no matter how scarse it is.

Even if money were to come the way of the author for publications, it would be intercepted by the university. For almost all researchers, the university pays their wage - the university is paying for a research output. If you publish, you're simply doing your job.

I have seen a similar situation with patents at my university - the 'inventor' as it were, takes a small percentage of the income generated from the patent, the university takes almost all of it - they have provided the backing and so see it as their product.

 

[xepma]

Even if money were to come the way of the author for publications, it would be intercepted by the university. For almost all researchers, the university pays their wage - the university is paying for a research output. If you publish, you're simply doing your job.

I have seen a similar situation with patents at my university - the 'inventor' as it were, takes a small percentage of the income generated from the patent, the university takes almost all of it - they have provided the backing and so see it as their product.

Google is a good example of this. The guys behind Google were phd's at stanford, and part of their algorithm was developed during their PhD's. Google still pays stanford in order to make use of these patented algorithms.

 

[ZapperZ]

PS let me make part of my point clear by the way: I don't think a scientist should make monry of his publications. I don't even find it weird he needs to pay 20-30 dollar in order to let article be peer reviewed. What I'm having trouble with, is that after this peer review process some journal "steals" your article, and will charge anyone else that wants to view this work. A publisher is making tremendous amounts money of your work and the work of the peer reviewer. And the article isn't even open access anymore. Articles that were published over 20 years ago are still in the hands of these journals.

The circumstances here are not very clear.

If all your professor wanted to do is simply regurgitate what he had written in the review article, then YES, of course the publisher will not allow it since they've already own the copyright to that article.

However, if the professor wants to write a more general and more encompassing topic, part of which covers many of the same stuff he had written, but not to simply copy that paper verbatim, then I would seriously doubt that the publisher will stop this.

This is the same with any kind of publishing. You can't copy exactly a murder-mystery story that has the same character, same premise, and same story line that has been published elsehwere. But that doesn't mean the whole murder-mystery genre has been "owned" by some publisher. Write another, different murder-mystery story.

Zz.

 

[Redbelly98]

I will repeat my request for information on how your model differs from those extant.

FYI, discussion of non-mainstream science is against forum policy. Let's keep this discussion to publication issues.

 

[Andy Resnick]

The next step was of course to publish it so I went on looking for what were the submission conditions on the corresponding specialized online-publishers and found that it was required the copyright to be transferred to them on acceptance for publication.

This sounded crazy to me since all profits coming from the purchase of the article were going to the publishers. What was then the benefit for the author? You will say: "If the article is accepted it will be seen by all potential buyers who are looking for the topic and trust the publisher's evaluation team on doing a good peer-review job. To the author is left the prestige gain if the content is well recognized by the readers".

I understand this filters all what is being submitted and leaves inside what is technically correct (that is the "good stuff"). By this way the publisher makes its reputation...but also takes all the money? This is contrary to what happens with the publication of a fiction novel on the regular market for example.

Since making a research article on theoretical physics like this demands much more effort than writing a novel then how this comes to be generally accepted?

Publishing scientific journals generally costs more money than is made; Elsevier has been making a lot of enemies because of their policies:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html

And more and more, authors have to pay page charges- that is, I have to pay to publish my own work. To be fair, since my research and salary was paid for by a granting agency, I'm not really paying out of pocket- I include publication charges in my grants.

http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm

Electronic publishing has really rocked the foundation of the print industry; scientific journals maintain their value by the editorial/peer review process. Reviewers don't get paid but editors do. Copyediting a paper is hugely expensive and time consuming... how should the publisher recoup the cost?

Let me ask you this: what is your motivation to publish your results? How do you propose to profit from your results?

 

[Andy Resnick]

PS let me make part of my point clear by the way: I don't think a scientist should make monry of his publications. I don't even find it weird he needs to pay 20-30 dollar in order to let article be peer reviewed. What I'm having trouble with, is that after this peer review process some journal "steals" your article, and will charge anyone else that wants to view this work. A publisher is making tremendous amounts money of your work and the work of the peer reviewer. And the article isn't even open access anymore. Articles that were published over 20 years ago are still in the hands of these journals.

The publication industry has undergone *huge* changes since the interweb started. NIH has also caused huge changes in open access.

Academic centers have open (not free) access to most Journals , the rates paid the publishers are much lower than paper subscriptions, and I pay nothing to have access.

Plus, you should differentiate between society journals and journals published by for-profit businesses.

Nature and Science are the two Journals most at variance with everyone else, AFAIK. PLoS One is at the other extreme.

BTW, page charges are considerably higher than 20-30 dollars.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Yet the tax payer is not able to view the scientific work published in the articles.

Not true, anymore:

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

 

[CGR_JAMA]

I will repeat my request for information on how your model differs from those extant.

For what it's worth, a lack of familiarity with the ArXiv should already be setting off alarm bells in people's heads regarding the seriousness of this thread.

You are not to take conclusions so rapidly.

ArXiv was one of the most consulted sources for articles I have being using during this research and I'm quite aware about this being a free service. And because it’s free it does not ask to release the copyright when publishing. Copyright in this case stands for the right the author has to "sell" a copy of his original article while having the exclusivity on doing that. It does not apply to the concepts in the article so that will be free to be citated and used on any other research. But the copyright law protects when unauthorized copies are made and distributed for free or on a given fee. When the copyright is transferred to a publication service it is understood that the article content and the authors referred on it will stay the same as when submitted. Any changes should be done on publisher's and/or reviewer’s requests by the authors themselves previous to publication.

When I said "I'm gone to check that service" when referring to ArXiv or other free publication services I was thinking if it was possible they were also offering payable downloads as well as free ones. That is something its worth to check out. Also I meant to be polite to those trying to give some useful feedback on my requests by not discouraging them on being helpful.

About your request on more details you will see that my answer went out of the forum limits, and I'm sorry for that. Just do a Google search on "conformal gauge relativity" and you will figure out what is it about.

FYI, discussion of non-mainstream science is against forum policy. Let's keep this discussion to publication issues.

 

[CGR_JAMA]

Publishing scientific journals generally costs more money than is made; Elsevier has been making a lot of enemies because of their policies:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html

And more and more, authors have to pay page charges- that is, I have to pay to publish my own work. To be fair, since my research and salary was paid for by a granting agency, I'm not really paying out of pocket- I include publication charges in my grants.

http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm

Electronic publishing has really rocked the foundation of the print industry; scientific journals maintain their value by the editorial/peer review process. Reviewers don't get paid but editors do. Copyediting a paper is hugely expensive and time consuming... how should the publisher recoup the cost?

Let me ask you this: what is your motivation to publish your results? How do you propose to profit from your results?

To make it simple, I'm don't have a supported budget for buying many related articles I would have consulted during my research so it’s a good idea I can use the income from this publication to gain access to them or other related ones. Remember mine is a self-supported stand alone work. Also as other repliers pointed out, in the case this work comes out to be a viable theory then a good idea will be to convert the article into a book by expanding its topics and adding new ones. For doing that I need to retain the copyright.

My publishing service (a custom web site) has no meaningful costs and provides access to an electronic-copy of the article. I visualize this can be downloaded from the Internet by any university library interested in it. There it can be accessed by any student, professor and researcher around.

 

[Redbelly98]

To make it simple, I'm don't have a supported budget for buying many related articles I would have consulted during my research so it’s a good idea I can use the income from this publication to gain access to them or other related ones. Remember mine is a self-supported stand alone work. Also as other repliers pointed out, in the case this work comes out to be a viable theory then a good idea will be to convert the article into a book by expanding its topics and adding new ones. For doing that I need to retain the copyright.

If access to previous work is a problem, then go to a nearby university's physics department library -- not the main campus library -- where the significant physics journals are readily available on the shelves.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I can use the income from this publication

That's the essence of my question to you: *how* do you propose to get income? Charging people to download the file from your website?

 

[atyy]

I will repeat my request for information on how your model differs from those extant.

For what it's worth, a lack of familiarity with the ArXiv should already be setting off alarm bells in people's heads regarding the seriousness of this thread.

http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

How does one get through the arXiv endorsement system if one is not affiliated with a well-known research institution?

Al68's suggestion seems to be a good one for that reason.

Also, couldn't one put it on a blog nowadays - that is publication - ie. making it publicly availiable.

 

[shoehorn]

FYI, discussion of non-mainstream science is against forum policy. Let's keep this discussion to publication issues.

FYI, this thread was still in the special and general relativity forum when I asked for clarification. Asking a question about the OP's treatment of general relativity is not, in any way I can fathom, deviating into discussion of non-mainstream science.

 

[shoehorn]

About your request on more details you will see that my answer went out of the forum limits, and I'm sorry for that. Just do a Google search on "conformal gauge relativity" and you will figure out what is it about.

All I can find on "conformal gauge relativity" is a single google link pointing to a website where someone - presumably you - is attempting to sell a paper on the subject for $50.

I appreciate that the vagaries of the academic publishing system can seem obscure to people on the outside, but what you're attempting to do is very odd. Were the paper free, I could read it for you to tell you whether or not there's any merit to what you're saying (a good chunk of my PhD work was taken up with studying how the conformal structure of general relativity - both with and without fields - makes the construction of solutions to the Cauchy problem for GR more tractable, so I am at least familiar with the terms you're using). Unfortunately, I find the idea of paying to read a research article frankly ludicrous.

 

[Dale]

You mean that authors "actually" are getting no money from publishers when submitting a scientific paper and I have already seen that's the way it is.

No, I mean there is essentially no money in it for the publishers either. It is expensive to produce a scientific journal and the circulation for each is very small compared to other types of publications. As a result the margins are typically very thin with few exceptions.