Copyright Issues
Copyright is for public good. Respect for copyright is essential to making the publishing system work. Copyright infringement violates authors' rights and, like any other form of theft, increases the burden on those who abide by the law. It puts pressure on prices, reduces publishing capacity, increases deficits, and shrinks resources needed for change, experimentation, and growth.
Part of the basic philosophy of SAJE is to explore issues to do with copyright, to engender culture change amongst editors, users and copyright owners about copyright, and to explore contractual or technical means to overcome the difficulties that copyright poses. However, The Open Access environment has created a number of entirely new copyright models, in which the copyright has to be transferred from the author(s) to the journal publisher, with minor variations in practice. This has to be in agreement.
SAJE and copyright issues
The Society is moving toward greater control of its intellectual property both in conventional and electronic arenas. Authors always consider publishing their work with publishers whose interests are sympathetic to the academic field. SAJE supports and encourages those institutions whose function is to make the results of research available on a nonprofit basis. As it becomes easier and cheaper to copy words and images on the net, more copying will be done and more copyright issues will arise. Editors strive to use their influence in their professional societies to make the editorial boards of their journals concerned about reducing the costs of publication and to discourage the publication of unrefereed journals. Electronic publication should be systematically developed to disseminate data and research. |