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5 . 3
C o p y r i g h t s P a y m e n t s
Copyright payments are a source of income for publishers. To reuse an article or
distribute an article one must obtain permission from the publisher and pay a fee. 37
Although, copying complete articles violates copyright laws, professors and students
copied material for years, often by photocopying sections from the original text or
by creating notes and handouts summarizing written work. Electronic material is
much easier to duplicate and distribute. Manuscripts can be posted on a class list-
serv, e-mailed, downloaded, and printed. Therefore, it was assumed that e-journals
would relax copyright policies, thus erode sales, and damage commercial publishers.
Gold [18] suggested that electronic publishing could benefit publishers. Work can
remain active longer, marginally profitable work can turn beneficial 38 and the cost
of production and distribution can be reduced. In addition, it is to the university's
benefit to support electronic publishing. The relationships between universities and
publishing houses should develop to allow implementation of electronic distribution
of academic work. Arrangement like Kluwer online and the ACM Digital Library
provide scholars and students with an unlimited access to material while preserving
copyright laws. Finally, some e-journals changed their copyright requirements. For
example, IPCT-J [8] does not require exclusive rights from its contributors but only
first publishing rights. Authors may republish their work in other outlets as long as
there is a mention that the article first appeared in IPCT-J .
6.
The Effects of E-Journals on Stakeholders
E-journals introduce several technological advantages such as increased space and
reduced cycle time (Section 4 ). E-journals are also cheaper to produce and distribute
although not cost free as was initially assumed. However, one needs to consider
their potential influence on the academic community and the various stakeholders
involved. Two stakeholders that have been largely ignored by electronic publishing
researchers are the editors of the journals (Section 6.1 ) and the authors who submit
their work to electronic journals 39 (Section 6.2 ).
37 Fees are charged even for educational use. Fees for most journals are handled through the Copyright
Clearance Center ( www.copyright.com ) . Some societies, such as ACM and AIS allow educational use
without a fee.
38 An example of such marginal work is the: “Women Writers Project” at Brown University [34, p. 218] .
39 Two exceptions are the work by the authors of this chapter on the management of electronic journals
and some work on hazards of publishing in e-journals for authors' tenure and promotion prospects by [51] .
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