Subject: Legal issue

From: "Rainer Stumpe 100012,1163" <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 94 15:08:52 EST

To:   >internet:[email-masked]
>From [email-masked]
Subj: Re: Legal issues about Mosaic

Dear Fellow Netters,

Let me add my comments to the discussion. I am a publisher,
however, the view expressed here may not be the official view
of Springer-Verlag.

Under the German Copyright law, we understand that an author
implicitly accepts the conditions for publication by submitting
a paper to the journal's editors. The publication contract is
closed by the note of acception. From that moment, the author
is bound to follow the conditions. While the author's right on
his intellectual property remains with him, he transfers the
right to print, publish, distribute and sell through-out the
world the journal containing his contribution. This transfer is
EXCLUSIVE for one year. After that time, the transfer is non-
exclusive, i.e. the author may submit the paper to another
publisher or distribute copies himself. Beware: not copies of
the published contribution, as the form of the printed version
remains the property of the publisher. The publisher's
continues to have the original rights.

There are many more agreements, usually negotiated by
associations of scientists and publishers; there are
international codes of practice, e.g. among STM publishers
(Scientific, Technical, Medical). All that material fills
volumes of a library and it would lead too far to explicit the
whole beauty of International Copyright. To answer the
questions raised earlier, the above might suffice.

The question whether or not it is permitted to make the
contents of a paper submitted or to be submitted to a journal
publicly available is to my knowledge not finally answered. Let
us take a practical approach, however. Making the result of an
scientific publication publicly available is only one side of
the coint. You as authors should also be aware that you want to
document the priority of solving a problem. How can you do that
on an internet server? Remember, we still live in a time where
official documentation is bound to the printed form! Just
imagine, a competitor by chance reads your innovative paper and
submits the result to a journal. YOUR discovery will for ever
be attributed to that plagiator.

Legally speaking, submitting a paper to a journal after the
contents are placed under Mosaic would constitute an act of
fraud. The publisher might enter the contract without knowing
you were no longer in the position to grant exclusive
publication right. Do not be afraid: I do not think any
publisher would prosecute you (at least not until a valiant
publisher started a court suit to clarify the question).

I would recommend that any author informs the publisher that he
has placed the manuscript on a server at the time of
submission. That would leave the choice to enter the contract
with the author to the publisher. At least the publisher could
not argue he entered the contract ignorant.

Personally, I would grant an author the right to put his
manuscript on a server, if he properly cites the journal. Of
course, I strongly recommend to do this only AFTER publication
(the priority issue, remember?). I would also suggest to add
the server's address to the paper when receiving the proofs.

Hope it helps you make the right decission.
Sincerely,

Dr. Rainer Stumpe
Sciences Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Tiergartenstr. 17
D-69121 Heidelberg

Phone: +49-(0)6221-487 310
Fax:   +49-(0)6221-487 366
Internet: [email-masked]