U.S. has war for access to scientific publications

" COMPARATIVE LAW

U.S. has war for access to scientific publications

By Luiz Otavio Rodrigues Junior 's lawyer Union , postdoctoral fellow ( University of Lisbon ) and Doctor of Civil Law ( USP ) , member of the Association Henri Capitant des Amis de la Culture Française Juridique ( Paris, France) and the Asociación Iberoamericana de Derecho Romano ( Oviedo , Spain ) .

There is a passage in the " Autobiography of Hans Kelsen ," whose Brazilian translation is the fourth edition , which is very curious and deserves to be repeated : " the work [ the thesis Habilitation Kelsen ] was published in 1911 under the title Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre , entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatz [ Main problems of the theory of public law , developed from the theory of the rule of law ] , by J. C. B. Mohr , Tubingen , by considerable costs of printing that needed paying , and formed the basis of my Habilitation at the Faculty of Law and Political Science , which occurred in the same year " . [ 1 ]

In one of the very rich notes autobiography , compiled by Matthias Jestaedt , coordinated by the Institute Hans Kelsen , one gets the real dimension of the circumstances of this episode :

" Paul Siebeck , then owner of publisher J. C. B. Mohr ( Paul Siebeck ) , Kelsen informed by mail of 01.09.1910 that need to be paid , ' in view of the theoretical nature of his research, a reasonable allowance for printing costs ' amounting to 15 marks per sheet printing 16 pages . Thus, the subsidy for printing costs for a total quantity of 735 pages should have reached around 690 marks. For comparison : in 1910 , the average annual income of a worker amounted to 1,078 gross landmarks . The selling price of Hauptprobleme was 16 marks ( DM 18.50 in hardcover ) " . [ 2 ]

One of the most important legal and philosophical works of the twentieth century , in which you could say is the starting point ( and even creating ) the Pure Theory of Law , was only published thanks to the assumption of editorial costs by its author , then a young and little-known lecturer Austro -Hungarian Empire. And, according to Kelsen himself , this occurred at a time of great difficulty , because " the financial situation in my parents' house is altered very unfavorably " with the bankruptcy of its parent company , which forced the Hans Kelsen teach private lessons to survive . [ 3 ]

This bitter reality of 100 years ago is reproduced in our day . Many legal publishing houses closed , were in pre - bankruptcy situation or were sold to large international groups . This is not a Brazilian privilege. You could say that it is an international phenomenon . The publishing houses that remain , there is a clear specialization in three niche markets : a) paid editions by authors (something unthinkable a few years, except in the graphic ) b ) scientific journals c ) for public works tenders . The monographs , dissertations and theses are heading into their proscription by commercial publishers . Unless the electronic ( e-books ) and scholarly publications ( mostly taken by books from other areas of knowledge) , these intellectual productions in press only enter if authors pay , in whole or in part , the costs of printing . Traditional publishers , for the most part , do not accept this model, for understandable qualms , which has open space for small publishing houses , some older , others newly created . In many cases , the imprint is a kind of timbre to identify whether a book was funded or not by its author to come to light .

This publishing " on demand " is greatly favored by strict controls productivity from development or regulatory agencies graduate ( in Brazil and in the world ) . In addition , there is a new stimulant to these editions factor : the criteria for entry or promotion in public service careers . Finally , the promotion of interest in a law firm , with the exhibition of the work of one of its members .

The " legal journals " have not gone unscathed by the dramatic process of transformation imposed on the publishing world through the internet . Before an essential access to the updated case law and literature on topics mechanism whose investigation demanded intellectual verticality , magazines today compete with the databases of the courts , which , in Brazil , are magnificent . And also suffer with the explosion of doctrinal texts freely available on the net .

In law , there is no tradition of charging authors for publishing articles in specialized journals . Some even pay a nominal fee for its employees . In the hard sciences , the picture is quite different. The researchers send their articles for scientific journals and pay for its publication . Its institutions , in turn , these journals subscribed and undertake to restrict access to a specific number of users . The reason for authors to pay to see their texts printed in these magazines is costs with the already famous " blind peer review " and the edition itself .

In February 2012 , as reported in the media, we initiated a boycott against the leading publisher of scientific journals for a large number of researchers from mathematics. [ 4 ] The letter - manifesto that boycott is titled The cost of knowledge , in which its authors highlight the role of scientific journals is dissemination of research and its results , in addition to peer review and professional development . [ 5 ] This movement grew to some American universities . Before his firing , the famous MIT , since 2009 , had adopted a policy of " open access " ( open access , in English ) to your academic papers . [ 6 ] The publishers responded and argued that their existence and function warrant by the essentiality of impartial , professional and organized selection of scientific papers . Without its intermediation , it not possible that 3 million items shipped annually to scientific journals were processed by 1.5 million articles published every year . The role of publishers of periodicals would prevent scientists expend time with administration and funding of these publications , the important process control call selection , linguistic revision and peer . [ 7 ]

This controversy came to the United States Congress . In 2011 , he presented a bill - the Research Works Act - with the support of associations of publishers and copyright protection , in order to prohibit a governmental body to disclose (or authorize the disclosure ) of any work or scientific research without permission from the publisher. In practice , it is a way to prevent official agencies which funded research on scholarships or grants , take ownership of their copyrights. [ 8 ]

However , in February 2013 , the U.S. Congress received a bill titled Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2013 which aims to open access of scientific texts produced on the basis of public funding . In the explanatory memorandum of this project , said that the United States has an interest in maximizing the impact and usefulness of scientific research , beyond what the internet has made possible the immediate access and review the results of these investigations to every scientist , physician, educator or citizen, whether at home , at school or in libraries. [ 9 ]

In Brazil , from February 12, 2006 , CAPES ( Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel ) , pursuant to Ordinance 13 , determined the mandatory disclosure in digital media , theses and dissertations produced in graduate programs in strict sense in the country [ 10 ] the ideological foundation of that standard is set forth in Article 5 : " the financing of working with public funds , in the form of study or aid of any kind granted to the scholarship program , induces the obligation or the master doctor submit it to the company that paid for the achievement , applying to it the provisions of this Ordinance . "

These new conflicts involving scientific, copyrights and the future of publishing should be analyzed in the light of changes in contemporary culture industry . People today no longer want to pay to listen to music . The general feeling is that our cultural heritage is available on the internet and any form of compensation would be unnecessary . This "new " perspective has forced artists to return to the business model of the nineteenth century , before the phonograph records : their income is mostly extracted from presentations to paying audiences.

In relation to books and journals in scientific production , with the expansion of free digital publications , is very likely the death of a bargaining model that was structured on the basis of copyright over 300 years".

[ 1 ] Kelsen , Hans . Autobiography of Hans Kelsen . Translation of Gabriel Nogueira Dias and José Ignacio Coelho Mendes Neto . Introduction Mathias Jestaedt . Introductory study of Luiz Otavio Rodrigues Junior and Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli . 4 . ed. Rio de Janeiro : Forensics , 2012 . p. 44
[ 2 ] Kelsen , Hans . Op . 45
[ 3 ] Kelsen , Hans . Op. cit . , Loc . cit .
[ 4 ] Available at Accessed on 05/07/2013 .
[ 5 ] Available at http://thecostofknowledge.com/ . Accessed 7-5.2013 .
[ 6 ] Available at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/open-access-0320.html . Accessed on 05/07/2013 .
[ 7 ] Available at http://www.elsevier.com/about/issues-and-information/elsevierstatement . Accessed on 05/07/2013 .
[ 8 ] Available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:hr3699 : . Accessed 7-5.2013 .
[ 9 ] Available at Accessed on 05/07/2013 .
[ 10 ] BRAZIL . Ministry of Education . CAPES . Ordinance 13 . Article 1 : " For the purposes of monitoring and evaluation for the periodic renewal of recognition, masters and doctoral programs should install and maintain, until December 31, 2006 , digital , accessible to the public through internet file for disclosure of dissertations and theses final course . "
Luiz Otavio Rodrigues Junior 's lawyer Union , postdoctoral fellow ( University of Lisbon ) and Doctor of Civil Law ( USP ) , member of the Association Henri Capitant des Amis de la Culture Française Juridique ( Paris, France) and the Asociación Iberoamericana de Derecho Romano ( Oviedo , Spain ) .

http://www.conjur.com.br/2013-mai-08/direito-comparado-eua-guerra-acesso-publicacoes-cientificas .
Login: 12/07/2013