InfoD-Cafe: Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Cafe,

An interesting story on the very troubling Fair Copyright in Research
Works Act:

     "Publicly funded research for a price"
     1st aired on the American Public Media radio program,
     _Marketplace_, 28 April 2009

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/28/pm_copyright/

Among other items of note:

     "Publishers might change their business model by making
     authors pay to have their own articles published."

FWIW, most publishing of scientific and medical research in the 17th
and 18th centuries used an "author-pays" business model -- or in the
case of the celebrated C18 medical researcher and surgeon, William
Cheselden, a "subscription" model.

With a few exceptions (some C18 encyclopedias of the arts & sciences),
neither one worked all that well.

(E.g., Cheselden's magnificent _Osteographia_ was a financial failure,
as his bid for subscribers met with little success.)

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
dtp at she-philosopher.com


P.S. to Conrad & others still interested in discussion of C17
calligraphy and cartographic calligraphy:

As always, I'm trying to do too many things at once, hence falling
further & further behind in all of it.

I did want to let you know, though, that I've found a rare and
little-known essay by a C17-C18 English engraver who raised some of
the very same issues Conrad did earlier about engraved calligraphy.

Writing in 1698, he made much of the differences between the
technology of the pen vs. the technology of "the Graving Tool" (also,
between "the *Penmans Ink*" vs. the printer's ink), trying to get
naive viewers and users of C17 copy-books to understand just how
technologically-mediated what we see in a printed writing specimen
actually is.

I'm going to be posting a digital edn. of his essay ("The Engraver to
the Lovers of Writing") to my website's library, along with C17
recipes for both kinds of ink, and lots more, as soon as I can manage it.

I will also post examples of "best" and "worst" practices of C17
engraved calligraphy for Conrad and others to explain to those like me
who are less discerning (if not exactly "naive" ;-) viewers of such
things.

So, more from me on this in the near future....

Deborah