[GOAL] Re: Japan's National OA Mandate for ETDs.

[Couture Marc]

Heather Morrison wrote:

>
> If the scholar grants blanket rights to create derivatives to any third
> party, then someone else could publish the monograph before the scholar has a
> chance to do so themselves. This is likely to make it more difficult for the
> scholar to publish their own work.
>

This issue has been considered in various studies, some of them based upon surveys conducted among publishers. These are summarized in:

Fox, E. A., McMillan, G., & Srinivasan, V. (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Progress, Issues, and Prospects. In T. Luke & J. Hunsinger (Eds). Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (chap. 7). Blacksburg, VA: Center for Digital Discourse and Culture.

"There have been several surveys of publishers' attitudes towards ETDs (Dalton, 2000; Seamans, 2001; McMillan, 2001; Holt, 2002). Rarely will a publisher allow an ETD without substantial improvement to appear in book or article form, and often publishers will consider the popularity of an ETD to be a convincing argument to invest in editorial assistance leading to a quality commercial product." (p. 133)

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/10th-book/putting_knowledge_to_work.pdf   

(Note that the whole monograph, though not under a CC licence, is "freely distributable, copyable, and downloadable").

Much like in the case of scholarly monographs becoming bestsellers, one is considering mainly "dreams" here, to re(use) Heather's words. The question is thus: should ETD policies be devised to allow a few scholars see their dreams come true?

Marc Couture