Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Copyright policies of academic publishers


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus.  MBisanz  talk 21:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright policies of academic publishers

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After doing some editing on this article, I have become convinced that it does not belong on WP and is not salvageable. My reasons are the following:
 * 1) This is inherently original research: it requires the editor to dig through publisher's websites to find their copyright policies and then summarize them. Much of this is also WP:SYNTH.
 * 2) If pursued, this will become one huge unmanageable list: the Category:University presses of the United States alone contains 115 publishers. The Category:Academic publishing companies another 108 (and then there are the university presses of all those other countries).
 * 3) To complicate the already almost impossible task outlined under 2, many publishers have different policies for different journals. Some publishers have both subscription journals and OA journals, for example. Others publish journals on behalf of learned societies and each society can (and will) negotiate its own policy with the publisher.
 * 4) I am unaware of any secondary sources on this subject. Indeed, all references currently in the article are to publishers' websites (primary sources; except the very first reference that actually has nothing to do with -or at best is only tangentially related to- the subject covered).
 * 5) I'm not sure that synthesizing a list of publisher's policies actually is encyclopedic and falls within the mission of WP.

For these reasons I believe this article should be Deleted. Randykitty (talk) 14:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)


 * There is coverage in secondary sources, which can replace the synthesis of primary sources. There may be no coverage of the policies of specific publishers, but that wouldn't be original research as the primary sources would be reliable for the purpose. If this is the case for all publishers, such a list wouldn't meet the requirements of the notability guidelines (and there would be no clear selection criteria). There's also the question of whether a list would be the most appropriate format for an article. Copyright transfer agreement and Academic publishing already exist, but I can't find an article that this duplicates. Addition of relevant content to Academic publishing would be useful, but depending on the amount of coverage a separate article (probably not a list) may be viable. Peter&#160;James (talk) 15:34, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

In fact, I believe there is an important overlap with List of academic journals by preprint policy, though this latter one is more limited in scope. Therefore, I propose their fusion. Joaosampaio (talk) 17:46, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is original research: there are references for every publisher, and there are probably some webpages with limited compilations of these policies. The article can be wikified: I propose a first part describing the different general rights given to authors (distribution of preprints, postprints, full distribution, open access content), the historic evolution of these policies, and then a table with the summary of the policies of the major editors (using the same criteria used in other related articles, or just the publication volume), with references to each publisher's policy.
 * Delete - If this list were done properly, it would run afoul of NOTDIRECTORY. As it sits, it's pretty much NOTAYTHING. Carrite (talk) 18:23, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I agree with the author that as the article stands, it is an OR problem. But I think there are sources appear now, with the Academic Spring and such, which discuss this topic, and which should allow for this to be rescued. As such, I think the topic may be notable, although I agree that the current sources are not sufficient to prove it. Also, this article should not be a list, but rather discuss the trends and such. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:54, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Divide and rewrite  Piotrus called my attention to this. It's tricky. A good page could be written, though this would be only the beginning. There  are really two parts to this: the first could be a separate article, Copyright in academic publishing presenting the various factors and the various problems. There are very good sources available, only some of them linked here. It would be difficult to do it briefly because the variations are rather subtle. The second half is the policy of the various major publishers. Here there are two problems: one is the somewhat confusing ways the various publishers state them, and the other is their variability. At the moment, it would be relatively difficult to handle, because the rules are changing, in response to the various open access initiatives. Much of what is available on the publishers sites is not in fact actually the way they do things at present, and there can be considerable discussion about the actual effective meaning.  Furthermore, it is not necessarily the same for all of their journals     I think the place for that part of things would be the articles on the various publishers--especially because then it would be possible to deal with the changes of their individual policies. I have the impression from the present article that the originator of it may not be fully aware of quite how much there really has to be done here; I'll be glad to help, of course
 * What I am suggesting is to move the information on the individual publishers where it belongs, and retitle and properly develop this article.
 * The various points in the nomination are worth discussing--some of them actually indicate the way to handle the topic.   (1) It is not in the least OR. The idea that "digging through the publishers websites to find their policies" is OR is quite mistaken--such is the way we construct all WP articles--we dig through the sources, and assemble the information. How do we do articles on sports seasons? on elections? This actually requires much less synthesis and OR than many general topics. Second, even if kept together, (2) That an article would be too long is not an objection--it can always be divided, and in fact, that's what I propose doing. Consider the article on anything where there is variation between states and countries, such as age of consent, or death penalty, or copyright in general.  There's always a way to handle it. Normally, in fact, we cover the major divisions first, or whatever the people here are interested in doing.. An objection like this is like saying we can't have an article on IBM, because they have too man products. Or how can we write an article on the US: there are all these different states, and they are each of them not homogeneous. (3) That policies vary for different journals is correct, and that is one of the reason s an article of this sort is appropriate and necessary. It's not too much detail to handle. Nothing is too much detail to handle if there are sources and people to do the writing. (4) I am aware of many secondary sources. I just reviewed one for CHOICE, in fact. What editors want, Univ. of Chicago Press.  There's an authoritative website, LIBLICENSE. There are several journals, particularly Learned Publishing, of which I used to be an editor--and many trade and speciality publication.  a few somewhat obscure ones. . There are articles in essentially every librarianship journal in the world. (5). The purpose of an encyclopedia  is to provide information. It's just as valuable to present (not synthesize) a list of policies as to present (not synthesize) a list of hurricanes, or anything else. The question in each case is how to do it.--and perhaps in addition to having the main information on each publisher page, we should indeed have a summary article.  DGG ( talk ) 03:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Point taken about the OR, I have struck that part of the nom. I also agree that an article about copyright issues in academic publishing would be interesting and sourceable. However, that would be a very different article from the current list-type article, which I think is not salvageable. I think this one should be deleted and, of course, that would have no bearing whatsoever on the creation of another article on a related but different topic (that is, an article on copyright/licensing issues in academic publishing). A list of hurricanes is not comparable to what is going on here: the effects of a 2009 hurricane won't change in 2015. In contrast, as DGG says, copyright/licensing policies of basically all current academic publications are very much in a state of flux and creating an up-to-date list of all copyright policies of all journals of all publishers is an unattainable goal. As for sources, I maintain that there are no secondary sources for the article as it currently stands. The sources given by DGG would, of course, be great sources for another, more general article as discussed above. --Randykitty (talk) 16:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment There is a secondary source, and is linked to in the article (Sherpa/Romeo) Joaosampaio (talk) 08:52, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a search machine/database and it actually looks like the current article just attempts to copy SHERPA/Romeo. --Randykitty (talk) 10:15, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Sherpa/Romeo is professionally curated by experts, and is considered reasonably reliable, though there are major disagreements about what ought and ought not be included  DGG ( talk ) 15:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, J04n(talk page) 10:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete This looks like a mixture of synthesis and OR to me.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 15:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment - I think there is a reasonable case for blowing this up with The Holy Hand Grenade of Brother Maynard of Antioch, without prejudice against recreation of a generalized article contemplated by David G. Carrite (talk) 15:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * (Nom: )Absolutely agree with this. --Randykitty (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * At a minimum, the effort to catalog the specific policies of various publishers which follows the lead needs to go away, in my view... Carrite (talk) 15:52, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep I think that DGG has made a solid case that this is not inherently OR. I also disagree with the perfectionist view that if a list is very hard or very difficult to compile then it does not belong on Wikipedia. Statements claimed as WP:Synth WP:OR need to be tagged with inline markers and reviewed and rewritten. Also I suppose for some editors tagging/fixing/sourcing the WP:Synth would be a lot easier than a total rewrite. As such I think what is really needed is some expert help (god forbid). I took a college course about 6 years back on academic publishing and an improved version of this article would have been quite welcome however things are changing quite quickly in this area. BO &#124; Talk 18:05, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Unless an article is throughly permeated with material that must be removed, or is basically wrong is overall conception & organization, I personally always find it is easier to edit from whatever portion of the material is usable than to rewrite from scratch. In this case in particular, I also think that any rewriting (and certainly in this case moving the material on the original publishers) will use so much of the original or be so closely parallel  to it that it is appropriate and even necessary to give credit to those who previously worked on the article--this can only be done by keeping the history & is a reason against throwing out & starting over  DGG ( talk ) 23:33, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article has great potential to be part of a quality improvement drive incorporating secondary sources about its subject matter. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 23:13, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - This list will be a nightmare to keep up with. There are whole databases (SHERPA/ROMEO) dedicated to this proposition, and they get out of date sometimes.  Bad information on something like this would, IMO, be worse than no information, since bad information could plausibly substitute for someone reading the policy themselves. --Lquilter (talk) 17:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.