Should copyrights be abolished in academia?

We've all been exposed to strange situations where we had to ask for permission to use our own figures or data from a paper into another paper, or a thesis etc... And the fact that one can retain copyrights is in my opinion one of the best benefits of some open-access journals. But Steven Shavell thinks we should go even further in this paper:

"The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would not be able to profit from reader charges. If these publication fees would be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) – suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should be achieved by a change in law, for the ‘open access’ movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties."

New Developments in the War on Science: Policing Your Hard Drives and the Internetz

Although he can't be bothered to discuss the issue with voting taxpayers in his own country, Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice has apparently joined up with an international task force (under the guise of an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) that aims to restrict the movement of digital information between countries. We're talking potential hard drive searches at airports and wide latitude to seize information. Who knows, maybe our brains will even be scanned for copyrighted information? Better get those Metallica tunes out of your head before travelling!

Such measures are totally uncalled for and if enacted, would represent a serious impediment to the daily activities of the thousands of scientists who rely on communicating and exchanging ideas around the globe in order to do their work.

Read about this nonsense here. Michael Geist provides more in depth coverage.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Moves to Back Open Access Science

Leave it to me to get my science news from a technology law blog, but at any rate I just learned from Geist that the CIHR (Canada's NIH so to speak) has introduced a new policy on open access publishing. It will now be mandatory for researchers to make sure all published CIHR-funded work is available online free of charge within 6 months. Good news. Except when the publisher of an article specifically prohibits this. Not-as-good news.

The new policy has good intentions to be sure - but will it actually lead to an increase in the accessibility of scientific publications, or will the publisher's copyright stipulations prevent this? A quick search of a few life science publisher's copyright policies reveals considerable variability in the freedoms they grant the original authors to share their research online:

Cell, Cancer Cell, etc. - Author cannot archive pre-print. Author can archive post-print on their own server given that the publisher is cited and linked to, but the publisher's print or PDF cannot be used.

Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, etc. - Similar to Cell, but pre-print is allowed and there is a 6-month embargo before post-print archiving is allowed.

Cancer Research - Archiving not allowed. Except for NIH researchers, who can archive 12 months post-print. (Look to see if this exception is also granted to CIHR researchers in light of the new policy).

PLoS Biology, Medicine - Author may archive pre- and post-print under a Creative Commons Attribution License. No restrictions.

Journal of Biological Chemistry - Similar to Cell, but pre-print is allowed.

Blood - Similar to Cell, except Wellcome Trust (British funding agency) researchers may submit to the Biomed Central Repository for a fee.

As it is common practice for scientists to send copies of their articles back and forth and free of charge upon request, I don't see how any of these restrictions are justified; making your article available for download just makes the process more efficient, and makes it easier for non-academic members of the public to read about science with their own eyes.