Re: Technical paper copyrights

[amollo38@gmail.com]

My brother (an intellectual property and copyright lawyer) says that if you let 
someone use your image pro bono for a paper that is subsequently copyrighted by 
the journal, you have lost the opportunity for compensation for that article.  
You still own the rights to your "work of authorship" i.e. your picture for 
future applications. 
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: GSP1954@aol.com
Sender: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:58:43 
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>; <vrtpaleo@usc.edu>
Reply-To: GSP1954@aol.com
Subject: Technical paper copyrights

Some more clarification on paleoart issues. 

At least one person -- in a rather overheated manner if you ask me -- 
claimed that the article copyright required by most technical journals means 
that 
any illustrations appearing in the article are then controlled by that 
journal, and the original artist can no longer claim to control the 
illustration. 

This is errant on many levels. Say and artist as a professional courtesy 
lets another scientist use without cost one of their dinosaur images in a 
paper, which is then copyrighted by the journal. Does this mean that the artist 
has now for no payment given up their rights to their image forever and a 
day? 

Of course not. Doing so would be unethical -- all the more so since authors 
often have to pay to get the papers published rather than the reverse -- 
and it would make artists rather reluctant to allow their work to appear in 
such articles. No academic journal has a system for controlling the rights for 
the images published in their pages and collecting royalties and so forth; 
they don't have the staff or the interest in doing so. Some of the copyright 
explanations for some publications even take the time to point out that 
they are not laying permanent claim to illustrations that appear in their 
journal. 

What journal paper copyrights are about is making sure that the author or 
someone else does not then take that paper, change the title, maybe tweak and 
reorder it, and publish it elsewhere. This does occur, especially in 
underdeveloped countries, as a means to increase publication counts. 

In any case only a small minority of my restorations including skeletons 
have first appeared in technical papers. 

G Paul

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