What's that sound? It's the credit crunch. Long term readers will know that I'm not one to stand by idly while the economy flounders and banks implode. Inspired by recent news that Thomson Scientific is suing Zotero, I've come up with a way to help scientists cope with the realities of the post-deprecession [1] world.
I've devised a new metric to analyse a person's publication record. It's the SCCI, Science Credit Crunch Index, a measure of the fraction of your papers that will not be available post-deprecession assuming that all of the companies/societies holding the copyright go down the tubes. In my case, it's a round 0.75. Any one interested in helping with a bailout?
[1] It's better than a depression - it's worse than a recession.
2 comments:
I like that idea :-)
What does actually happen to copyrighted material if the copyright holder does not legally exist anymore? Would I be allowed to offer a paper for free download (I assume yes)?
Would I be allowed to send such a paper elsewhere (I assume no)?
If Novartis disappeared, what would happen to their patents? :-) Companies don't disappear without their assets getting transferred somewhere else. I think you'll find that the copyright will be retained by a bunch of lawyers somewhere, whose interest in the scientific record will be minimal. Try accessing papers from the Internet Journal of Chemistry, which only folded a couple of years back.
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