On Parade

[mcbishop]

Fortunately, the European Union is preparing legislation that will allow the great publishing houses some time to keep their texts "closed", but forces them make the accessible after this interval.

Which is pretty much what has happened with the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Of course, a lot of archaeological/ancient historical research is not (or only indirectly) publicly funded. Even developer-funded archaeological reports, where statutory bodies place a requirement of public domain on the information produced, are trumped by journals specifically claiming copyright (and in the UK legislators are itching to tighten copyright legislation even more, which is why Creative Commons becomes so important for those of us with a more liberal attitude to 'rights management' issues). The only solution is to boycott publications adopting such an approach, but I have found that such little catch-all clauses tend to get sneaked in when you have already agreed to the publication and perhaps even started work on it. Caveat scriptor.

Mike Bishop