Conflict Potpourri Front Page university community and stressed that publishers need to educate the public about the functions of copyright. Yet more than education may be required. Just last September, Lisa Guernsey reported that Steven Koonin, Provost at the California Institute of Technology, would prefer that Caltech's professors retain copyrights and license publishers.
Few publishers are likely to laugh.
That writers increasingly can publish whatever and whenever they desire, signifies little in terms of capturing an audience. Beyond that, academic and professional works in many fields receive little if any recognition without peer review. Such review is often critical. It not only has a major role in tenure decisions but also may determine the courtroom admissibility of evidence based on scientific research. The short answer is that authors' refusing to transfer all rights to publishers at best leads to wasted time and money.