Legal Concerns Hit Open Access Physics Archive

An unusual case of plagiarism has struck ArXiv, the popular open access repository of physics papers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, resulting in the withdrawal of 22 papers.

In light of the incident, Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg, who developed the archive, says that he now intends to investigate measures to prevent such misdemeanours from recurring.

In the meantime, Ginsparg is also facing the challenge of potentially libellous material being posted on the server, after a paper made a strongly worded attack on Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal. ArXiv doesn't usually check papers before they are posted. But because postings on the site are deemed to be published, they are subject to libel law.

http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=1087&language=1

Preprint server seeks way to halt plagiarists
Critical comments threaten to open libel floodgate for physics archive
(Nature, 6 November 2003)

E-print and open archive expert, Stevan Harnad made an insightful (inciteful) response to this on the ARL SPARC-IR listserv. His main point, which comes fairly far into it says "the Physics ArXiv's "legal concerns" are all a tempest in a teapot anyway. A central archive is a service provider. The service it provides is to operate an archive for authors to self-archive in. If an author self-archives a piece of plagiarism or libel therein, the only legal responsibility of the archive is to *remove* that item as soon as it is drawn to their attention. This is exactly the same rule as the one applied to other Internet service providers."

https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-IR/Message/128.html

Posted by Tom on November 11, 2003