Information Research Weblog

Last year I received a request from an African aid agency to allow Information Research to be distributed by them on CD-ROM. I had to refuse, since it would have meant contacting all of the authors to seek their approval as copyright holders.

However, it seemed to me that the proposal was a very desirable one, since Web access is by no means universal on the African continent and it occurred to me that the authors would, in all probability, agree.

To overcome the problem of the authors being the copyright holders I am considering putting the following paragraph into the Copyright Policy page:

"2. However, in submitting to Information Research, authors agree to the republication of papers for charitable or other non-profit reasons."

This would allow me to sanction the proposal from Africa, while the authors retain copyright for any for-profit purpose.

I'd welcome feedback, especially from those who have published in the journal.