Timeline for How could publishers, in particular disreputable ones, prove that you “signed” a copyright agreement?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Mar 6, 2015 at 14:22 | comment | added | Bill Barth | @WilliamForcier, good point. That's a 3rd degree felony in my state. I doubt any publisher who would get up to this scheme would be based in a country where you could easily go after them nor would they be likely to come after you. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 14:14 | comment | added | William Forcier | It should be noted that although this dispute may have some civil qualities, if the author is saying that they never signed a copyright agreement and the journal is saying that the author did, then the author is accusing the journal of forgery, a rather serious crime. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 12:56 | comment | added | Bill Barth | @Wrzlprmft, In your example, the onus will be on the pub to show you transferred, and if their evidence is weak, they will probably lose. Many of the things I listed would be fine evidence (on a plane, in class, wrong IP, etc). I think the most likely situation is that you would have to sue them after being turned down for publication by a second publisher who sees their fraudulent publication as having already published your article. I also think this is pretty unlikely. You didn't pay, and you demanded a retraction. The shady publishers want your money waaay more than your article. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 7:45 | comment | added | Wrzlprmft♦ | @BillBarth: 1) In the usual situation where the author does not dispute having interacted with the journal’s submission system (e.g., they submitted the paper, did not transfer copyright and retracted after shady reviews came in two days later), all your proposed evidence is worthless. 2) I am not necessarily talking about the author suing the publisher but about the possibility of the publisher suing the author (that is often implicitly considered in such questions) – whether that’s a realistic thing to happen or not. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 1:04 | comment | added | Bill Barth | @Davidmh, yeah, and? So when I call you to the stand when I'm suing you in court for fraudulently publishing my paper, I'll have subpoenaed your records for that IP info and use it to impeach your testimony. I'll also have the opportunity to testify that I was on an airplane or teaching class at the time your records indicate. That won't be good for your case. You guys seem to be beating up a strawman here. Unscrupulous publishers aren't going to sweat the lack of a proper copyright transfer, and they're going to publish your article from a jurisdiction that's hard for you to get to anyway. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 0:50 | comment | added | Davidmh | @BillBarth still, I, as an editor of a shady journal, can sign up in your name with your email, pull the password from the DB (by default I generate four digits codes, so I can also crack it), and sign in. The IP will be off, but they are known to change, and the rest will be consistent. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 0:38 | comment | added | Bill Barth | Presumably when you fill out the web form saying you'd like to transfer the copyright, that's part of a system that you logged in to. You submitted your article through it, gave them contact information, etc. All of that info is part of a database, presumably, that keeps a coherent record. The designer of the system can testify to its design and produce records related to your interaction with it. At that point, it's up to you to rebut their evidence. Maybe you were in Bora Bora snorkeling on the day the claim you transferred the copyright, and you can prove it. That's evidence the other way. | |
| Mar 6, 2015 at 0:34 | comment | added | Bill Barth | Testimony from a person at the publisher that they received your email of the copyright transfer agreement and a copy of that agreement is sufficient evidence. If they go to court and swear to that, unless you get on the stand and swear that you didn't, they don't have to do anything else. One of you is lying. At that point, they can try to produce further details from their email (or webserver or whatever) logs that show further evidence of receipt. They can also subpoena your computer, your ISP, etc, to produce your records. They can produce the history of your interaction. | |
| Mar 5, 2015 at 23:35 | comment | added | Wrzlprmft♦ | 3) Similar evidence could be used if you submitted the form through a website. – But what should this evidence look like? That’s the central point of my question: How could a publisher not using an external sumbmission system produce any evidence that I clicked a button in this system? 4) If the journal presents some evidence of a transfer document, you're going to have to try to convince a judge/jury that it's somehow fraudulent. – But only if there is some evidence (that remotely deserves to be called such) in the first place. And where such evidence comes from, is exactly my question. | |
| Mar 5, 2015 at 23:30 | comment | added | Wrzlprmft♦ | 1) I did not say that I do not care about what a court would say. I only said that I am more interested in the existence of evidence than in its potential effectiveness in court. 2) As such, a copy of the email from your email address, attested to by sworn testimony from the recipient and containing the proper text to be a copyright transfer would probably be sufficient. – While I agree that an e-mail, whose existence can be confirmed by a third party, is evidence, I fail to see what the recipient’s testimony be good for as the recipient is the publisher. | |
| Mar 5, 2015 at 22:53 | history | answered | Bill Barth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |