Sir

The News report entitled “Personal computers spur drive to keep control over copyright” appears to misapprehend important aspects of copyright law (Nature 396, 293; 1998).

It describes universities and publishers as battling over the copyright to contributions by academic authors and states: “One of the main issues of concern is how to maintain the peer-review certification process⃛while allowing electronic publishing to disseminate scholarly work more widely.” But the connection between peer review and copyright is far from obvious. Peer review does not depend in any important way on who owns the copyright. Under long-standing tradition, the mere submission of a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal grants an implied licence to make the adjustments called for by the peer-review process. In any event, the publishers could demand such a licence expressly, without demanding a transfer of the entire copyright to the article.

The real issue is: will electronic publishing (or other forms of distribution) by the author or university reduce demand for the journal? Scientific publishers cannot be expected to absorb the costs of running articles through peer review and printing them if they will lose most of their sales because readers get their copies direct from the authors (who will note proudly on their manuscripts that the articles have been peer reviewed and accepted by X Journal).

This issue arises in theory even if the journals do get an assignment of the copyright, if authors as a group are successful at negotiating licences to distribute their work. Even without a licence, the author may be free after transfer of the copyright to make at least some kinds of distribution as a ‘fair use’.

In the United States, whether the scholar or the university owns the copyright has not been firmly decided. A straightforward reading of the Copyright Act leads to the conclusion that the university owns the copyright (subject to negotiation with the members of the faculty) as a work made for hire. But at least two important judicial decisions have found a ‘professor's exception’ to the work-for-hire doctrine, based on long tradition at universities.