THE SBL, COPYRIGHT, AND SCHOLARLY COURTESY: Further to yesterday's post, Mark Goodacre reports that Matthew Collins has e-mailed him the following. (If the message was sent to me as well, I never received it.)

my original intent in putting the rider on the papers, however, was not one of claiming copyright or any such thing (you'll notice I don't say they are copyrighted, only that one should ask permission). Rather it was to reinforce the idea of scholarly courtesy in recognizing the provisional nature (both in print and online) of the Seminar Papers as a publication. We have had this approach to the Seminar Papers since its inception. I have seen (and heard) quotations of papers printed in the Seminar Papers used to argue that scholar X holds a particular point of view - when in fact in the final version of the paper published elsewhere, scholar X either takes a very different view or doesn't address the perspective quoted. The Seminar Papers has always been a provisional publication designed to stimulate scholarly interchange at the meeting through the circulation of papers in advance of the meeting. The fact that these papers were bound in a nice volume and sold made many assume they were finished and copyrighted products. If you look at the print versions of the past, you will note the only copyright claimed is for the printed collected volume. Authors still retained all copyrights and publication rights.

A few responses, in part echoing what Mark has already said:

1. This is an unannounced and, as far as I know, undiscussed departure from the previous policy regarding SBL Seminar Papers. Some of the volumes have pointed out that the papers are preliminary work, which is fair enough, but there's never been a hint that they shouldn't be cited and, indeed, they have frequently been cited in the secondary literature. I've published two papers in the SBLSP myself, at least one of which has been cited elsewhere, indeed in the last few months. It never would have occurred to me to expect the citers to ask my permission first.

2. The new policy doesn't make any sense for the printed and bound volumes, let alone for Internet publications. It seems to be aimed at small seminars of, say, a dozen or fewer people in which they circulate the papers among themselves for discussion and feedback before revising and publishing them. In that case it's perfectly reasonable to agree that no one will quote the papers without prior permission. But in the case of the SBLSP, we're dealing with papers that have been published and are available to anyone who buys the volume or takes the trouble to look it up in a library (in the case of the printed version) or to anyone who has an Internet connection and who clicks on the link (in the case of the online version). Not at all the same thing. Scholarly courtesy is natural in the small seminar, but it becomes a more complicated issue when the paper is actually published and widely circulated.

3. I submit that my observations on copyright were relevant. The papers are copyrighted (by the author) and published, whether or not they are "finished." (And few of us ever feel our work is unalterably finished, even after publication.) Suppose I find an idea in one of the papers that is directly relevant to my current research and that moves it in a productive new direction. Then suppose that I ask the author for permission to cite it and the author says no. What do I do? Poach the idea without attibution? That could potentially count as copyright violation and in any case would be unprofessional and immoral. Drop my research and do something else? That\s unreasonable. Or, on the basis of fair use, do I cite the idea from the published work and proceed with my research?

Likewise, suppose I find a discussion in an SBLSP of something I'm working on and I disagree with the conclusions. Suppose I contact the author and ask permission to cite the discussion and the author says that he or she stands behind the view expressed but still doesn't give me permission to cite it. What do I do? If I ignore the discussion, I am not giving a full account of the state of the question (i.e., what has been published). If I include it, I am violating "scholarly courtesy" (but not copyright).

4. The point here is that the policy has not been thought through properly and it has the danger of putting other scholars in an impossible position. If people's work is at such a provisional stage that they don't want it cited, they shouldn't publish it, either in print or on the Internet. Surely the assumption for all these years of printed SBLSPs is that the work in the papers, although more preliminary than what we might find in a peer-review journal or a major monograph, is of sufficient standard to be made public and become part of the discussion.

If some SBL Seminars now don't feel that way, the easiest solution is for them to put the papers online with password protection so that only Seminar members can access them. Nothing simpler. But they shouldn't put the rest of us in the very awkward position outlined above.

5. As for people citing an author's views in a paper after the author has changed his or her mind, so what? We all change our minds all the time. Exactly the same situation can arise after a peer-reviewed journal article has been published. Granted, the peer-reviewed journal article has passed through more hurdles and more thought has been put into it, but it can still be improved upon. The whole point of publishing is to keep the state of the question advancing, and that means we all have to keep changing our minds. That is our glory, not our shame.

Matthew, I hope you will take these points under consideration and will reconsider the policy. In my view, it just doesn't work.

Also, Stephen Carlson has the following response on Hypotyposeis:

One of the nice things about the Annual Meeting is receiving feedback from our colleagues about our works-in-progress, so that we can improve them for later publication in a peer-reviewed journal or book. As such, I can understand why someone may not wish their working drafts cited or quoted in other peer-reviewed publications without someone checking with them first--their views may not be sufficiently defined for scholarly comment, or they may have been published in a more appropriate forum. Although there may be nothing legally stopping scholars or anyone else from quoting or citing papers published on-line within the ambit of fair use, it might be wise as a practical matter in more formal writings, such as in peer-reviewed articles and books, to be more restrained in citing or quoting such informal works. Providing a working draft before the Annual Meeting is a courtesy that benefits many, and it does not make much sense to discourage that behavior. We don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

I think I have addressed all these points above. The golden eggs kept coming through all the years of the print version and I don't see why the policy should change with Internet publication.

Perhaps an analogy might help my point. Lots of interesting stuff gets said at cocktail parties at SBL. Should they be cited too?

This is a completely false analogy. It compares chat at parties to published scholarly work. Chat at parties is not written down, is not copyrighted, and is not published. Of course one shouldn't cite it in a footnote without permission.

That being said, there are some aspects about how the courtesy policy is phrased that gives me pause. I have a duty to credit the source of the ideas I use in my work, and I can't see how someone's failure to give permission (perhaps by being unavailable or dead) should prevent that fundamental academic duty.

Agreed. This is the problem I see with the new policy.

UPDATE: Rub�n G�mez (Bible Software Review Blog) comments on my original post here.

UPDATE: Steven Carlson has more here. Just a clarification or two: I am aware of the difference between copyright and plagiarism. In the paragraph from me which Steven quotes, when I said "That could potentially count as copyright violation and in any case would be unprofessional and immoral," I meant that if, for example, in my poaching of the idea I were to copy a page or even a whole section of the paper more or less verbatim and without attribution, that would count as copyright violation. (That's right, isn''t it Steven?) If I just poached the idea but not the wording, it would be unprofessional and immoral (and plagiarism) but copyright would have no bearing. And when I said, "Or, on the basis of fair use, do I cite the idea from the published work and proceed with my research," I was assuming that I was quoting relevant material from the paper in citing it. Steven is right that if I just cited the idea, copyright and fair use would not enter into it. I should have spelled out more clearly what I was thinking.

Steven's post is very helpful for sorting out the ethical and legal issues involved in this whole SBL Seminar Paper controvery.

UPDATE (16 September): Mark Goodacre has more here