2. It might. You’d have to do the usual four-factor test.

3. I should think so, yes. If there’s a POD market already, your printing a copy is more likely to harm the market for the work, harming a fair-use case.

4. Mmmmmaybe, but likely not; case law is not on your side here. See the latest in copyshop course-pack case law. See also photo reproduction shops that won’t touch anything that might be copyrighted.

5. Who knows what publishers know?

6. No copyshop with sense will advertise such a thing unless they’ve worked out a licensing deal with the publisher. They got bitten bad by course-pack cases. A copyshop without sense will likely be sued. Win or lose, who knows? but they’re liable to see the inside of a courtroom.

1. Yes, I believe so.

2. Unclear, but if I were a copyshop I wouldn’t want the risk.

3. I doubt many have thought this scenario through.

4. Again, the copyshop would have to be crazy to advertise this.

Dr. Townsend, thanks for your comments. Kudos for allowing author self-archiving and for providing delayed OA. If all publishers followed those policies, we should all be a lot better off. But I think the compact is a step forward both for OA and for humanities publishers. Notably, the compact provides a potential pool of funds for publication charges for authors in HSS who have less access to research grants than STM authors. In addition, compact funding only requires that the peer-reviewed content of the journal be OA. One significant point raised by the NHA report is that a much higher share of HSS journal content is non-peer-reviewed, which comes at high costs. So for the purposes of the compact, we can consider those costs separately from the research content of the journals, keeping it paywalled for the time being if necessary. I think the compact would be better if it was open to other funding models, but I still think it’s a step forward for humanities publishers.

One interesting outcome is the wide range of per-page costs quoted for the first online copy (i.e., eliminating print costs), from $90 to $1,326 per page. I would argue that the $90 is excessive – but $1,326 PER PAGE??

My comments can be found on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, here: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/humanities-and-social-sciences-thoughts.html

and here: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/cost-per-page-for-hss-journals-varies.html

Another positive effect might be that younger candidates would encourage turnout among younger voters, who lag other age groups at this time. Voters like seeing candidates who look like them and younger candidates may better energize younger voters.

Impact on seniority is another interesting question. If Congresspeople started their Congressional careers younger, might they retire younger too?

But the thought of how a few younger elected public officials might influence policy is an interesting one. Might there be more clamor for education spending and student loan relief? More policy targeted toward helping early career professionals and young families? Might there be more caution to use military force, since it’s young people who do the fighting and dying?

While for you, it may seem obvious what has just been said, that is only because you have just read it. To the person reading your email (especially if they did not write the original, such as on a mailing list) it is extremely useful to put the specific parts of the reply after the specific part being replied to (called intermixing).

Examples below… it becomes more obvious with longer messages, but hopefully you can see that.

Example 1 : Topposting

I agree, that seems like a good idea!

< I really hate what they’re doing.
< It seems like they want to take over the world.
< Maybe we should build a defense tower.

Example 1 : Bottomposting

< I really hate what they’re doing.
< It seems like they want to take over the world.
< Maybe we should build a defense tower.

I agree, that seems like a good idea!

Example 1 : Bottomposting

< I really hate what they’re doing.

I agree.

< Maybe we should build a defense tower.

That seems like a good idea!

The only disadvantage is if you believe there’s a convention to bottom-posting, which makes top-posting unexpected to you. But it’s not the case. The most popular mail clients put your cursor at the top by default, which is why emails from Aunt Sally are always top-posted. There are way more Aunt Sallies out there on the Internet than there are people who want to preserve a bottom-posting convention.

Plus, at this point, I do it just to be contrarian.