Having read some of the CAUT Bulletin articles about Internet copyright, we would be interested in any thoughts on copyright and career issues that have come up for our research unit. Our work is essentially directed at health policy of various kinds so the dissemination of research findings is more important to us than ownership. In the past we have published findings in technical reports in New Zealand then written material about it for publication in the international academic journals. To improve local dissemination and to help establish ourselves as the "authoritative knowledge producers" for a couple of areas that we're best at we have put up an extensive web site. The plan for the future is to publish on the web first and on paper afterwards.

The question for us is that the web is international publishing in a way that our technical reports weren't. Will we be shooting ourselves in the foot with the international journals if the findings are no longer "new" because they have been on the web? On the other hand who wants to wait a year or two for a paper to be reviewed and eventually appear in a journal. But the review process is important to us. Peer review and academic journals underpin our authoritative knowledge, our position in the university and its resource politics, and our position-from-which-to-speak publically in New Zealand about policy issues. Not to mention our personal careers (three journal articles a year recommended).

So we asked our favourite journals what they thought. And they don't know yet. Most of the copyright debate is about copying ("downloading") and ownership, or putting journal publications on the web which is much the same as re-publishing, "fair use" rules etc. (e.g., http://www.arl.org/newsltr/192/intro.html).

Dr. Linda Hill
Researcher, Alcohol & Public Health Research Unit, University of Auckland

Material can be sent to Linda Hill at the University of Auckland, PB 92019, Auckland, New Zealand; web site: http://www.aphru.ac.nz; e-mail: linda.hill@auckland.ac.nz -- ed.