Journal of Social Science for Policy Implications

The Initial Monetization of the Copyright in American Physics
Dr. Thomas Scheiding

Introduction
In 1976 the copyright law in the United States was revised, and publishers quickly attempted to profit from this revision. An initial attempt to monetize the value of the intellectual property in scholarship was in the discipline of physics with the motivation being the replacement of declining revenue that came from the page charge and subscriptions. Using the archival records of the American Institute of Physics, this paper discusses the attempt to legitimize a new source of revenue within the scholarly society – a copyright royalty payment for the reprinting of a scholarly article. Although the American Institute of Physics was successful in capturing ownership over the intellectual property when the copyright law was revised, the organization ultimately struggled for many years to collect any meaningful revenue through the vehicle of the Copyright Clearance Center. This attempt however ultimately set the stage for capturing royalties through the electronic distribution of scholarship. This paper expands on our understanding of how the organizational structure and financing of the scholarly communication process in physics adjusted to external changes in the second half of the twentieth century.

Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jsspi.v8n1a3