(2007) 4:3 SCRIPTed 242–300

Issue DOI: 10.2966/scrip.040307

Volume 4, Issue 3, September 2007

Editorial

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • The European Regulation on Biometric Passports: Legislative Procedures, Political Interactions, Legal Framework and Technical Safeguards
    Gerrit Hornung, p.246-262
    The current implementation of biometric data in the new generation of European passports is progressing rapidly. On the legal basis of an EU Council regulation, member states must include RFID chips containing facial and fingerprint images in the travel documents of their citizens. While the use of biometric systems itself poses fundamental questions of constitutional and data protection law, the political and legislative procedures implemented prior to the adoption of the Regulation have been highly problematic due to the absence of public debate, the lack of participation of the national parliaments and the overruling of the European Parliament by the Council. Furthermore, important practical issues remain unsolved.
  • Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality
    Chris Reed, pp.263-284
    It has often been asserted that technology neutrality is the proper approach to ICT regulation, but those making this assertion use the concept in a number of divergent senses. This article analyses those different meanings and asks whether technology neutrality really is as desirable as motherhood and apple pie, and whether it does in fact achieve the goals desired by legislators.

Analysis

  • Copyright and research: an archivangelist’s perspective
    A. A. Adams, p.285-290
    Conflation of academic copyright issues with respect to books (whether text books, research monographs or popularisations) and research articles, is rife in the academic publishing industry. A charitable interpretation is that this is because to publishers they are all effectively the same: a product produced for commercial benefit. An uncharitable interpretation is that this is a classic Fear Uncertainty and Doubt approach, in an attempt to delay the inevitable move to Open Access (OA) to research articles. To authors, however, research articles and books are generally very different things. Research articles are produced without the expectation of direct financial return, whereas books generally include some consideration of financial return.
    Taylor’s “Copyright and research: an academic publisher’s perspective” (SCRIPTed 4:2) falls wholesale into this mental trap and in particular his lauding of the position paper of the Association of American Professional and Scholarly Publishers, shows a lack of understanding of the continuing huge loss to scholarship of a lack of OA to research articles. It should be regarded as a categorical imperative for scholars to embrace OA to research articles.

Book Reviews