Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / November 2004

We wish to express our gratitude to the many users that visited our
growing site, offered feedback and shared their impressions and
suggestions, helping us growing.

Our free contents policy caused some surprise in a field in which the
impression is of researchers jealously watching their material and
refusing to share it with the scientific community for fear of
plagiarism, while at the same time they are eager to find and use any
resource available.
An impression, certainly, caused by the massive, continuing reliance
on hard-copy and "traditional" means of distribution of research
results on the part of many researchers. But a strong impression
nonetheless.

Comments to our open source policy so far ranged from the most
enthusiastic to the merely snide. One of our contributors witnessed a
colleague saying "If they are so stupid they put their stuff online,
I've a right of downloading and
using it as I please". We of course wish all the best to this
gentleman, in terms of career development and human relationships, but
we also wish to point out that our material is released under a
standard Creative Commons license, which simply requires users to give
credit where credit is due. It is not a matter of stupidity.

The Creative Commons license is there just to grant the basic
attribution rights of those few hardy souls that decide to share their
material no matter what. While "plagiarism" is not the proper word for
the uncredited use of our contents, the effects are very similar.
Sadly, this "grab and run" attitude seems to be growing.

Another common fear (as expressed recently by some researchers in
public forums) concerns the "harvesting of e-mail addresses" which our
required registration seems to imply to some.

First and foremost - we do not harvest e-mails. Our privacy
disclaimers are all in place and we mean to stick to our policy. We
are not interested in harvesting e-mails. And the last thing we want
is for such a rumor to spread, as it would very logically scare away
potential users. Suspicion is a well-advised strategy on-line, but in
the case of ePalaeontology it has no base in fact.

We survive thanks to the contributions from our users. And a
registered user should be normally more willing to provide contents to
his community than a casual passer-by.

Incidentally, many users complained on public forums about the
scarcity of the available material on our site. And yet, they are not
willing to post their own stuff, thus contributing to the growth of
our community.

ePalaeontology is of course grateful of their presence on our site,
but a more charitable attitude might be in order - after all you can't
complain if everybody else is doing exactly what you do, taking
without giving.

This "grab and run" attitude is currently damaging our efforts at
popularizing science and creating a lively on-line community, while at
the same time our motives and our honesty are questioned.