the title of the work, e.g., ''Copyright 1998 by Magon Thompson (or Sundown Press)."
Publishers are obligated to protect a copyright not only on their own behalf but also on behalf of the author. Since the electronic version of a paper can take many forms, publishers themselves may not always be aware of possible problems and pitfalls. You will need to make sure that the publisher of your scientific paper guarantees, in writing, that it will accurately represent your words and intention if your paper is translated to a digital environment. For example, conference proceedings are frequently placed on a CD-ROM, with contents, keyword, and index access to the papers it contains. In addition, the material may include hypertext links to other information, including other papers, graphics, and additional information added by the journal publisher. You will need to ensure that the access the journal has provided to data on the CD or Web page from your paper, or to your paper from others, is consistent with the way you want your work to be represented. You may trust the hardcopy format of your journal implicitly, but once the journal goes into the electronic arena, the representation given to the paper you created may include features that conflict with your work and ideas.
Because of the huge changes taking place in the electronic world of copyright, both publisher and author organizations are banding together to identify and manage copyrighted documents through a database application devoted to this purpose. One such system is the PII (Publisher Item Identifier), a tagging system for both print and electronic formats that is used by the American Chemical Society and the American Mathematical Society, among others. The copyright owner of a published work can generate its PII tag. Because technology is changing so rapidly and providing so many new ways to publish and distribute data, the field of electronic copyright is also in flux. Whenever any work in which you hold copyright is to be published in an electronic format, be sure to learn and understand fully your rights under current copyright law.
