Comments on the Publishing Agreement

1. My affiliation is
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science, Switzerland

2. Article 1.1.  “If such an enhancements are included in or linked to the Work,
they are an integral part of the Work and, unless otherwise explicitly set forth in in Clause 9, all rights, licenses and obligations agreed to hereunder shall apply to such enhancements.”  I will refer to and encourage the reader to use
many software packages that are typically open-source free packages.  They should not be considered as a part of the Work.  Thus, the sentence quoted above
is confusing and probably harmful.

3. Article 1.2.  Here the first sentence is terribly long and I do not think
an ordinary person can read it in one breath.  Moreover, some “parallel” 
words do not seem to be parallel in any reasonable sense.  For example, “unlimited” right should imply “exclusive”, “sole” , “worldwide”, “transferable” rights. Can one give the “unlimited” right to a second person/company without giving any one of the other rights? Why do we need such a long and 
confusing sentence in stead of a set of short sentences that have the better
effect with clear logical connections?

4. Article 3.1. “electronically in Microsoft Word format”  There is zero chance that the MS Word will be used in my writing.  It will be written in tex/latex format.  In fact, Article 9.2 says that I have to deliver the final manuscript 
in LaTeX2e.  Why do we need “MS Word” in any part of the project?

5. Article 4.1. I can do the proofreading with the condition that the manuscript is not changed from LateX to anything else. I personally had to deal with a galley proof sent by the Springer for my accepted paper
by J. of Discrete and Computational Geometry, prepared by an outsourced typesetter who
converted my latex source to an MS Word format.  This was a nightmare of lost structures and
clean styles.  I complained to Guenter Ziegler (Berlin) who was responsible for my article.  
He clearly saw the serious problem of cheap outsourcing (you can contact him
for verification). They had to redo the proof and finally I received a proof that was MS Word free.

6. Article 6.4. “If Publisher grants licences to use the Work …” I would want to insert here “with the approval of the Author” and “with proper references”.

7. Instead of current 8.1 and 8.2 I would prefer the sentence like in 9.1. 
“The publication of subsequent editions shall be undertaken only after reaching agreement with the Author over the extent of revisions, the deadlines and terms of delivery of the manuscript, and any other applicable modifications of the present Publishing Agreement. If  Author is unable or unwilling to deliver a subsequent edition, Publisher is entitled to continue to publish the Work without updates or amendments with respect to the existing edition.”

(Explanation with my problems with Article 8.1. and 8.2. “Publisher has the sole right to determine the publication of any subsequent edition, such determination to be made after consultation with the Author”
Instead of “consultation” agreement with the Author is strongly preferable.
Also I don’t agree that the Publisher is entitled to revise etc by designating one or more individuals to prepare this and future editions.)

End of comments.
—