Stevan Harnad wrote: sh> It is beyond my powers to discern what is exercising Professor sh> Ransdell, what he is worrying about, or why, so I will not attempt to sh> comment on most of what he has posted.
What, me worry? 8-) Actually, I do worry, though I'm delighted with the way things are going thus far. Anyway, If anyone has any criticisms of my point about the sort of objection that would be taken to establshing a new administrative level of control I would be pleased to learn of them and duly responsive. sh> The only substantive point I sh> found was the following, and unfortunately it is based on a sh> misunderstanding: sh> jr > ...it seems to me that Stevan's point that existing jr > journals don't need to be subsumed under such an arrangement because jr > they are already doing a good job might mistakenly be brushed aside as jr > impertinent on the grounds that the question isn't whether they are jr > doing okay but whether they are making any moves to go online properly, jr > and since there is little indication that they are, why shouldn't the jr > prestige of the universities forming the Consortium be used to persuade jr > them to get on board The Prestige Express and get the migration to the jr > internet started at last? sh> sh> Most journals ARE already migrating to the internet; that is not the sh> problem. The problem is how to free the online journal literature (from sh> Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View [S/L/P]) access barriers. That is sh> what journals are not doing, and not going to do, except under pressure sh> from the user community, i.e., authors (self-archiving for free) and sh> readers (preferring the free online version to any S/L/P strategies There is no misunderstanding on my part, Stevan. I don't regard the S/L/P strategies that the journals -- some of them -- are using right now as migrating to the internet. They are just doing what they have always done and allowing, in addition, some limited access on private lines to some people at some places. Our department hasn't even asked the library to buy site licenses for the various "experiments" in this because they are doing it in such a feeble and inept way that it is really just useless and the very idea of a site license for displaying the results of scholarly research strikes me as perverse somehow. I don't mean to reduce this to a verbal quibble, though: if you call what they are doing "being on-line" I won't argue with you. But none of this is to the point, really. I support your view because I have the same aim, up to a certain point, at least: namely, unrestricted self-archiving on machines with servers that provide universal unrestricted access. I have surely made that clear. I'm sorry this diverted you from what you must originally have intended to do, which was to explain why you are so confident that they will not brush aside your own insistence on the inappropriateness of the administrative agenda they seem clearly to have in mind in the Proposal. sh> Authors need support in self-archiving: They need a reliable Archive sh> they can trust, backed by Institutions they trust, and protected from sh> copyright restrictions by collective initiatives they trust and can sh> join. That is precisely the critical role the Scholar's Forum can sh> play in this -- without any danger whatsoever of breeding a "class of sh> sycophants"! Well, of course authors need all that, but they won't get any of it if we don't look closely at what exactly is happening. One knows nothing at all about what any of these things mean other than through the examination of the detail of arrangements and agreements, and the probable consequences of doing this or that. If I am mistaken as regards the likely result of establishing an administrative system like the one described, reasons can surely be given as to why I am mistaken. There IS something to be concerned about in this, on the face of it. As it stands, this is a proposal for a new level of government of intellectual life by the coordination of some of the most powerful institutions in the world. I'm saying that this sort of thing is not what is wanted, and I thought you were, too. I don't see that I can be faulted merely on the grounds that I have worries about such a thing. It worries me when I learn that people aren't worried about these sorts of ambitions. I would have thought that this sort of concern is just common sense. But as regards what especially concerns you, what I am saying is this: assuming that by "the Scholar's Forum" is meant the system to be set up by the Consortium which is described in the original Proposal, then what is being established is a set of facilities designed for use in moving journal publication on-line, such that if a given journal uses the facilities then that journal is ipso facto on line in the relevant sense because that is built into the design of the system. These facilities are of the nature of a document archive with a variety of special systems facilities for sophisticated document management, including a server system for document input and output, and the whole is enframed by an administrative system that determines, among other things, who uses the facilities and how. Now, I claim that there are certain reasons why the Consortium cannot set up the sort of administrative system they have in mind -- not the server system but the enframing administrative system -- and expect it to have any long-range viability. (I am not criticizing the system as an archive & server system, by the way.) But let us suppose that I am wrong about that. It still is not clear why they should put as much weight on your insistence on the self-archiving principle as you think they should. My objections aside, it is surely well within the power of such a Consortium to attract as many prestigious editors with their journals as they can accommodate, and to keep on doing so until they have brought on board every journal they think worth supporting, without having to depend upon the much slower results of relying on the self-archiving principle to work its results out gradually on the basis of marketplace considerations. It would cost them something to set up the facilities, but then they must know that or they wouldn't be thinking of getting into this to begin with, and the expense might be recoverable from the money saved by the end of the dependence on commercial journals. Why would the journal editors and the contributors to and readers of the journals be unwilling to take advantage of the sort of arrangements and facilities the Consortium could provide if they were assured that their editorial policies were not interfered with and the papers published would be available at no charge? Sounds like a bold and quite practical solution on the face of it. Of course, I am claiming that it won't work, after all, and it shouldn't. I could be wrong, but as regards your interests I am simply providing a backup argument in case they decide that your insistence on the self-archiving principle doesn't actually make that much difference to them after all since they can accomplish the goal of getting everybody on-line that deserves to be on-line without having to wait for the eventual effects of free self-archiving. I can see why they might think that. This might help explain why they have not shown much overt interest in the self-archiving principle thus far, which I was unable to track down functionally in analyzing their proposal, and why their reference to the xxx server seemed more expressive of piety than of a practical understanding of what that is all about. I don't attribute any of this to sinister forces. It could be simple oversight, for example, or sloppy thinking, though I am rather more inclined to interpret it charitably as an indicator that their present perspective on this doesn't make the importance of these things as obvious to them as it should. -- Joseph Ransdell <[email protected]> or <[email protected]> Dept of Philosophy Texas Tech Univ. Lubbock TX 79409 (806) 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax ARISBE:Peirce Telecommunity http://www.door.net/arisbe http://www.door.net/arisbe/homepage/ransdell.htm
