On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, David Goodman wrote: > Steve, a request which I make because I am so greatly appreciative of > your work, and so eager to see it succeed. > > There are, as you have so often acknowledged, more than one possible > way of improving the mode of production and distribution of scientific > articles. > > Perhaps you might, when replying to suggested extensions or > alternatives, discuss a little more how to incorporate, include, or at > least make use of, others' suggestions instead of concentrating on why > they are not quite as good as your original proposal.
David, fair comment: I do need to be reminded when my evangelizing goes over the top! Thanks. The suggestion in question (Peter Singer's), to change the incentive structure of academic evaluation, is a commendable one, and I wish I could think of a way to use it to help facilitate the freeing of the refereed journal literature online (the theme of this Forum), but unfortunately the only things I myself can think of are the obvious ways this can slow and impede the freeing of the literature: It asks people to change MORE things as a PRECONDITION for freeing the literature: They must first change their evaluation practices and their publication practices. Perhaps Peter Singer is right, that this would all be for the better, if there were a concrete idea of what people should do, and how, and a way to successfully persuade them to do it. But to me this still sounds like untested conjectures -- notoriously difficult to get people to adopt (en masse, and soon), whereas freeing the refereed literature by simply self-archiving it on-line NOW is not something that depends on, awaits, or is (or ought to be) in any way conditional on the testing and implementation of further untested conjectures: It already has face-validity (if everyone did it, it would most definitely free the literature, by definition), and it has been tested and works (e.g., the Physics Archive). Nor does it require giving up or changing anything else as a precondition; nor has it had any untoward consequences. The Forum is certainly open to further debate on these alternative proposals, and I invite all those who can either contribute ideas about how to change the academic incentive structure now, so as to facilitate freeing the journal literature, or solutions to any of the problems I have repeatedly pointed out -- e.g., in peer-review reform or peer-review replacement schemes (self-publishing, open commentary, etc.) -- to air them in this Forum. Note that I have only used my Forum moderator's powers to invoke cloture twice (as far as I recall): once on the side-topic that there is a conspiracy on the part of university administrations to wrest ownership of their intellectual property from their faculty (a possibility, but too remote from the concerns of this Forum) and the other on the side-topic that there would be no problem of free access to the refereed journal literature if only more money were given to libraries (again a possibility, but not increased in its probability or relevance by dint of repetition). Apart from those two cases, it seems to me that it is irrelevant that I am the moderator of this Forum: I just happen to be one of its more vociferous contributors, writing in favour of what I think makes sense, and criticizing what I think does not (but always ready to be corrected). -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
