On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Albert Henderson wrote: > sh> Journal articles are author GIVE-AWAYS; > > Harnad confuses the exchange of copyright for > valuable recognition and dissemination with the > fact that money does not change hands. Authors > work hard for acceptance and each has a selection > hierarchy for submissions if the first choice > will not publish.
Authors work hard for recognition and certification by their PEERS, and it is the service of peer-review (refereeing) that a refereed journal implements (the peers review for free too!). The implementation of that Quality-Control/Certification (QC/C) SERVICE will be paid for, as a service, but it costs only a tiny fraction of the price the world now pays for access to a PRODUCT, which is the QC/C'd paper itself. THAT will be disseminated free, through self-archiving. > R. K. Merton has made this > point at length. I believe any economist would > agree that an exchange, not a give-away, takes > place. RK Merton was writing in the Gutenberg Era. For the view of Economists in the PostGutenberg Era, see: Harnad, S., Varian, H. & Parks, R. (2000) Academic publishing in the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free? Culture Machine 2 (Online Journal) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Varian/new1.htm http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j002/Articles/art_harn.htm > sh> the average refereed journal > sh> article (this is a free estimate, but unlikely to be far from the > sh> truth) has, let's say, 25 readers, and zero citations (apart from > sh> self-citations), in its entire life-cycle. (Authors for whom UnCover > sh> raises that number by 1 or 2 are not "abused"!) > > Not relevant to "hot papers" that score hundreds > or thousands of readings and citations -- the > latter a regular feature in THE SCIENTIST. I said AVERAGE. But even the happy authors of the "hot papers" would, I assure you, be quite happy to increase their impact still further; and for that, the needless impact-barriers need to go. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: [email protected]
