Fytton, I stand corrected in the light of your more detailed knowledge. It appears from your description that 'pre-prints' were not printed. Neither were they advanced copies of material to be printed (in their current form at least).
In summary - pre-prints were neither 'prints' nor 'pre'. No wonder I was confused :-) . Regards, John Smith, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Fytton Rowland wrote: > John Smith wrote: > > >This clashes with my definition of a 'pre-print'. As far as I am aware > >this term arises from the provision by many journal publishers of printed > >copies of papers in their final form to authors in advance of the formal > >publication so they could distribute them to colleagues. So they were not > >unrefereed or unaccepted just not formally published. The act of > >distibuting papers in advance of submission for publication I would > >describe as the circulation of 'working papers' or 'work in progress'. > > > >This provision of paper 'pre-prints' may still happen. I have some > >provided by an Indian journal which published a paper of mine in 1996. > > > >Regards, > > > >John Smith, > >University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. > > John, > > I'm afraid I don't agree with your definition. Having worked in scholarly > publication in hot-metal days, I can say that it was not possible to > produce offprints of the accepted papers very long before publication. The > way they were produced was to print extra copies of the journal but not > bind them. The unbound sheets were then stapled up into offprints of the > individual articles and supplied to the authors. But they went out at more > or less the same time as the actual journal copies went off to libraries. > Authors called them "reprints", but actually nothing had been reprinted, so > properly they were offprints. They weren't preprints. > > But in the USA thirty or so years ago an effort was made to organise a > preprint exchange, which really did distribute paper (photo)copies of > as-yet unaccepted typescripts. It eventually collapsed for two reasons: > many scientists objected to the distribution of non-refereed material as > debasing the currency; and the costs involved, especially postage costs for > pritned materials in large quantity, became too high. I think there was > also a feeling that it created a privileged class of people who were on the > mailing list, leaving others unable to get hold of the material so early. > > Yours, Fytton. > > ********************************************************** > Fytton Rowland, M.A., Ph.D., F.I.Inf.Sc., Lecturer, > Deputy Director of Undergraduate Programmes and > Programme Tutor for Publishing with English, > Department of Information Science, > Loughborough University, > Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK. > > Phone +44 (0) 1509 223039 Fax +44 (0) 1509 223053 > E-mail: [email protected] > http://info.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/staff/frowland.html > ********************************************************** >
