In response to David Goodman: You catch the general drift of my thought, David. I certainly agree that it is a matter of fact whether or not other scientific communities can actually make good use of a Ginsparg-like archive and server system, and am strongly in favor of figuring out ways to get them to try.
I wonder, for example, what the molecular biologist's reasons actually are, since there is more protection for priority in making one's paper available as a preprint on an open access server like that at LANL than there is in submitting it to a journal, where the non-public aspect of peer review does sometimes provide the opportunity to have one's ideas filched by the clandestine peer reviewer. To what extent that actually happens I don't know, but that is a recurrent fear in connection with peer review, and the solution is to make it available first in the pre-print form, provided the place of appearance has reliable dating procedures, reliable document handling, and so forth, which is what Ginsparg was careful to make sure of in setting his system up. Self-archiving on one's own website is not good for that purpose unless extraordinary measures are taken to establish document identity, reliable time-stamping, etc., and few individuals have the sort of expertise required to make their websites secure in that way. Of course, Stevan's (and others) work on the new self-archiving software is aimed at part in remedying this. Anyway, the point is that it is not at all clear what the molecular biologist's reason is, given that establishing priority surely is not the real reason. More generally, there must be many fields which, like the fields well-served by the LANL system, have been working for quite a long time on the basis of preprint distribution. Primary publication and regular journal publication have, in other words, been on separate tracks for decades in many fields in the sciences precisely because the great emphasis on priority has forced preprint distribution to become the primary publication medium. What distinguishes the people using the LANL system is that they were willing to give up their privileged status by using an open access distribution system. It wasn't just the use of the automated system that counted but the willingness to allow that system to be made available to anybody. There was a risk in that in several respects. For one thing they couldn't know in advance but what the quality of work made available in that way would contain too much poorly prepared material to make it feasible to use it. Also, they must have been more or less aware that this would subject them to a lot of hostile criticism from people who would see them as encouraging barbarism. But they did it anyway and it worked. My reason for believing that it worked is this. Had it not worked, the effect of it would have shown itself in professional communication in those fields by now. To take a fanciful example, suppose that the research community began to develop the same kind of uncritical habits of thinking that, say, the New Age devotee has who is always ready to accept any new belief that comes along, whether it be crystal power, orgone accumulation, pyramid power, salvation by extra-terrestials, or what have you. The effect of using the automated server system as a place of primary publication would then be to generate acceptance of just about any research claim made through it, and this tolerance of inconsistency and incoherence would in turn result necessarily in less and less common agreement and understanding in the research community as the contradictions in their beliefs increased. This would in turn show itself in the literature, which would become increasingly irritable and angry in tone as misunderstandings proliferated unchecked by critical control; accusations, suspicions, and postures of belligerence would become increasingly normal; the basic form of primary publication -- which is actually rather strict -- would cease to be followed by the people submitting papers to the archive, and so forth. And as that happened people would stop using the server as the basic medium of primary communication and either reform around some new and private method of distribution or else the research community would just dissolve as a community. That is why the statistics of use have some real force, considered as showing what the tendencies are: if the system wasn't working it would by now have shown signs of increasing abandonment. This is what I have in mind in saying that the automated system of primary publication cannot be and will not be used other than by people who are in fact matured enough in their practices to use it. But there certainly should be many more that are competent enough to use it than are actually using it. Could it be that they just are not ready to give up on the advantages they might be enjoying as "invisible colleges"? In that case it is mainly just a problem of lack of moral leadership in those fields. But there may be other reasons than this. I have no idea what they might be. It seems to me that there is an answerable question in this, though it would take people in those fields to provide the answer. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joseph Ransdell [email protected] [email protected] Dept of Philosophy 806 742-3275 Home: 806 797-2592 Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA http://www.door.net/arisbe (Peirce Gateway website) http://www.door.net/arisbe/homepage/ransdell.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
