Dear Professor Harnad As someone who has studied electronic publishing in some depth over the last few years and produced a report on the subject for JISC, I much enjoyed the rehearsal of your proposal yesterday at IIS <http://www.iis.org.uk/events/agm2k/index.html>. I cannot claim the eminence of writers such as Odlyzko, Ginsparg or yourself, and, it should be said that I come to this from the library/information science [LIS] end of the continuum, but, having followed your work for a while, I find that for me at least, it does not sit comfortably with fundamental LIS precepts. While I have no problem with the ethics or efficacy of your approach, nor with the publisher reaction or Charles' Oppenheim's corrigenda, I do have a profound worry over one issue that neither you nor your audience yesterday addressed.
In your scenario, we would have pre- and possibly post-print versions of a paper co-existent with the final, formally published version - and it is here that I have to take issue with it. How is the user to know which is the copy of record? Which should be cited - and which will HEI authorities consider in RAE or tenure-testing exercises? Further, what is to prevent accidental or intentional changes, not to mention further electronic copying and publishing - again with possible unauthorised or accidental alterations (see Graham, 1992/3) - of the electronic original? We try to inculcate good practice which includes the evaluation of resources in users of the WWW, but it seems to me that your proposal, if widely adopted, would muddy the water, at least to the extent that indication of authorship and corporate source will no longer necessarily help to define authority, accuracy or currency. Other issues that cannot easily be ignored are those of access (few _formally_ published electronic papers find their way into BNB or its equivalent) and legal deposit. Most arguments that electronic publishing will take over from print hinge on mechanical rather than social advantages; your imposition of a human-originating variable is an unknown. Ginsparg has suggested 10 to 20 years before electronic supersedes conventional scholarly publishing, others and you, I think, somewhat less. The interregnum will prove difficult for users who are faced with such choices - I fear that all but the most committed will remain faithful to the tried and tested formal publishing. Sincerely Chris Armstrong Centre for Information Quality Management (CIQM) Information Automation Limited (+44) 1974 251302 [email protected] <http://www.i-a-l.co.uk>
