At 10:46 08/09/00 +0100, Chris Armstrong wrote:
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
Chris, You underestimate your authorship, but you are in danger of emulating a common misapprehension.
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?
Stevan Harnad replied to the specific points, but there is a more general misunderstanding implied in your comments. It has never been the role of those who provide access to information, librarians or publishers, to FIX content, i.e. to select a particular version, but to enable users to MAKE SENSE of it. In the e-environment that includes versioning, allowing updates, creating links to subsequent and related works, etc. It's a continual process. Fixing versions is an artefact of print. So, you ask legitimate questions, but have selected the wrong target. Why seek to diminish the role of eprints when these issues apply to all electronic publishing? People on this list are finding solutions to these questions, acting on just these issues, and building new services: they are not a road block.
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?
This is not 92/3. There is substantial experience of eprint/electronic publishing now, so we don't need to invent problems. What real examples are there of this?
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
No, managed eprints supported by managed QC publishing is the opportunity to make things a great deal clearer. More access is better, not worse.
, at least to the extent that indication of authorship and corporate source will no longer necessarily help to define authority, accuracy or currency.
Again, it's not clear if you are pre-judging this, or whether there are real examples of this problem. It is possible to build authoritative sources on top of submitted data.
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.
The old framework needs to change, not the other way round.
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.
Who knows how long it will take. Users have a choice and need to be convinced, but we shouldn't pretend that it will be easier for those who stick with 'tried and tested' . Steve Hitchcock Open Citation (OpCit) Project <http://opcit.eprints.org/> IAM Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
