On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Thomas Krichel wrote: > interesting article in the Chronicle of HE > "Scholars Urge a Boycott of Journals That > Won't Release Articles to Free Archives" > > http://chronicle.com/free/2001/03/2001032601t.htm
See the original Roberts et al. article on which it is based, in this week's Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318a and also "Science's Response" by the Editors: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318b Roberts et al. are comrades-at-arms, so it is regrettable that I have to express some pessimism about the likelihood of success of their proposal. My own response to it is appended below. But much more important is rebutting the Science Editors' Rebuttal to Roberts et al. in their editorial response (in which they offer a compromise -- freeing Science's contents on-line 12 months after they are published -- and suggesting "Government" do the rest). I am preparing a critique entitled "Too Little, Too Late". Stay tuned. Meanwhile, the comment on Roberts et al. -- SH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SELF-ARCHIVING ALTERNATIVE Stevan Harnad Roberts et al., in "Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature" <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318a> argue compellingly for the following three pleas to publishers and authors: It is imperative to free the refereed literature online. To achieve this goal, the following should be done: (1) Established journal publishers should give away their journal contents online for free. (2) Authors should submit preferentially to journals that give their contents away online for free. (3) In place of established journals that do not give away their contents online for free, new journals (e.g., BioMed Central <http://www.biomedcentral.com>) should be established that do. The goal of freeing the refereed literature online is completely valid, optimal for science and scholarship, attainable, inevitable, and indeed already overdue. But these proposed means alas do not look like the fastest or surest way of attaining that goal, particularly as there is a tested and proven alternative means that will attain the very same goal without asking journals to do anything, and without asking authors to give up anything: (i) There is no reason journals should pre-emptively agree to give away their own contents online at this time. If researchers wait until many or most journals find a reason for doing so, it will be a very, very long wait. (ii) Asking authors to choose which journal to submit their research to on the basis of whether or not the journal agrees to give away its contents online for free rather than on the basis authors currently use -- journal quality, reputation, impact factor -- is again an unreasonable thing to ask, and will result in a long, long wait. More important, it is an unnecessary thing to ask, as there is already a means for authors to achieve precisely the same goal immediately without having to give up anything at all: by self-archiving their refereed articles themselves, in interoperable, University Eprint Archives <http://www.eprints.org>. (iii) Creating new journals, without track-records, to draw away submissions from the noncompliant established journals, is another long uphill path, and again it is not at all clear why authors should prefer to take that path, renouncing their preferred established journals, when they can have their cake and eat it too (through self-archiving). The details of the self-archiving alternative (including questions of copyright and embargo) are fully described in "For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now." http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): 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]
