Dear Colleagues, This week's New Scientist (26.05.01), apart from being substantially about complementary medicine, contains a boxed article (p.53) by Stevan Harnad on e-archiving copyrighted, peer-reviewed research findings on the Web to make them more widely available for free to all fellow researchers. I think the article suggests that this will improve researchers' chances to achieve higher impact factors and better success in getting research grants and (eventually) tenured academic posts.
I believe the reasoning behind these conclusions contains at least one major fallacy and several sub-fallacies. Can you spot them? I offer a book-token of £20.00 for the best suggestion. As the article is, I believe, written with the tongue slightly in the cheek, I don't want to appear too serious with this offer, but would like to have the fallacies brought into the open nevertheless ... Best wishes, Reinhard Reinhard Wentz, Dipl. Bibl. Imperial College Library Service Medical Library Chelsea & Westminster Hospital 369, Fulham Road London SW10 9NH tel.: 0044 (0)20 8746 8109 fax.: 0044 (0)20 8746 8215 e-mail: [email protected] P.S. Stevan Harnad knows about this challenge and has already claimed the prize money. So I may have to double it (£20.00 to him, £20.00 to AN Other) if I am satisfied with his explanations. If there are many contributions I may have to appoint un-biased assessors and anonymise the entries. Oh dear!
