For the most part, I find that Albert Henderson's postings are their own best rebuttals, hence best left to undo themselves unanswered.
But I am also continually stunned by the sluggishness with which the trivial token -- that the REFEREED literature can and should be freed of all access/impact barriers right now through author/institution self-archiving -- is dropping in the minds of researchers. It remains a profound puzzle to me, because all the reasons so far adduced against it have been so equally obviously either elementary misunderstandings or non-sequiturs. But given that it is all not nearly as trivial or obvious to most researchers as it seems to some of us, I shall spell out the fallacies inherent in Albert's comments: On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Albert Henderson wrote: > Harnad wants to have his cake and eat it too ... Correct. The self-archiving of all REFEREED research amounts to having one's (peer-reviewed) cake and eating (freeing it from impact/access barriers) too. That is precisely why the original proposal was (self)-labelled "subversive," but we can all be grateful to Albert now for noticing and pointing this out for those who may not have noticed: http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ One small correction, though: The ones who are to have their cake and eat it too are the researchers of the world -- the authors of the annual 2,000,000+ articles in the world's 20,000+ refereed journals. (I happen to be one of them, but apart from that, I have no special interest; in particular, unlike Albert, I am trying neither to protect nor to garner any revenue streams. It is all only in the interest of research itself.) > sh> But virtually all of the self-archived preprints in arxiv are > sh> submitted to refereed journals, revised in accordance with the referees' > sh> recommendations, and if the author judges the changes substantive, the > sh> corrected final draft is self-archived too; otherwise, the reference is > sh> merely updated to make it the formal journal bibliographic citation. > > "virtually" doesn't make it so. Garvey and Griffith found > "two thirds of the technical reports produced in 1962 had > not achieved journal publication by 1965, and, apparently, > the contents of the vast majority of these reports were > never submitted for journal publication. Many authors of > such reports indicated that 'no further dissemination of > the information was necessary.' ... This raises some > questions about the ultimate value of the information in > these reports and its relevance to the established body > of scientific knowledge." [from Garvey, COMMUNICATION: > THE ESSENCE OF SCIENCE. Pergamon 1979] Now what on earth could this spectacular non-sequitur imply for the validity of the thesis that the refereed literature can and should be freed as of the 1990's (since online self-archiving has become feasible)? (1) that the authors of, say, the 150,000 eprints (= pre-referring preprints + refereed postprints) self-archived in the Physics Arxiv have been doing something irrelevant with material of questionable ultimate value? (That will come as a surprise to the 60,000+ daily users of the Arxiv...) (2) that the proportion of the PREprints self-archived in Arxiv that are then submitted to refereed journals is not at least as high as the proportion of preprints NOT self-archived in Arxiv that are then submitted to refereed journals? (3) that the proportion of the PREprints self-archived in Arxiv that are then accepted by refereed journals is not at least as high as the proportion of preprints NOT self-archived in Arxiv that are then accepted by refereed journals? (4) that the proportion of articles accepted by journals that have been previously self-archived as unrefereed preprints or subsequently self-archived as refereed postprints is of lower value or relevance than the proportion that have not? In other words, just what point does Albert think is made by these old G & G data on overall proportions of submissions and acceptances in the 60's? And what on earth do these pre-archiving statistics have to do with the face-valid benefits of freeing the refereed literature from all impact/access barriers online through self-archiving, now that it has at last become possible? > A recent study produced similarities to this data and > also called into question the value of citing informal > papers as if they were a part of the formal literature. > [Callaham, M.L., et al. J A M A 1998. 280:254-257] Again, what has this to do with anything? And in particular with the benefits of freeing the refereed literature through self-archiving? The value of pre-refereeing preprints themselves, and of citing them, is a scholarly/scientific matter, and probably differs from discipline to discipline. But we are talking here about the REFEREED literature, and the only way unrefereed preprints even got into the discussion was by way of a reminder that most of the unrefereed preprints self-archived in Arxiv are submitted to and eventually accepted by journals (with no implication that that proportion will be either higher or lower than the overall baseline proportions for preprints, whether self-archived or not: that irrelevant baseline is the only datum the 1960's G&G data estimates; ditto for the virtues/vices of citing unrefereed papers. In fact, forget about those papers that are NOT eventually submitted to and accepted by refereed journals. THEY are irrelevant, and this discussion is not about them. > I don't think it is fair to the student, the young > researcher (and research sponsors) to encourage the study > of preprints that may never be submitted, much less > published, in the same breath that demands preparation > carefully rooted in the formal literature. And who, may I ask, is doing this reprehensible thing (encouraging the study of unrefereed papers)? This Forum is about freeing refereed papers online. The unrefereed papers are merely a bonus. Caveat Emptor. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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]
