Comments on David's message are inserted below. (BTW, the subject heading for my previous message, to which David responded, was chosen by Stevan, not by me). --Jim
On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, David Goodman wrote: > For one thing, listing in Cogprints is more of a recommendation to a > searcher with interdsciplinary interests than publication in this very > obscure journal, which isn't even in PubMed. For another, people who > have used it know that Cogprints leads to full text, unlike the journal's > abstracts-only link. Yes, David, the JCIM is a still-obscure new journal, in a rather new (and, still quite controversial?) field. But, I'm one of those odd folks who believe that it's the perceived merit of the *article* itself that should (if possible) be evaluated, as directly as possible, rather than via more indirect proxy-indicators (such as the perceived merit of the *journal* in which the article is published). I responded positively to an invitation from JCIM to provide a commentary, mainly in order to take advantage of the opportunity that it provided to do a small experiment on self-archiving. The editorial board for this journal is, I think, a credible one, and my topic (cancer-related electronic support groups) was a suitable one for this particular journal. BTW, I'd already published, about a year earlier, a previous invited commentary on this same topic, in another new journal, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (HQLO), one of the set of journals published by BioMed Central. There was no need to self-archive my previous commentary, because the published version is openly accessible, via: http://www.hql.com/content/1/1/16 An initial step in my little experiment with JCIM was to test whether or not the editors and the publisher would permit me to retain copyright (and, the right to self-archive a postprint). After a brief exchange of emails, this negotiation was successful. A later step in this same small experiment was to self-archive versions of the same postprint at three different locations, one of which was the CogPrints archive. The URLs for the other two alternative locations are available via the CogPrints location, see: http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003566/ Another step in my small experiment is to compare the evolution of the Google page ranks for the three self-archived versions (they differ in some very minor ways; another somewhat controversial topic?). What I *didn't* expect was a high early ranking for *any* of the three self-archived versions. Could it have been simply the number of visits to the site that led to a relatively high Google page rank for the CogPrints location, within a few days after the postprint was posted there? My test search was for "electronic support groups" (note that I *didn't* include the word "cancer" among the keywords that I used in my test search). At present, I have no credible explanation for the almost-immediate high rank that the Google page ranking algorithm gave to the CogPrints version. > The first question I have, is what is the justification for this > journal existing in the first place? The second, Jim, is why, as > a senior scientist not seeking promotion or tenure, did you bother > publishing it there? Did you think that the imprimature of this unknown > journal's peer review would add anything to your name in this field as > an indicator of quality? The principle reason I can see would be the > desire to add its regular readership, however small, to those who would > see your paper. It can't be just to get the paper indexed in Medline, > because Medline doesn't yet include the journal. David, I've tried answer to your question (please see above) by sketching out the design of my little experiment on the self-archiving of a postprint, at different locations. > Could we concentrate better on the need for open access repositories if > we did not waste effort on unnecessary journal publication? Everyone will > I hope understand that this is not primarily intended for Jim personally, > but to authors in general. My commentary in JCIM does contain some novel material (including some comments on Internet research ethics), in comparison with the commentary on the same subject that I published last year in HQLO (again, see above). And, I expect that the JCIM will reach quite a different group of readers than does HQLO. So, I (of course!) don't regard it as an "unnecessary publication". But, my primary goal was to undertake a small experiment on self-archiving (*not* one on self-promotion). :-) Jim Till University of Toronto
