I am also dumbfounded that some one would make such an absurd statement. A case in point is Gene's suggestion, some years ago, that Cyrillic articles should be transliterated to the Roman alphabet to make them more easily read and more affordable than translated articles.
Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm ________________________________ From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 4:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Note from Gene Garfield On: English Language, Scientific Journals, and Thompson-Reuters ISI Coverage Posted with permission. -- SH GENE GARFIELD: Dear Stevan: Do you happen to know Charles Durand? At one point he appears to have been at the Univ of Sherbrooke in Quebec, but I have not been able to locate his email or other address or phone? In a recent posting he attributed a statement to me that was not true. Here is the message I tried to send him but it was returned as undeliverable. Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield -- codex.cis.upenn.edu<mailto:[email protected]> home page: www.eugenegarfield.org<http://www.eugenegarfield.org/> Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com<http://www.isinet.com/> 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com<http://www.the-scientist.com/> 400 Market Street, Suite 1250, Philadelphia, PA 19106-2501 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asist.org<http://www.asist.org/> In a paper (doi: 10.2167/cilp085.0) you posted on the www you claim that I said "If It's Not in English, It's Not Worth Reading" You refer to a 1998 paper of mine, but there is nothing in that paper about this topic. Furthermore, I never said or believed what you attribute to me. Please inform me exactly where you obtained this misquotation. This is a complete distortion of what I have said about the use of English as the lingua franca of science. I am fully sympathetic with desires of Francophones to promote the use of the French language in daily life. Now in the era of electronic publication I would encourage those who are able to publish bilingually to do so since there is usually enough space on the web for such bilingual postings. I became aware of your views just today from a posting at: http://www.ameriquebec.net/actualites/2009/02/02-pour-le-francais-dans-nos-universites.qc STEVAN HARNAD: Hi Gene, The issue of the posting is not so much language of publication (though it does discuss that too) but the language of notices on walls in Francophone universities in Quebec: Sometimes they are in unilingual English -- which is regrettable, but it is sometimes unavoidable, if the source of the notice is an American university that does not produce French versions. This is something that is felt less acutely in France, where the language is strong and safe, than in Quebec, where its survival may be at risk. (There is, however, little excuse for notices produced by the Francophone University itself being in unilingual English. That has a note of laziness and inconsiderateness, if not of contempt. I think you might be able to understand that plaint.) I am sure you never wrote anything like what was quoted above. That's typical hyperbolic distortion on 2nd hand repetition. The issue was probably about how ISI selects journals for coverage. ISI criteria are probably objective ones, based on readership, regularity, maybe citations, and it may simply be a demographic fact that it was mostly English-language journals that met those criteria at that time. Since then, coverage is cheaper and broader because of the online medium, but it's probably still true that most of the "core" journals in most(scientific) fields are in English. Those statistics, not of ISI's creation, are of course a far cry from the distorted quote above. If you give me permission, I could post our exchange on AmSci, to set the record straight. The essence seems to be: (1) Charles Durand repeated a common misinterpretation and misquotation of your view and writings. (2) You had written that ISI had to base coverage on objective criteria on journal usage and reliability, as it could not index them all. (3) In most fields, this meant that a majority of the journals covered, especially the "core" journals, were English-language ones (4) This was not a value judgment but a demographic fact. (5) Lately, the online medium has made it possible to widen ISI coverage. (6) But it still remains a demographic fact that in most fields, especially science, the "core" journals are in English. Best wishes, Stevan
