Re: WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT?
On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Marvin wrote: > > It is researchers who gather, interpret, > > write and package their research reports. The only thing they cannot do > > for themselves is the Quality-Control and its Certification (QCC). > > > These cost money to do well, do they not? Which, the QCC? Yes, see below. What the researchers do? That too, but that's not what S/L/P pays for, so it is completely irrelevant. > If there is only self-archiving in who knows how many sites, there will be > chaos. That's the Santa Fe Convention is for: http://www.openarchives.org > > SLP - 70%(SLP) = QCC > I've seen many things said that I think are simplistic. I've been in charge > of the expenses of one journal recently. Have you? Anyone can invent > numbers. I'm not inventing them. They have been estimated by Andrew Odlyzko http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/eworld.html and confirmed (on the "70/30" thread earlier in this Forum) by Mark Doyle of APS. I have edited one (paper) journal for over 2 decades and an online-only one for over a decade. Stevan Harnad p...@soton.ac.uk Editor, Psycoloquy phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Department of Electronics and fax: +44 23-80 593-281 Computer Science http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/psyc University of Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html Highfield, Southampton ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOMnews:sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy Sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
Re: Incentives
On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Peter Singer wrote: > Here is the part I don't get, Stevan. If a researcher chooses not to post > an electronic unrefereed preprint because of restrictive journal embargo > policies, and the journal insists on copyright, how can the peer-reviewed > literature be freed? What I said was that embargoes are not legal matters and can and should be ignored. They are also not enforceable; so until they are formally dropped, self-archived preprints can simply be made cosmetically different enough from the submitted draft to be undetectable. > Stevan, help me out here. If i want my paper published in the highest > impact medicine journal, and that journal's restrictive embargo policy > precludes self-archiving the unrefereed preprint, and its restrictive > copyright policy prevents me from archiving the referreed postprint, what > should i do? Hint: "Publish somewhere else" is not advice most people will > heed because of the incentives and reward system of academic medicine. Don't pick your journal on the basis of its copyright policy but on the basis of the established quality of its QC/C: If you are forced to sign a copyright transfer agreement that forbids self-archiving, just archive the corrigenda as an addendum to the already legally archived preprint, specifying what changes must be made to turn it into the final refereed draft. >sh> Republication by other journals is utterly irrelevant, once the >sh> refereed version is free for all online. > > Maybe now but not in the future. Journals, especially those that are > focussed on secondary review, will be an important element in a quality > assessment system. One can envision the same article "published" in > several journals, and this would be an indicator of its quality. Umm, given that its refereed final draft, already accepted and published by journal Q, is online already, in an Open Archive free for all, always, if the referees of journal R really have nothing better to do than to re-referee already refereed papers again, why can't they referee it and assign it their QC/C tag too, and then just link to it...? Better still, why don't the "referees" get a bit more credit for their supernumerary efforts by publishing their QCC accreditation as a peer commentary (citing and linking the original paper) in a prestigious peer commentary journal? > The current sentiment regarding "republication" is a social convention > rooted in the old model of information dissemination using paper journals. Actually, it's only words that stand in our way. Once the refereed paper is online in a distributed archive, having passed at least one QC/C filter (for a FEE, in my model), if there is the time and talent to keep QC/C-ing it over and over again (for free? for another fee?), there's nothing to stop entities from doing it: But why call them "publishers" rather than "re-certifiers"? or maybe "reviewers"! The trouble with all this is that the ones who get the QC/C fee are the IMPLEMENTERS of the QC/C, not the referees themselves. And whereas referees (for reasons I have analyzed several times in other threads, having mainly to do with the Golden Rule and intrinsic interest in the paper the first time 'round) are willing to referee something the first time, for the right journal, it is not clear that they would (or should) be willing to devote still more of their time to refereeing (and re-refereeing) instead of to researching... [Please, please, let's not put on the old record about paying referees again! Short answer: there isn't faintly enough money to ever make it worth their while if the Golden-Rule considerations are not already enough to make them willing to do it for free: We're talking about a HUGE annual literature here, most of it destined to go uncited and virtually unread.] Stevan Harnad
WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT?
On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Marvin wrote: > Max Frankel..NY Times Magazine (Sunday, July 9): > > "when will you get The Nirvana News?... not until the Web > worshipers quit their rhapsodizing about "free" digital news and > figure out a way to pay for its production. The Web has not > produced very good reporter robots or electronic editors. Nor has > it figured out how to pay the costly humans needed to gather, > interpret, write and package information in the coming world." > > Frankel wrote about newspapers, but most of his column is equally > applicable for scholarly publications. How is it applicable, Marvin? It is researchers who gather, interpret, write and package their research reports. The only thing they cannot do for themselves is the Quality-Control and its Certification (QCC). > Most newspapers pay their writers, scholarly journals don't. Both have > costs beyond paying (or not paying) for manuscripts. If authors self-archive their final refereed drafts, and the distributed institutional Open Archives house them in perpetuo, what exactly are those further costs, other than QCC? > Keeping in mind "he who pays the piper calls the tune", we need some > realistic discussion on who will pay for free-to-the-reader scholarly > publication. I didn't hear it at the meeting, and I haven't seen much > on this forum. And here I was, thinking that maybe I was repeating the formula too often: Have you seen much of this formula? SLP - 70%(SLP) = QCC Stevan Harnad
Re: The July 6-7 NYAM "Freedom of Information" Meeting
My attention has been drawn to the fact that I neglected to mention Paul Ginsparg when I stated: "There were only two people who argued forcefully and eloquently for radically revamping the copyright status and wresting control from publishers: Barry and Pat Brown." I stand corrected and somewhat red-faced, particularly since Paul is one of the originators of the whole concept. Upon reflection, the reason I didn't think of him in this context is that, in my own mind, the situation in physics is very different from that in the biomedical sciences (mainly the influence of a vast "medical-industrial complex"). I don't want to argue this point here, and I'm sure most will not agree with me. I only bring it up as a sincere explanation why I didn't mention Paul in my note about the conference. Michael Jacobson --- Michael Jacobson, MD, MPH Journal Club on the Web http://www.journalclub.org/ m...@journalclub.org
Re: Incentives
On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Joshua Lederberg wrote: > Do those websites include all your web-mail on the topic? American Scientist Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Ebiomed/PubmedCentral Discussion: http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/comment.htm I believe so. There might be some odds and ends in the elib list and in vpiej-l and serialst, but most of it is in those two archives. Elib: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/lis-elib/ VPIEJ-L http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/vpiej-l.html SERIALST: http://list.uvm.edu/archives/serialst.html Some side-discussions: Chronicle of Higher Education: http://www.chronicle.com/colloquy/98/copyright/re.htm CalTech Scholars Forum Discussion: http://library.caltech.edu/publications/scholarsforum/ Times Higher Education Supplement Discussion: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Theschat/ Author Eprint Archive Discussion: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Author.Eprint.Archives/ To take it back earlier, there is always the original subversive proposal discussion: http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/Subversive.Proposal/ And then there is always my own archive of papers on this: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/intpub.html > yes, indeed you may post. > Joshua Many thanks! Stevan
Re: Incentives
Dear Steve You well know I have been a fan (alongside of you) of self-archiving from the beginning of these discussions. So, speaking of which, have you set up a website for this discourse that I can rely upon for future access to trace the history of the debate. And not too far off the subject, have you seen: http://profiles.NLM.nih.gov/ (a not typical example, but who else has 55 years worth of papers?) All my works have been scanned, and will be posted as soon as permissions can be procured, or fair use doctrine clarified. I have generally been successful either in getting permission ex post facto, or anticipating that as a qualifier when I sign my copyright assignments. But I'm not a tenure-seeking first-timer 'fraid to take any chances about having my papers accepted for "publication". I think institutions will have to play some role in peer-review (mostly ex post factor) of "self"-archivings. For better or worse I chair the external advisory group to PubMedCentral Joshua
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Christopher D. Green wrote: >sh> Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright >sh> LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice >sh> that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such as >sh> not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). > > This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no > difference for people who must attempt to publish in American > Psychological Assocaition journals in order to advance (or even > maintain) their academic careers now. The simple fact (whether legal, > political, or even crassly careerist) is that scientific psychologists > will not be self-archiving in droves until the problem is resolved. Don't be so pessimistic! The problem IS solved, insofar as legality is concerned. Moreover, the APA embargo policy is not even enforceable. So it is now all just about PERCEIVED (but unreal) risk: I know Physicists are somewhat brighter than us Psychologists, but not THAT much brighter. We will catch on soon, especially with the help of interoperable Open Archives, as they sprout at the universities and begin to fill with distributed content. The universities will be allies too, with their embattled periodicals budgets. But the biggest ally will be the palpably growing impact of those who ARE sensible enough to take this small step: We are developing citation-analytic and other informetric/webmetric tools to measure, estimate and predict the enhanced impact gained by freely accessible refereed papers compared to "controls" kept behind the financial firewall: http://opcit.eprints.org See also: http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/elib04.html http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~cssrccc2/papers/ > Despite your apparent optimism about the matter, I have seen no > indication that APA will "see the light" given the extraordinary degree > of control they currently have. As you know better than most, they have > been relatively resistant to even acknowledging the importance of > electronic media. Just a bit more patience (and a bit more boldness)... > Question: Do you know what the current policies are among the few, > major non-APA scientific psychology journals? e.g., American Journal of > Psychology (U. Illinois), Psychological Science (APS), Cognitive > Science (Ablex), and Cognition (Elsevier) come immediately to mind. > There must be others as well. No I don't, but as you know, I am not a supporter of the "switch" strategy, not even among established journals, to favor the ones that allow self-archiving (although it is again a strategy I wish well). The strategy I advocate is the legal but subversive one of BOTH sticking to one's established journal of choice AND self-archiving. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu 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, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Christopher D. Green writes > Stevan Harnad wrote: > > > Please note that you are now asking about embargo POLICY, not copyright > > LAW, and embargo policy has no legal status. It is merely a practice > > that a journal may or may not adopt, and may or may not follow (such > > as not accepting articles in Spanish or on Experimental Oenology). > > This is a fine distinction in principle, but in practice it makes no > difference for people who must attempt to publish ... Could not agree more. At the end of the day, each author has a choice to make between getting published and surrender copyright, or not getting published and continue to have the right to self-archive. For journals, that is a tough choice. But it is a different matter for conference proceedings. The prestige from giving a paper at a conference comes from presenting it there. It does not really come from having the paper included in the conference proceedings. I have just written to the organisers of ECDL2000 http://www.bn.pt/org/agenda/ecdl2000/ that I and my co-authors will not surrender the copyright to our paper http://openlib.org/home/krichel/phoenix.html to Springer for inclusion in the proceedings. I presume that I will still be able to present the paper. It will simply not appear in the conference proceedings, which I consider to be a minor inconvenience. Has anybody here stories to share about copyright surrender refusal? Cheers, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT?
- Original Message - From: "Stevan Harnad" To: Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 4:32 PM Subject: WHO WILL PAY FOR WHAT? > On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Marvin wrote: > > > Max Frankel..NY Times Magazine (Sunday, July 9): > > > > "when will you get The Nirvana News?... not until the Web > > worshipers quit their rhapsodizing about "free" digital news and > > figure out a way to pay for its production. The Web has not > > produced very good reporter robots or electronic editors. Nor has > > it figured out how to pay the costly humans needed to gather, > > interpret, write and package information in the coming world." > > > > Frankel wrote about newspapers, but most of his column is equally > > applicable for scholarly publications. > > How is it applicable, Marvin? It is researchers who gather, interpret, > write and package their research reports. The only thing they cannot do > for themselves is the Quality-Control and its Certification (QCC). > These cost money to do well, do they not? And I wsn't only talking about who gets payed for what. There is more than that to the column, and I said where anyone can read the whole column - for free. > > Most newspapers pay their writers, scholarly journals don't. Both have > > costs beyond paying (or not paying) for manuscripts. > > If authors self-archive their final refereed drafts, and the distributed > institutional Open Archives house them in perpetuo, what exactly are > those further costs, other than QCC? > If there is only self-archiving in who knows how many sites, there will be chaos. > > Keeping in mind "he who pays the piper calls the tune", we need some > > realistic discussion on who will pay for free-to-the-reader scholarly > > publication. I didn't hear it at the meeting, and I haven't seen much > > on this forum. > > And here I was, thinking that maybe I was repeating the formula too > often: Have you seen much of this formula? SLP - 70%(SLP) = QCC > > Stevan Harnad I've seen many things said that I think are simplistic. I've been in charge of the expenses of one journal recently. Have you? Anyone can invent numbers.
Re: Incentives
On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Peter Singer wrote: SH> This Forum is about freeing the peer-reviewed literature, such as it SH> is, now. There is no reason to delay or side-track this immediate, SH> face-valid objective by coupling it in any way with untested hypotheses SH> about ways of improving or modifying or replacing peer review. > ps> There is a reason. You can create self-archives but their use by ps> researchers will be impeded by the fact that self-archiving will be ps> seen by researchers to limit future publication options (see below), ps> and therefore opportunities for promotion and other incentives. You may be right that researchers have, among other unexamined rationales for not going ahead and self-archiving, the superstitious notion that it might somehow "limit future publication options," but what is their basis for believing this? If it is a fear that it might be illegal to self-archive, see the ongoing thread on "Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts" in this Forum. (Ditto if the concern is about journal embargo policies.) But note that you said above "[t]here IS a reason" (to delay or side-track this immediate, face-valid objective of freeing the peer-reviewed literature): What is that reason, then? If it is something different from what is being discussed in that other thread, please say what it is, so we can consider it explicitly. ps> I know the Los Alamos physics archive enjoyed tremendous growth, but i ps> am not aware the physics community faced a critical mass of prestigious ps> journals that would not publish papers that had been self-archived. Am ps> i wrong about this? This is of course an empirical question. It is indeed an empirical question, in fact, several questions: (1) Why is Los Alamos still growing only linearly rather than exponentially? [I think it has to do with the unsolved horse/water problem -- and interoperable open-archiving may prove to be the solution.] (2) Is there "a critical mass of prestigious journals" whose copyright and embargo policies oppose self-archiving in Physics? [I don't know the answer. I don't think there is a critical mass, and I think the question has to be subdivided into negative copyright policies and negative embargo policies. SCIENCE is negative on both, ELSEVIER is negative on copyright but not embargo, APS is positive on both. But there has been no evidence whatsoever of any "limit [on] future publication options" as a result of self-archiving.] (3) Is there "a critical mass of prestigious journals" whose copyright and embargo policies oppose self-archiving in Biomedicine? [I don't know the answer, but I don't think there is any "critical mass" here either, just a mixture of journals, with a mixture of copyright and embargo policies (most of them not explicitly formulated on the online self-archiving question). Again, SCIENCE and NEJM seem to be negative on both, NATURE and BMJ in the middle, and JAMA on the side of the angels.] http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.scinejm.htm ps> We can find some empirical evidence in BMJ netprints -- the growth ps> there has not to date parallelled the situation with the Los Alamos ps> server. Why not? BMJ netprints is just for unrefereed preprints; we are talking about freeing the refereed literature. But it is certainly true that the horse/water problem is not yet solved, either in physics or in biomedicine. Let us hope that the availability and proliferation of Santa-Fe-compliant open archives will at last persuade the research cavalry that it is safe to drink! ps> Self-archiving is not a both/and decision because many prestigious ps> journals will not accept papers that have been posted to the web. ps> Although some journals do accept previously posted articles, the author ps> limits her options by self-archiving. We may agree that such ps> restrictions are not a good thing, but they exist. Self-archiving embargoes on pre-refereeing pre-prints are not only not a good policy, they are not an enforceable policy: Even if journals were to dispatch software agents all over the web trawling for "look-alikes" before refereeing any submission, drafts of a paper are on a continuum: Author-agents making pre-emptive cosmetic changes to outwit embargo-agents could keep one another endlessly busy while researchers went about their business. The absurdity of such "spy vs. spy antics" is patent, and in turn highlights the futility of trying to resolve this fundamental conflict between the interests of research/researchers and the interests of current publication revenue-streams in this heavy-handed way. Nor do I believe that journal editors and referees (who, after all, are us) would knowingly collaborate in such entirely needless and counterproductive cyber-sleuthing; they too would go about their business. So such sci-fi scenarios are mere figments of the imagination, and not realistic reasons for fearing to self-archive one's pre-refereeing prep
Re: Incentives
Thank you very much for your comments, Stevan. They are very helpful. I have questions or comments on four of your points, below. sh>But note that you said above "[t]here IS a reason" (to delay or sh>side-track this immediate, face-valid objective of freeing the sh>peer-reviewed literature): What is that reason, then? If it is something sh>different from what is being discussed in that other thread, please say sh>what it is, so we can consider it explicitly. > You are right Stevan. The exciting initiatives aimed at freeing the literature need not be delayed to align incentives or validate quality measures. However, the literature will never be truly free until the incentives are aligned and the quality measures valid. Until then, researchers may not make optimal use of the new vehicles such as self- archiving. sh>BMJ netprints is just for unrefereed preprints; we are talking about sh>freeing the refereed literature. But it is certainly true that the sh>horse/water problem is not yet solved, either in physics or in sh>biomedicine. Let us hope that the availability and proliferation of sh>Santa-Fe-compliant open archives will at last persuade the research sh>cavalry that it is safe to drink! Here is the part i don't get, Stevan. If a researcher chooses not to post an electronic unrefereed preprint because of restrictive journal embargo policies, and the journal insists on copyright, how can the peer-reviewed literature be freed? >So such sci-fi scenarios are mere figments of the imagination, and not >realistic reasons for fearing to self-archive one's pre-refereeing >preprints, or for feeling obliged to submit them only to journals that >explicitly allow self-archiving. Embargoes, I repeat, unlike copyright >agreements, are not legal matters, but mere journal policy matters -- >and arbitrary and self-serving ones, in this case. > Stevan, help me out here. If i want my paper published in the highest impact medicine journal, and that journal's restrictive embargo policy precludes self-archiving the unrefereed preprint, and its restrictive copyright policy prevents me from archiving the referreed postprint, what should i do? Hint: "Publish somewhere else" is not advice most people will heed because of the incentives and reward system of academic medicine. > >Republication by other journals is utterly irrelevant, once the >refereed version is free for all online. > Maybe now but not in the future. Journals, especially those that are focussed on secondary review, will be an important element in a quality assessment system. One can envision the same article "published" in several journals, and this would be an indicator of its quality. Journals will focus more on the information needs of their audiences than on ownership of other people's scientific papers. Several people at the NYAM confence envisioned this sort of scenario, and i wrote about it in my earlier article "Medical Journals are Dead. Long Live Medical Journals." [http://www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-162/issue-4/0517.htm] The current sentiment regarding "republication" is a social convention rooted in the old model of information dissemination using paper journals. It is one of the conventions that i predict will change with a free literature. You will respond that this is a futuristic and unproven scenario and we oughtn't to delay freeing the literature now. Fair point, but i just want to point out that republication will not be "utterly irrelevant" for long.
WHO WILL PAY?
Max Frankel's last column in the NY Times Magazine Section appeared yesterday (Sunday, July 9), with the tile "The Nirvana News". The subject is the future of newspapers. A couple of quotes are: "If you think a newspaper must always involve an imprint of inks on costly pulp that is processed from Canadian trees, trucked into urban factories and trucked out again to ever more widely dispersed readers, then its prospects are dim indeed. There is no feature of that paper product that will not soon be replicated and improved by digital technologies. . . . So when will you get The Nirvana News? Alas, not until the Web worshipers quit their rhapsodizing about "free" digital news and figure out a way to pay for its production. The Web has so far supplanted only the newspaper's trucks. It has not produced very good reporter robots or electronic editors. Nor has it figured out how to pay the costly humans needed to gather, interpret, write and package information in the coming world." (Anyone can read the whole column - free - at NYT.com. You have to register, or sign in if you are already registered, and then find your way to the Extended Search and use the phrase "The Nirvana News"." That should take you to a list of search results with the item you are seeking at the top of the list.) Frankel wrote about newspapers, but most of his column is equally applicable for scholarly publications. Like Frankel's column, the meeting last week at the NY Academy of Medicine was divided between the wonderful advantages of digital publishing and the economic questions. There was no dissension at the meeting about the advantages (which doesn't mean that everyone is in favor of it), but the real dispute (polite on the first day, less so on the second) comes down to "who will pay". Most newspapers pay their writers, scholarly journals don't. Both have costs beyond paying (or not paying) for manuscripts. There are already some scientific journals that are free to the reader - advertisers pay for them, the content of the journals reflects that, and the quality is markedly different from the journals we need to buy. Similarly, there are advertiser supported newspapers (usually weeklies) with second- or third-rate news coverage. Keeping in mind "he who pays the piper calls the tune", we need some realistic discussion on who will pay for free-to-the-reader scholarly publication. I didn't hear it at the meeting, and I haven't seen much on this forum. Marvin Margoshes
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
i will give this a try having watched the fray from an interested sidepost try not to confuse legal status with general ethical policies and individual journal policies and practices the author(s) owns copyright until granting it to another even up until the actual publication time an author can publish something as original only once(technical or non-technical) ever after it becomes a secondary or derivative or duplicative or"redundant" or self-plagiarism type of publication all of which are alright if agreed to in advance by the authorseditors (?publishers) and the readers are so informed the Inglefinger rule has been retired for many years it was replaced by the policies of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (the so-called Vancouver Group)to whose Uniform Requirements the correspondents are referred for details electronic publication is publicationof course many journals in different(or even the same) fields have different policies the World Association of Medical Editors(WAME) is another good place for this kind of discussion gdlundberg Antonella Pavese on 07/10/2000 12:47:00 PM Please respond to September 1998 American Scientist Forum To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org cc:(bcc: George Lundberg/Medscape) Subject: Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts Does anybody know what is the legal status of preprinting a paper as a technical report? It is a frequent practice in academic departments to distribute not-yet-published articles as technical reports and I have never heard of problems when the same papers are submitted to refereed journals. Technical reports can be distributed and archived, and often have the same identical content as the submitted paper. Antonella Pavese -- Antonella Pavese, PhDph: (215) 456-5887 Moss Rehabilitation Fax: (215) 456-5926 Research Institute Korman Bldg., Suite 203 1200 West Tabor Road mailto:pav...@hslc.org Philadelphia, PA 19141http://www.geocities.com/pavesina/
Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts
Does anybody know what is the legal status of preprinting a paper as a technical report? It is a frequent practice in academic departments to distribute not-yet-published articles as technical reports and I have never heard of problems when the same papers are submitted to refereed journals. Technical reports can be distributed and archived, and often have the same identical content as the submitted paper. Antonella Pavese -- Antonella Pavese, PhDph: (215) 456-5887 Moss Rehabilitation Fax: (215) 456-5926 Research Institute Korman Bldg., Suite 203 1200 West Tabor Road mailto:pav...@hslc.org Philadelphia, PA 19141http://www.geocities.com/pavesina/
Re: Incentives
On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, David Goodman wrote: > Steve, a request which I make because I am so greatly appreciative of > your work, and so eager to see it succeed. > > There are, as you have so often acknowledged, more than one possible > way of improving the mode of production and distribution of scientific > articles. > > Perhaps you might, when replying to suggested extensions or > alternatives, discuss a little more how to incorporate, include, or at > least make use of, others' suggestions instead of concentrating on why > they are not quite as good as your original proposal. David, fair comment: I do need to be reminded when my evangelizing goes over the top! Thanks. The suggestion in question (Peter Singer's), to change the incentive structure of academic evaluation, is a commendable one, and I wish I could think of a way to use it to help facilitate the freeing of the refereed journal literature online (the theme of this Forum), but unfortunately the only things I myself can think of are the obvious ways this can slow and impede the freeing of the literature: It asks people to change MORE things as a PRECONDITION for freeing the literature: They must first change their evaluation practices and their publication practices. Perhaps Peter Singer is right, that this would all be for the better, if there were a concrete idea of what people should do, and how, and a way to successfully persuade them to do it. But to me this still sounds like untested conjectures -- notoriously difficult to get people to adopt (en masse, and soon), whereas freeing the refereed literature by simply self-archiving it on-line NOW is not something that depends on, awaits, or is (or ought to be) in any way conditional on the testing and implementation of further untested conjectures: It already has face-validity (if everyone did it, it would most definitely free the literature, by definition), and it has been tested and works (e.g., the Physics Archive). Nor does it require giving up or changing anything else as a precondition; nor has it had any untoward consequences. The Forum is certainly open to further debate on these alternative proposals, and I invite all those who can either contribute ideas about how to change the academic incentive structure now, so as to facilitate freeing the journal literature, or solutions to any of the problems I have repeatedly pointed out -- e.g., in peer-review reform or peer-review replacement schemes (self-publishing, open commentary, etc.) -- to air them in this Forum. Note that I have only used my Forum moderator's powers to invoke cloture twice (as far as I recall): once on the side-topic that there is a conspiracy on the part of university administrations to wrest ownership of their intellectual property from their faculty (a possibility, but too remote from the concerns of this Forum) and the other on the side-topic that there would be no problem of free access to the refereed journal literature if only more money were given to libraries (again a possibility, but not increased in its probability or relevance by dint of repetition). Apart from those two cases, it seems to me that it is irrelevant that I am the moderator of this Forum: I just happen to be one of its more vociferous contributors, writing in favour of what I think makes sense, and criticizing what I think does not (but always ready to be corrected). Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@princeton.edu 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, Southamptonhttp://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
