Re: Eprints Open Archive Software

[Stevan Harnad]

The operational release of the Eprints archive-creating software is now
down-loadable from http://www.eprints.org

The eprints.org software will create Eprints Archives that
are interoperable and compliant with the current Open Archives protocol.
The software is free, uses only free software, and can be installed
and maintained easily. It is modular, and written to be easily upgraded
with each upgrade of the Open Archives protocol:
http://www.openarchives.org

All Eprint Archives created with the eprints.org software are fully
interoperable, and can be registered as Open Archive Data Providers:
http://www.openarchives.org/sfc/sfc_archives.htm

This means that their contents can then in turn all be harvested, jointly
indexed, and jointly searched with all the other Eprint Archives
through Open Archive Service Providers

such as
http://arc.cs.odu.edu

All Eprints can also be citation-interlinked:
http://opcit.eprints.org
so that the research literature can be navigated by citation. It will
also be possible to monitor research impact in powerful new ways,
once the eprints are up there:
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.citation.htm

The Eprints software was expressly designed so that universities and
research institutions worldwide can now immediately create their own
Open Archives, in which their researchers in all disciplines can
(immediately) self-archive their research -- both pre-refereeing
preprints and refereed postprints.
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/1-Anomalous-Picture/sld001.htm
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld001.htm

As soon as universities create their own Eprint Archives and their
researchers self-archive their papers in them, the world's refereed
research literature will be freed from all its current needless
access-barriers and impact-barriers.

Footnote: HISTORY IS WATCHING. The means of freeing the entire
refereed research literature (within a matter of days, in
principle!) is now within the reach of the world research
community. If you have a published paper of your own that has not
reached its full potential readership, if there is a published
paper by someone else that you or your university cannot afford to
access, or cannot access immediately, or if your university has a
"serials crisis" preventing its researchers from accessing the
entire refereed research corpus -- AND you have NOT self-archived
your own papers -- then, as of now, you have only yourself to blame
(and history will be the judge, in hindsight)!


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

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):


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:

american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org

Re: Evaluation of preprint/postprint servers

[Jim Till]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 Greg Kuperberg wrote:

GK> I would say that the quality of the papers in any particular e-print
GK> archive speaks for itself.  If it happens to have no irrelevant or
GK> crackpot material, you can then ask why.  In my opinion the smaller
GK> servers have a natural "security through obscurity" that does not
GK> scale up to the something the size of the arXiv. [remainder snipped]

Certainly, a crucial criterion for the quality of an eprint archive is the
quality of the eprints in it.  However, when an archive is still rather
small, should one rely only on this criterion?

For example, consider "security through obscurity":  I'll argue that
another criterion for the evaluation of the quality of an eprint archive
probably should be its accessibility.  Even if an archive contains
high-quality material, it probably doesn't merit a high quality rating if
it's very difficult to access.

A sidebar re accessibility:

Earlier this year, an eprint archive on international health was available
via Lancet's website, at:
http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/eprint/index_body.html
This url now yields "404 Not Found".

I hadn't been visiting this archive on a regular basis.  Now, it seems to
have disappeared from Lancet's website.  When I go to:
http://www.thelancet.com/ and then to "Info for Authors" and then to
"Writing for The Lancet", I find a section entitled: "Electronic research
archive", which states:

"This service is intended to offer a place for electronic peer review and
publication of research in the field of international health.  For a
detailed description visit our website (www.thelancet.com/eprint)"

I've tried this url, and the response has been, again: "404 Not Found"
(which means that it's gone, not simply busy).

On Dec. 5, I sent an email message (via Lancet's feedback link), to ask
whether or not the eprint archive has been discontinued.  As yet, I've
received no reply.

Does anyone know what's happened to this archive?

Jim Till
University of Toronto

Re: ClinMed NetPrints

[Thomas Krichel]

  Jim Till writes

> From Dec 1999 through Apr 2000, 16 preprints were posted at the
> ClinMed NetPrints website.  If it's assumed that it takes a
> minimum of about seven months for an article to be submitted,
> peer-reviewed, and published, then the publication rate for
> these preprints is, so far, at least 25%.
>
> This percentage could increase,

  Sure, in particular if you allow for long publication delays.
  I am not familiar with clinical medicine. In Economics it
  takes about 3 years on average for a paper to be published. All
  published papers in Economics are out of date.


  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
 RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel

  2000-10-05 to 2001-01-06:
  Institute for Economic Research / Hitotsubashi University
  2-1 Naka / Kunitachi / Tokyo 186-8603 / Japan / +81(0)42 580 8349
  tho...@micro.ier.hit-u.ac.jp

Re: Evaluation of preprint/postprint servers

[Thomas Krichel]

  Jim Till writes

> So, should one criterion for the evaluation of the quality of preprint/
> postprint servers be the existence of (as a minimum) a "filtering system"
> analogous to the one described by Greg?

  Yes. But it may not be done at the archive level, but rather at
  the issuing institution level. Within the RePEc system, (almost all)
  archives are operated by institutions, be they University departments,
  or public bodies like the Federal Reserve Boards, the IMF and others.
  They simply continue the tradition---inherited from the print era---of
  issuing free publications. In the amount of crackpot material in these
  archives is nil.

  When a new RePEc archive is opened, we check the affiliation of the
  person who requests an archive. If she is working for a recognized
  institution, then we allow them to go ahead. From our experience
  that eliminates the need for further screening.


  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
 RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel

  2000-10-05 to 2001-01-06:
  Institute for Economic Research / Hitotsubashi University
  2-1 Naka / Kunitachi / Tokyo 186-8603 / Japan / +81(0)42 580 8349
  tho...@micro.ier.hit-u.ac.jp