Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
Greg, I honestly don't know what the substantive issue is that you are disagreeing with me about. We are both for freeing the research literature. We are both for self-archiving. We are both for interoperability. We both agree that the Physics arXiv was the first to show the way. We both agree that it would be good if the pace of self-archiving were accelerated. We both agree that it would be good if self-archiving spread to all disciplines. So what is at issue here? That I have suggested that distributed OAI-compliant self-archiving may help accelerate and spread self-archiving whereas you think it won't? Well let's just wait and see. You seem to have some reason for wanting to nip distributed self-archiving in the bud, a reason that I can't fathom. Could it be because it is "competing" with arXiv in mathematics? Who cares? Self-archiving is self-archiving, and free is free. As for interoperability, the reason I stress it is that that is what will make the locus-differences between the individual archives irrelevant. It will all be harvested into global virtual archives, and those, not the individual archives, will be the locus classicus for the research literature. On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Greg Kuperberg wrote: > You don't just recommend institution-based archives, you hype them as > superior to discipline-based archives. You describe them as a "powerful > and natural complement" that you hope will "broaden and accelerate the > self-archiving literature". I think you should add, more clearly than > you have, that that part is only your opinion, and not that of the > physicists and others who have "shown the way". Greg, it seems to me "hope" is already at least as subjective and hypothetical a descriptor as "opinion." Nor does "hope" equal "hype." Nor do I say anything about "superior." I simply state the facts (and hopes). The facts are that it started in Physics, in the form of centralized self-archiving; but this is only growing linearly and not generalizing across disciplines. Enter OAI-interoperability and the possibility of complementing central self-archiving with distributed self-archiving. Why, one wonders, would any disinterested party (or rather, one with an interest solely in freeing the literature, not in characterizing one form of self-archiving as "superior") fail to welcome a complementary form of archiving, rather than trying to dismiss it as hype and opinion, or as contrary to the opinion of physicists? "The freeing of their present and future refereed research from all access- and impact-barriers forever is now entirely in the hands of researchers. Posterity is looking over our shoulders, and will not judge us flatteringly if we continue to delay the optimal and inevitable needlessly, now that it is clearly within our reach. Physicists have already shown the way, but at their current self-archiving rate, even they will take another decade to free the entire Physics literature (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/Tim/sld002.htm) -- with the Cognitive Sciences (http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk) 39 times slower still, and most of the remaining disciplines not even started: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/Tim/sld004.htm "This is why it is hoped that (with the help of the eprints.org institutional archive-creating software) distributed, institution-based self-archiving, as a powerful and natural complement to central, discipline-based self-archiving, will now broaden and accelerate the self-archiving initiative, putting us all over the top at last, with the entire distributed corpus integrated by the glue of interoperability (http://www.openarchives.org)." > sh> Perhaps I should have said interoperable OAI-compliant archives. > sh> And ir they exist, that's splendid. I hope there will be many more. > > This sounds like the Western leftists who insisted that China and the > Soviet Union didn't practice true Communism. If it is utterly irrelevant > that many of the mathematical archives are interoperable and DC-compliant, > why will making them interoperable and OAI-compliant make all the > difference? Granted, the OAI group may have made a better standard > than the Dublin Core. It's still insane to dismiss one as paganism and > embrace the other as gospel. Greg, I don't care! One of the purposes of interoperability is to make sure it can all be harvested into global virtual archives like ARC http://arc.cs.odu.edu/ thereby making the individual archive locus irrelevant (and "empowering" distributed archiving). If DC-compliance is enough to vouchsafe that, that's fine with me! Let 1000 flowers bloom! *You* (not the Western leftists) are the one who seems to have some sort of animus against these other archives! And I think we are beginning to repeat ourselves (again). We have bet on our respective horses. Can we now wait and see how they do in the self-archiving sweepstakes? (I have the advantage tha
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Sat, 3 Feb 2001 Greg Kuperberg wrote: > if I submit a paper to the arXiv... > that is them archiving my papers, not me archiving my own. Sorry, Greg, I don't find these details useful. This is terminological niggling. (As long as we're at it, I prefer the word "depositing" to an archive, because I "submit" to a journal.) > The arXiv has a technical staff, admittedly small, and you could fairly > call the staff members archivists. The authors are not archivists. And authors are not publishers either. Yet it is quite common to say "I've published that paper." What was needed was a term to describe the act of depositing a paper into a free on-line archive for yourself, rather than relying on someone else (e.g., a publisher) to do it for you. Self-archiving describes that quite transparently. (If I had to vote on it, I'd say most of the work of archiving itself was being done by the software and the hardware, not the staff. But the supporting staff are certainly essential, as they are even for personal web-pages...) > in your paper you do still imply that the arXiv is an example of > "self-archiving". And so it is. Authors can self-archive in centralized OAI-compliant archives like arXiv or distributed institutional OAI-compliant archives like the ones being set up using eprints.org software. > Anyway, my *main* comment last time is that you don't even mention these > points of disagreement in your article. Your article has the bias that > if people agree with you on the ends, it doesn't matter if they agree > with you on the means. Well it seems to me that in my article (1) I recommend self-archiving to free the refereed research literature, and (2) I recommend self-archiving in distributed institutional OAI-compliant Archives to complement self-archiving in centralized OAI-compliant Archives. Now in recommending this, what exactly do you think I should add? That there are some people who think it's not worth complementing the former with the latter? that they think we should just carry on with the former as if there were no new possibilities for broadening and accelerating the growth of self-archiving? Why would I want to say that? Why would anyone want to say that? > > On-Line archives (apart from the Physics arXiv) are all but non-existent. > > That's not true at all. In mathematics alone the AMS has a list of 60+ > department-based and research-institute-based archives, Perhaps I should have said interoperable OAI-compliant archives. And if they exist, that's splendid. I hope there will be many more. > Maybe a dozen of these independent archives are bigger, as measured by > new submissions per month, than your CogPrints archive. The biggest one, > mp_arc, gets 30 new papers a month. If you put them all together they > are comparable in size to the math arXiv. Good. Let them go OAI-compliant (perhaps by installing eprints.org software!) and they will be making a valuable contribution to freeing the refereed research literature (assuming they are not just for unrefereed preprints!). > But they're not growing as quickly as the math arXiv So what? > > I have no idea why you mention politics. > > Because deciding who gets to maintain the archives is political. > People get service credit for it and they don't want to give that up. Pity. Especially if it ever engenders a conflict of interest (as it has done in journal publishing) between what's in the best interest of research and researchers (maximizing free access) and what's in the interests of "archivists." > Some of the Europeans don't trust projects that they perceive as American. > In mathematics, the numerous institution-based archives tend to satisfy > administrators more and readers less. They are useful, but they grow > less quickly than the arXiv because they are less useful. They aren't > by any means the arXiv's savior. Make 'em all OAI-compliant and it will no longer make a bit of difference... 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 & 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: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 07:10:10PM +, Stevan Harnad wrote: > Well it seems to me that in my article (1) I recommend self-archiving to > free the refereed research literature, and (2) I recommend self-archiving > in distributed institutional OAI-compliant Archives to complement > self-archiving in centralized OAI-compliant Archives. > > Now in recommending this, what exactly do you think I should add? You don't just recommend institution-based archives, you hype them as superior to discipline-based archives. You describe them as a "powerful and natural complement" that you hope will "broaden and accelerate the self-archiving literature". I think you should add, more clearly than you have, that that part is only your opinion, and not that of the physicists and others who have "shown the way". > > > On-Line archives (apart from the Physics arXiv) are all but non-existent. > > > > That's not true at all. In mathematics alone the AMS has a list of 60+ > > department-based and research-institute-based archives, > > Perhaps I should have said interoperable OAI-compliant archives. And if > they exist, that's splendid. I hope there will be many more. This sounds like the Western leftists who insisted that China and the Soviet Union didn't practice true Communism. If it is utterly irrelevant that many of the mathematical archives are interoperable and DC-compliant, why will making them interoperable and OAI-compliant make all the difference? Granted, the OAI group may have made a better standard than the Dublin Core. It's still insane to dismiss one as paganism and embrace the other as gospel. -- /\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) / \ \ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ \/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, Greg Kuperberg wrote: > On Sun, Dec 31, 2000 at 09:57:50PM +, Stevan Harnad wrote: > > > > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm > > > > "Physicists have already shown the way, but at their current > > self-archiving rate, even they will take another decade to free the > > entire Physics literature" > > Of course you are entitled to your opinion that institution-based open > archiving (sorry, I won't call it "self-archiving") is the bugle call > of the revolution. Terminology is terminology, but calling one's own archiving of one's own papers "self-archiving" sure sounds like calling a spade a spade... Besides, the Open Archives Initiative (OAI http://www. openarchives.org) has informed me in no uncertain terms that I should NOT characterize self-archiving as open-archiving or vice versa. The OAI is a much broader initiative than the self-archiving initiative. OAI is dedicated to providing shared interoperability standards for the entire on-line digital literature, whether self-archived or not, whether for-free or for-fee, whether journal, book or other, whether full-text or not, whether centralized or distributed. It is true that the OAI was originally proposed as the "UPS" (Universal Preprint Service), which was indeed a form of self-archiving (though a limited form, focussing on the unrefereed preprint rather than on both the unrefereed preprint and the refereed postprint, as self-archiving does). But "UPS" was quickly dropped and the OAI has since vastly outgrown those limited original objectives. > In my opinion, institution-based archives are, > > o in physics, all but superceded by the arXiv, On-Line archives (apart from the Physics arXiv) are all but non-existent. The hope is that institution-based, distributed self-archiving (perhaps with the newfound help of the http://www.eprints.org archive-creating software) will now remedy this. And, as I said above, even in Physics, self-archiving is still growing too slowly to free the Physics literature in less than a decade. It seems to me that the central self-archiving model, admirable and welcome though it is, can use all the help it can get. > o in mathematics, a politically appealing distraction, and I have no idea why you mention politics. The only "appeal" is to researchers, that they should free their refereed research from their obsolete access- and impact-barriers by self-archiving it, now. I have no "political" preference for their doing it the central way or the distributed way: We should all just go ahead and DO it! I used to lean towards central self-archiving myself, seeing no reason why it should not all be subsumed under arXiv; but that just isn't happening, and the clock is ticking; so it's time to add more powerful and general means of self-archiving. Besides, the whole point of OAI-compliance and interoperability is that it should no longer MATTER which way you self-archive: centrally or institutionally. It's all harvestable into the same global virtual archive anyway, thanks to the OAI protocol. Unless one's "political" objective becomes, publisher-like, to protect one's own proprietary (centralized?) turf instead of to free the research literature... > o in computer science and economics, the inadequate status quo. I have no idea what you mean by the above. > As I said before, I know that NCSTRL and RePEc, which are the efforts > in computer science and economics to make institutional archives > interoperable, are important major projects. I don't mean to slight > them. But they are not a panacea and they do not match the arXiv. Nobody is trying to "match" anything. We are trying to free the research literature, as quickly and as effectively as possible. > Computer science has a second important project, ResearchIndex/CiteSeer, > which has some good features that the arXiv does not. But (a) it doesn't > match the arXiv either, (b) it relies on search engine intelligence and > not bureaucratic standards, and (c) an arXiv search facility could be > made as intelligent as CiteSeer. I really can't follow any of this, and I have no idea who you think is competing with whom for what: ResearchIndex/CiteSeer is a wonderful tool, harvesting and citation-linking papers on the Web, whether in OAI-compliant archives or not. As the OAI-compliant corpus grows (with the growth of central and distributed self-archiving), ResearchIndex/CiteSeer's harvest will grow, and surely we all welcome that! I don't know what you have in mind with "bureaucratic standards," but you need not sell me on search-engine intelligence: I love it already. Moreover, as the OAI-compliant corpus grows, it will spawn still further and more powerful Open Archive Service Providers (e.g., OpCit http://opcit.eprints.org and ARC http://arc.cs.odu.edu/). But the main goal now is to do whatever can be done to make that corpus grow into the full refereed literature in all disciplines as soon as possible. This
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 10:28:19AM +, Stevan Harnad wrote: > Terminology is terminology, but calling one's own archiving of one's own > papers "self-archiving" sure sounds like calling a spade a spade... In my opinion, if I submit a paper to the arXiv or to a hypothetical UC Davis archive, that is them archiving my papers, not me archiving my own. The arXiv has a technical staff, admittedly small, and you could fairly call the staff members archivists. The authors are not archivists. > Besides, the Open Archives Initiative (OAI http://www. > openarchives.org) has informed me in no uncertain terms that I should > NOT characterize self-archiving as open-archiving or vice versa. I suspect that that's because you don't take into account considerations that they consider important. In any case in your paper you do still imply that the arXiv is an example of "self-archiving". Anyway, my *main* comment last time is that you don't even mention these points of disagreement in your article. Your article has the bias that if people agree with you on the ends, it doesn't matter if they agree with you on the means. > On-Line archives (apart from the Physics arXiv) are all but non-existent. That's not true at all. In mathematics alone the AMS has a list of 60+ department-based and research-institute-based archives, http://www.ams.org/global-preprints/dept-server.html and 16 subdiscipline-based archives, http://www.ams.org/global-preprints/special-server.html Maybe a dozen of these independent archives are bigger, as measured by new submissions per month, than your CogPrints archive. The biggest one, mp_arc, gets 30 new papers a month. If you put them all together they are comparable in size to the math arXiv. But they're not growing as quickly as the math arXiv, not even those in Germany that enjoy an interoperable metadata standard and a common search engine called MPRESS, http://mathnet.preprints.org . MPRESS even includes everything in the math arXiv. MPRESS can be useful, but it is not the panacea that you seem to expect it to be. > > o in mathematics, a politically appealing distraction, and > I have no idea why you mention politics. Because deciding who gets to maintain the archives is political. People get service credit for it and they don't want to give that up. Some of the Europeans don't trust projects that they perceive as American. In mathematics, the numerous institution-based archives tend to satisfy administrators more and readers less. They are useful, but they grow less quickly than the arXiv because they are less useful. They aren't by any means the arXiv's savior. > Besides, the whole point of OAI-compliance and interoperability is that > it should no longer MATTER which way you self-archive: centrally or > institutionally. It's all harvestable into the same global virtual > archive anyway, thanks to the OAI protocol. There lies MPRESS, the global virtual archive in mathematics, and it still does matter. -- /\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) / \ \ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ \/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *
