My thanks to my colleague Peter Singer for his provocative article in CMAJ, and for pointing me toward this forum.
It's still far from clear (at least, to me!) why members of the physics research community seem, in general, to be more comfortable with eprints than are (as yet?) many members of the biomedical research community. Stevan Harnad has written (about the arXiv server) at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature2.html > [sh] Is this really evidence that peer review is not indispensable > [sh] after all? Hardly, for the "Invisible Hand" of peer review is > [sh] still there, exerting its civilising influence: Every paper > [sh] deposited in Los Alamos is also destined for a peer reviewed > [sh] journal; the author knows it will be answerable to the editors > [sh] and referees. That certainly constrains how it is written in > [sh] the first place. Paul Ginsparg has written (about possible differences between physicists and biologists) at: http://arXiv.org/blurb/beagle99.html > [pg] Some of the suggested differences are actually amusing, for > [pg] example that physicists are intrinsically "less competitive" > [pg] than biologists (!). Perhaps physicists had instead simply > [pg] abstracted long ago the essence of their research communication > [pg] from its physical embodiment in paper, so found the move to new > [pg] functionalities afforded by the new medium both obvious and > [pg] natural. L.L. Hargens, in a paper published in 1988 [Am Sociol Rev 53(1): 139-151] commented on the importance of variation in 'consensus' as an important determinant of rejection rates for [paper] journals. Interdisciplinary variation in scholarly consensus involves the extent to which scholars share conceptions of appropriate research problems, theoretical approaches, or research techniques. When scholars do not share such conceptions, he wrote, "they tend to view each other's work as deficient and unworthy of publication". I'll suggest that differences in scholarly consensus across disciplines also seem likely to be an important variable in the evaluation of (and the acceptance or rejection of) eprints. Jim Till Senior Scientist Emeritus Ontario Cancer Institute University Health Network 610 University Avenue Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2M9
