On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 [email protected] wrote: > In a message dated 4/4/00 2:58:07 AM, [email protected] writes: > > << It's also noteworthy that the number of 'rapid responses' to the posted > NetPrints seems to have been very low. Not what I would have predicted. > >> > > also the experience of the American Psychological Association e-journal. > our colleagues seem to view this as an unrewarding task. > cordially > don klein
Not quite sure which APA e-journal Don means. I don't know of any the APA publishes, but perhaps he means Psycoloquy, which APA currently sponsors, rather than publishes (although they are currently considering formally publishing it). In that case my reply to Don would be this: (1) Eprint Archives such as: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/ are not to be confised with electronic journals, such as Psycoloquy http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/psycoloquy/ Electronic Archives archive, whereas electronic journals peer-review and publish. Journals will also archive (their own contents), but Archives archive (multiple) journal contents. (2) Netprints seems to be a bit of a cross between a journal and an archive; we will have to wait to see how it develops. But Archives' success or failure in attracting papers should not be confused with journals' success or failure in attracting papers. (And among papers, target articles should be distinguished from commentaries and responses: Jill's comment seems to have been about responses, by which I think she meant commentaries!) (3) The current status of contributions to Psycololoquy is this: (i) Target article submissions are rising (but still not high enough) (ii) Commentary and responses submissions are rising too, and were always high (but not as high as BBS yet). (iii) After 10 years, Psycoloquy is finally being indexed, as of this year, by APA's PsycINFO and ISI's Current Contents and Science Citation Index. (iv) Virtually all the important established journals are now electronic journals too (so the distinction between them and "electronic journals" is now incoherent. Perhaps "electronic journals" should be called "online-only journals," to single them out among the hybrid journals that have lately become the norm. (v) As far as I know, all online-only journals still have to be more activist in attracting papers than the established and hybrid journals. However, as I said, submissions are improving, and I am certain that, as all journals will be come online only, it is only a matter of time before there is no difference left at all. (4) Archives, like online-only journals, are likewise not yet close to asymptoting on their potential contents. The Physics Archive is bigger, has 128,000 papers and is growing linearly, but even it needs to switch to a faster growth rate if it's to capture the entire Phsyics literature soon. My hope is that the Open Archives Initiative will help hasten us to the optimal and inevitable in all fields http://www.openarchives.org/ and I hope the free, generic Santa-Fe-compliant archiving software we will soon be releasing will help too. http://www.eprints.org/index.html In closing, it's important to make the distinctions above if one wishes to see the status quo, and quo vadis, clearly. Mixing journals with archives and articles with commentaries blurs a picture that is only now coming into focus. Stevan Harnad
