Here is a reply to a query that is pertinent to this list: > [Do you know] about the petition that asks signers not to participate > in publishing articles in journals that don't share their archives[?]
I haven't seen that petition yet, but you may be surprised to hear that I would not myself endorse it. I am a strong advocate of freeing the refereed journal literature online through self-archiving, but I am opposed to making this conditional in any way on FIRST changing either journals or author-submission practises in any way (e.g. through author boycotts). The reason for my opposition is simple: because such preconditions are unnecessary, ineffectual, and would in fact be counterproductive. So focusing on them and waiting for them to happen is simply delaying us on the road to the optimal and inevitable, which is already in reach now. Journals need to continue to exist and perform their essential, irreplaceable function, which is implementing peer review and certifying the revised, accepted final drafts as having been published by that journal: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/nature2.html And there is no reason whatsoever for asking or expecting researchers to choose the journal to which they wish to submit their research findings on any other basis than the one they use already, which is quality, reputation, impact. Why should researchers base that important choice on whether or not a journal shares its archives (whatever that means)? For if "sharing its archives" means obliging the journal to give away its own contents, now, for free, in a public online archive, then surely it should be the JOURNAL that decides whether or when to do that, based on its economics and cost-recovery methods, not its authorship. (But there are other things its authorship can do, now, that will have exactly the same effect!) Nor would I endorse a journal boycott by authors even in support of modifying journals' copyright transfer policy so as to permit authors to self-archive their final refereed drafts -- but that is because authors can all do that, legally, already, now (by using the Harnad/Oppenheim strategy)! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/2-Resolving-the-Anomaly/sld007.htm Again, a boycott would be unnecessary, ineffectual, and counterproductive (delaying the optimal and inevitable by making it conditional on a prior, successful boycott). The fact is that the option of self-archiving is already there and ready, as a SURE means of freeing the refereed literature without authors' having to boycott or give up anything at all. (That is why the proposal was dubbed "subversive".) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ And the physicists have already demonstrated that it can be done, and how. So they will get the undisputed historic credit for having been the fastest of the mark. But even the physicists are only approaching the optimal and inevitable linearly (at this rate, with 30-40% of the refereed physics literature freed to date, it will take another decade or more to free it all). So something is needed to accelerate the self-archiving rate in physics from the linear to the exponential, and to propagate that momentum into all the other disciplines as well. (Physicists may be smarter, more serious about research, and faster about doing what needs to be done about it, but they are not infinitely smarter; and all disciplines would benefit hugely from free access to their refereed literatures, and from the enhanced research tempo and impact that would vouchsafe. I am hoping the release of the eprints.org software so all institutions can immediately set up OAI-compliant Eprint Archives will now help to propel that self-archiving momentum into the exponential range in all fields at last.) Petitions like the one you allude to only reinforce the false idea that in order to free the refereed literature there is something authors first have to give up: There is not. Moreover, I, as an author/researcher, would certainly not give up the prerogative of submitting my work to, say, Science, because Science currently declines to give away its contents free, or declines to change its copyright policy: I can publish in Science and liberate my paper through self-archiving anyway! (And there are signs that Science's policy in this regard may be changing anyway; Nature's already is.) > I have another question. I've just taken a quick look at the Open > Citation Project--which looks sensible and straightforward to me. > > Have biomedical researchers shown an interest in using OpCit? It > seems a graceful way of liberating this material, as you say, without > making threats or demands on publishers. I think you are conflating two related but distinct projects: (1) The OpCit Project: http://opcit.eprints.org and (2) The Eprints Project: http://www.eprints.org OpCit is an NSF/JISC-funded project for citation-linking, in the first instance, the Los Alamos Physics Archive, and eventually all distributed, OAI-compliant Eprint Archives (this still waits on introducing references into the OAI Protocol: http://www.openarchives.org). Citation-linking provides a powerful new means of navigating the digital refereed literature and it also provides new scientometric measures of research impact: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.citation.htm However, OpCit is not a way of liberating the material: It operates on material that has already been liberated. The means of liberating the material is Eprints: Eprints is the self-archiving project, providing OAI-compliant software to Universities worldwide so that (1) they can immediately create their own OAI-compliant Eprint Archives, so that (2) their researchers can self-archive their papers in them: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD All the distributed Eprint archives can then be harvested into one global virtual archive in which everyone, everywhere can search and retrieve the full refereed journal literature self-archived therein for free, thanks to such Open Archive Services as: http://arc.cs.odu.edu/ So what biomedical researchers should show an interest in now is Eprints, rather than OpCit! It is self-archiving in OAI-compliant institutional Eprint archives that provides the graceful way of liberating this material. The release date for the operational version of the Eprints software is in a few weeks. Stay tuned. Then I'll be able to tell you whether biomedical researchers are showing an interest. But I do know that over 100 institutions are already beta-testing Eprints now. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science har...@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, Southampton http://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