On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Bernard Lang wrote: > I noticed that many people on this list seem genuinely afraid of > hurting the feelings of publishers. Stevan gave me that impression in > our latest exchange, to which I stopped replying because I had the > impression that his eagerness to defend publishers (in the classical > sense) was hiding facts I did not know about.
No hidden facts. Just one very open one. It is possible to free the entire refereed journal corpus online (all 20,000+ journals, all 2,000,000+ articles annually), NOW, without asking or waiting for publishers to do anything at all. http://cogsci.sootn.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm Hence I think it is unnecessary and a waste of time and breath to fulminate against publishers, when there is something much more useful and effective that we could all be doing instead. Moreover, peer review is essential; it is what makes the refereed corpus a REFEREED corpus. Publishers currently implement peer review; it is an essential service; and there is no reason they should nto continue doing it, come what may. So I see absolutely no value in publisher-baiting. It is neither fair nor useful. So, no hidden facts. Complete disclosure. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 & 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