On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, George Lundberg wrote: > many articles > (and many journals) are intended to educate practicing physicians as to how > they should treat patients. These readers (the great majority of biomedical > journal readers) are very different from physicists and mathematicians as > described in this forum. And the stakes of what happens to the participants > in this forum and to their families when they become ill and must receive > medical care are also very different. I would be greatly averse to having > my doctor treating me based on some ??published self-archived article. > Therein lies one of the principal rubs in this discussion.
The above is an excellent rationale for retaining peer review (in physics as well as biomedicine), in fact I've used it myself: Harnad, S. (1998/2000) The invisible hand of peer review. Nature [online] (5 Nov. 1998) http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html Longer version in Exploit Interactive 5 (2000): http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/peer-review/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature2.html But this Forum is not proposing to do away with peer review, only with the fee-based access-barriers to the outcome of the peer review, the refereed, published research report. Why does George Lundberg imagine that patients are more at risk if the peer-reviewed, published research on the basis of which they are treated is accessible online for free? And what is the difference between physics and biomedicine in this regard? I see none whatsoever. The primary motivation for freeing the refereed, published research literature by publicly self-archiving it online is that barrier-free public access is optimal for research and researchers. It also happens to be useful for other kinds of users (e.g. practitioners and students), but what is the "rub"? Or is this still just the usual conflation of the self-archiving of refereed research with the self-publishing of unrefereed research? For the tradition, and perhaps also the motivation, behind this persistent conflation in biomedicine, see the following, concerning the "Ingelfinger Rule": Harnad, S. (2000) E-Knowledge: Freeing the Refereed Journal Corpus Online. Computer Law & Security Report 16(2) 78-87. [Rebuttal to Bloom Editorial in Science and Relman Editorial in New England Journal of Medicine] http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.scinejm.htm Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing. Lancet Perspectives 256 (December Supplement): s16. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.lancet.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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