On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Albert Henderson wrote: > Instead of scientific studies to support > the misnamed "self-archiving" argument, we are abused > with the rhetoric and nonsense such as attempts to > justify the phrase "virtually all" while citing a > source that provides the statistic "36.87%."
I patiently repeat that the "virtually all" refers to the proportion of self-archived preprints in the Physics Archive that are submitted to refereed journals. The respective acceptance rates of those journals are a separate (and completely irrelevant!) matter. The 36% referred to the number of authors that updated their reference at that time: this is another irrelevant statistic (for Albert's purposes), about which the author, Tim Brody, has already posted a response to this Forum. http://opcit.eprints.org/tdb198/opcit/ http://opcit.eprints.org/ijh198/ > Support for "self-archiving" is made more foolish by > the fact that, as even its most ardent supports in this > forum have pointed out, authors are notoriously difficult > to regulate. Whatever is made public outside peer-reviewed > journals cannot be trusted as a general rule. Moreover, > no one can guarantee that charlatans will not insert > counterfeit claims of research to support their private > commercial interests. Albert predictably keeps speaking of self-archiving as if it were the self-archiving of unrefereed research, whereas this is all about the self-archiving of refereed (= peer-reviewed), published papers. The pre-refereeing preprints are merely a bonus, over and above the refereed postprints. I think it would be useful if Albert reviewed the logic of conditional probabilities: From the fact that many papers are first self-archived at their pre-refereeing preprint stage (in Physics) it does not follow that the later (refereed) stage (1) does not take place or (2) is not self-archived! Please note: (1) It is indeed true that virtually every preprint in the Physics Archive goes on to be submitted to a refereed journal (exactly as I said). (2) The proportion of those submitted papers that is eventually accepted by a given journal no doubt matches the acceptance rate of that particular journal -- rates vary from about 20% to 80%). (3) Rejected papers are then presumably submitted to other refereed journals, with lower refereeing standards and higher acceptance rates. (4) In biomedicine in the 1980's, Stephen Locke reported that virtually every paper eventually gets published somewhere. (I don't know how true this was then, nor whether it is still true now, nor whether it is also true of physics, but again, that is irrelevant.) Harnad, S. (1986) Policing the Paper Chase. (Review of S. Lock, A difficult balance: Peer review in biomedical publication.) Nature 322: 24 - 5. (5) The right conditional probability to look at is: What is the probability that a published, refereed paper in one of the subareas of Physics that is doing substantial self-archiving in the Physics Archive (e.g., High Energy Physics) appears in the Archive. And the answer there is: very high! (6) THAT (5) is the relevant statistic to consider in evaluating the causal inferences Albert is trying to make. It will be found that there is no logical basis whatsoever for Albert's conclusions. And if that is not enough to show that we are talking about the self-archiving of peer-reviewed, published research (and not some other "unregulated" gray matter, as Albert keeps implying) then look at CogPrints http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk most of whose authors archive ONLY the published draft, and don't even bother with the preprint. The "regulation" of "charlatans" in the "gray matter" (the subset that is never submitted to or accepted by a peer-reviewed journal) is merely a red herring and a distraction from the substantive matter at hand. Ignore the unrefereed sector, if you like. Focus on the refereed papers, because that what this is all about! > Thus, the self-archiving movement not only promises > to eliminate considerable library spending. It promises > a sort of chaos that will undermine peer review and > authorship. Utter nonsense. How can the self-archiving of peer-reviewed research by the authors of that research undermine either peer review or authorship? All it does is to free it from access-tolls online! (And if that should happen to save libraries some spending money, is that something to grieve about?) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm > It will slow scientific progress and justify > perpetual renewals of grants for promising research. A complete non sequitur, like much of the rest... I pass over the still shriller and increasingly far-fetched rants in silence. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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