Re: Validation of posted archives
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:26:46 -0500 From: Guillermo Julio Padron Gonzalez guillermo.pad...@cigb.edu.cu From your mail I see there is no administrator of files posted in Internet using OAI. May be it has been already discussed in the Forum--I am sorry if it indeed was--but I have two questions: 1. How can a reader differentiate a non-validated--non peer-reviewed--archive from a validated peer-reviewed version? There is a metadata category refereed vs. unrefereed. Also Journal Name, etc. http://www.eprints.org/ 2. How can this system avoid the possibility of charlatans posting their non peer-reviewed or even rejected papers using OAI? As far as I know, any person outside the journal/publishers sites can post them. It is self-archiving, so in principle I can post someone else's article as my own (plagiarism), or can post my own and call it refereed when it is not, or can post an inaccurate version of the final draft. All this is easily monitored and checked, if anyone wants to set up a system to do so, but it is not necessary! The archive of record for refereed papers, for the time being, is the publisher's paper version, in libraries the world over. The self-archived version is merely FREEING these papers online, for one and all. Peer review continues to be implemented by journals. If one retrieves un unrefereed paper, caveat emptor. And the incentive to plagiarize or to misclassify one's own work does not have much force behind it. See: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#8. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@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, Southamptonhttp://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
Re: Validation of posted archives
Dear Stevan: The name of a journal is part of the validation of a published paper. We all use the rigorousness of the peer review and the editorial crite-ria of the journals to judge about the validity of a published paper. I agree that there can be exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. It is clear that nobody has the time or the willingness to dive into each paper to find out whether it is the final version of a validated paper or it is just electronic garbage. The fact is that a non-administered archiving system may cause a proliferation of non-validated, duplicated, misleading and even fraudulent information in the web and there will be no way to identify the valid information, so the readers will go to validating sites, v. g. the publisher site. Unless OAI included some kind of validation... Regards, Guillermo -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, 21 March, 2001 10:36 AM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Validation of posted archives Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:26:46 -0500 From: Guillermo Julio Padron Gonzalez guillermo.pad...@cigb.edu.cu From your mail I see there is no administrator of files posted in Internet using OAI. May be it has been already discussed in the Forum--I am sorry if it indeed was--but I have two questions: 1. How can a reader differentiate a non-validated--non peer-reviewed--archive from a validated peer-reviewed version? There is a metadata category refereed vs. unrefereed. Also Journal Name, etc. http://www.eprints.org/ 2. How can this system avoid the possibility of charlatans posting their non peer-reviewed or even rejected papers using OAI? As far as I know, any person outside the journal/publishers sites can post them. It is self-archiving, so in principle I can post someone else's article as my own (plagiarism), or can post my own and call it refereed when it is not, or can post an inaccurate version of the final draft. All this is easily monitored and checked, if anyone wants to set up a system to do so, but it is not necessary! The archive of record for refereed papers, for the time being, is the publisher's paper version, in libraries the world over. The self-archived version is merely FREEING these papers online, for one and all. Peer review continues to be implemented by journals. If one retrieves un unrefereed paper, caveat emptor. And the incentive to plagiarize or to misclassify one's own work does not have much force behind it. See: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#8. Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Sciencehar...@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, Southamptonhttp://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
Re: Validation of posted archives
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Guillermo Julio Padron Gonzalez wrote: The name of a journal is part of the validation of a published paper. We all use the rigorousness of the peer review and the editorial crite-ria of the journals to judge about the validity of a published paper. I agree that there can be exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. It is clear that nobody has the time or the willingness to dive into each paper to find out whether it is the final version of a validated paper or it is just electronic garbage. The fact is that a non-administered archiving system may cause a proliferation of non-validated, duplicated, misleading and even fraudulent information in the web and there will be no way to identify the valid information, so the readers will go to validating sites, v. g. the publisher site. Unless OAI included some kind of validation... I hope you do not mind me adding to this discussion. If I may clear up perhaps a confusion about the protocol OAI: OAI is a protocol for the distribution of Metadata, much the same as TCP/IP is a protocol used by the Internet to distribute information. I would no more expect OAI to provide me with guarantees about the content than I would TCP/IP about this email. (As an aside, OAI does not provide any facility for the distribution of full-text papers (it can merely distribute 'pointers' to papers).) Therefore the validation, or otherwise, of papers and their heritage rests with the application(s) that use OAI. As an example of an Open Archive that has had ample opportunity to be filled with rubbish; (correct me if I am quoting wrong), arXiv has, in its ten years, only had to delete 2 papers out of 160,000. This would suggest that either arXiv has a very efficient staff or this is not really a problem (or, as I suspect, both). Your suggestion, to me, does seem a rational one (and indeed currently exists between arXiv and the APS - I believe the APS will accept submissions using arXiv papers), that there are archives of pre-print papers which are then picked up by validating services (i.e publishers) which then repackage archives into validated subject/editorial content. It would then be your choice as to whether you use the e-Print server or the packaged (and pay-for) service of Publishers, and naturally the effect of the publisher service would be to improve the e-Print content (... invisible hand of peer review). All the best, Tim Brody.
Re: Validation of posted archives
On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 06:11:11PM +, Tim Brody wrote: As an example of an Open Archive that has had ample opportunity to be filled with rubbish; (correct me if I am quoting wrong), arXiv has, in its ten years, only had to delete 2 papers out of 160,000. This would suggest that either arXiv has a very efficient staff or this is not really a problem (or, as I suspect, both). I would say that maintaining minimum standards in the arXiv is a problem, but one that has been solved. The arXiv mainly works on the self-respect system. Most serious authors have respect for their own work, and the arXiv takes certain steps to reinforce this principle. First, in order to register an author should provide some evidence that someone in the research community will be interested in his or her submissions. Any real academic affiliation is sufficient and the arXiv assumes it if the author has an academic e-mail address. It's not perfect since occasionally someone obtains an academic e-mail address without any affiliation whatsoever, but it works pretty well. Otherwise the author needs a letter of reference from someone in the research community. It doesn't have to be anything like a letter of recommendation for a job, just some kind of expression of interest in the author's work. Second, the component archives are moderated, mainly for the purpose of fixing misclassifications. At this level the arXiv doesn't keep out work that is merely wrong or weak; it might still be relevant to research. But there are separate categories for submissions that defy classification, and that includes material that makes no sense to the moderators. Third, submissions are irrevocable. You can always submit a new version, but all versions remain available. So you have to live with your mistakes; the best you can do is submit a withdrawal notice asking people not to read previous versions. This three-tier system has nothing to do with the handful of deleted submissions. Deleted submissions are things like conference announcements, garbled files, and duplicates. Besides that, I'm not sure what the original poster had in mind as rubbish. Maybe half of the articles in the math arXiv are ho-hum works that would never interest me. But that's not the same as rubbish; most of these papers are legitimate but boring. Maybe 5% are so lame that I would be embarrassed to have my name on them. But even most of these are on-topic and publishable. On the other hand, the arXiv does have some excellent papers that will never be published, or that have even been rejected by a journal. I think it's important to put peer review after permanent archival. Your suggestion, to me, does seem a rational one (and indeed currently exists between arXiv and the APS - I believe the APS will accept submissions using arXiv papers), that there are archives of pre-print papers which are then picked up by validating services (i.e publishers) which then repackage archives into validated subject/editorial content. This is a major controversy surrounding the arXiv right now. It is important for journals or other vehicles of peer review to validate research papers. But why bother repackaging them? -- /\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) / \ \ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ \/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *
Re: Validation of posted archives
on Wed, 21 Mar 2001 Tim Brody tdb...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Guillermo Julio Padron Gonzalez wrote: The name of a journal is part of the validation of a published paper. We all use the rigorousness of the peer review and the editorial crite-ria of the journals to judge about the validity of a published paper. I agree that there can be exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. It is clear that nobody has the time or the willingness to dive into each paper to find out whether it is the final version of a validated paper or it is just electronic garbage. The fact is that a non-administered archiving system may cause a proliferation of non-validated, duplicated, misleading and even fraudulent information in the web and there will be no way to identify the valid information, so the readers will go to validating sites, v. g. the publisher site. Unless OAI included some kind of validation... I hope you do not mind me adding to this discussion. If I may clear up perhaps a confusion about the protocol OAI: OAI is a protocol for the distribution of Metadata, much the same as TCP/IP is a protocol used by the Internet to distribute information. I would no more expect OAI to provide me with guarantees about the content than I would TCP/IP about this email. (As an aside, OAI does not provide any facility for the distribution of full-text papers (it can merely distribute 'pointers' to papers).) Therefore the validation, or otherwise, of papers and their heritage rests with the application(s) that use OAI. As an example of an Open Archive that has had ample opportunity to be filled with rubbish; (correct me if I am quoting wrong), arXiv has, in its ten years, only had to delete 2 papers out of 160,000. This would suggest that either arXiv has a very efficient staff or this is not really a problem (or, as I suspect, both). The LANL server is undoubtedly efficient, but probably not effective in screening out useless material. Mathematical proofs validate much of its content but contribute little to usefulness. Moreover, the peer-reviewed journals in physics have a much higher acceptance rate than journals in other fields. In short, I would not be so sure that LANL's service is not filled with rubbish. More important, physics and mathematics are far removed from topics useful to quacks who promise to treat everything from aching backs to zodiacal destiny. LANL's most effective feature perhaps is its use of XXX -- an insignia that keeps out children who are protected by parental controls from Internet peril. Best wishes, Albert Henderson 70244.1...@compuserve.com . .
