Congress Acts to Shut Down Government Web Site Used for Journals Research

[mj]

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from: m...@global.co.za

_

The following message was enclosed:
  Dear Sir, I will be writing to you
  concerning the NTIS dissemination plan,
  Kind regards,
  Mary Jean Johnson
  Cape Town

  South Africa
  email: m...@global.co.za (h)
  m...@capechamber.co.za (w)

_

  
> From the issue dated July 20, 2001



  Congress Acts to Shut Down Government Web Site Used for
  Journals Research

 A Web site operated by the U.S. Energy Department that allows
  scientists to search journals for citations and abstracts in
  the physical sciences is in jeopardy because of a bill
  approved last month by the House of Representatives. The bill
  is accompanied by a report that recommends eliminating the
  service.

  The service, PubScience, allows researchers to examine more
  than 1,000 peer-reviewed journals free and at the same time,
  instead of searching multiple Web sites, publications, and
  references (http://pubsci.osti.gov).

  PubScience is the Energy Department's most popular Web portal,
  receiving millions of search requests a year, said Walter
  Warnick, director of the department's Office of Scientific and
  Technical Information. The department spends about a
  half-million dollars a year to operate it.

  However, a report accompanying the Energy Department's 2002
  appropriations bill, H.R. 2311, asks the department "to
  carefully review its information services such as PubScience
  to be sure that such efforts remain focused on appropriate
  scientific journals."

  A House aide said that the service also competes with private
  companies that index scientific journals.

  The report, which was written by the House Appropriations
  Committee, mirrors his remark.

  The Energy Department is not legally required to abide by the
  report. But the cautionary language combined with steep budget
  cuts for the department's technical-management program make
  eliminating the service a foregone conclusion if the bill is
  signed into law, an Energy Department official said.

  The Senate is expected to approve a comparable spending bill
  for the Department of Energy, but it is unclear whether its
  legislation will include similar language on PubScience.

  The PubScience text was inserted in the House report after
  lobbying by the Software & Information Industry Association on
  behalf of member companies, including Chemical Abstracts
  Services, Reed Elsevier, and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts,
  according to the association.

  "The Department of Energy has entered into the role of
  secondary publishers," said David LeDuc, a lobbyist for the
  software association. "There's existing private-sector
  services. We would like to have the public sector stop
  competing with these services."

  But Stephen Miles Sacks, editor and publisher of Scipolicy --
  The Journal of Science and Health Policy, said PubScience is
  the only Web service that compiles abstracts from about 19
  small, niche scientific publications, including his.

  He called the House action "irresponsible and damaging to the
  advancement of science and medicine."


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Copyright 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Query on eprint archive indexing

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Colin Steele wrote:

> The audio and print transcript is now available on the ABC website.
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s345514.htm
>
> However, the main reason for the email is to ask your advice or point
> me to someone. We've just established the ANU eprint archive for all
> subjects and need to sort out our strategy for scaleability of keyword
> indexing.
>
> Do we allow the academics to give us their own keywords and then allow
> natural language searching or do we attempt a thesaurus approach which
> involves quite a lot of extra work on our side as we can't ask the
> academics to go into thesauri as it's going to be bad enough to get
> them to follow the copyright and OAI issues. It's just that when we get
> let's say to tens of thousands of articles what is the best searching
> and indexing procedure?
>
> This is clearly from one who has not been involved in this technical side!
>
> Colin Steele
> Director Scholarly Information Services & University Librarian
> Division of Information, R G Menzies Building (#2)
> The Australian National University
> Canberra  ACT 0200
> Australia
>
> Tel +61 (0)2 612 52003
> Fax +61 (0)2 612 53215
> Email: colin.ste...@anu.edu.au
> Library Web: http://anulib.anu.edu.au/

Dear Colin,

I am forwarding your query to the OAI and Eprints lists as yours is a
technical question and has already had some thought and discussion
devoted to it.

I would note, in passing, that by far the most pressing objective at
this time is not that of devising the optimal indexing system for
the Eprint Archives (though that can be accomplished) but that of
getting CONTENT into those archives, as soon as possible (so that,
if you like, there will be the data to optimize the indexing FOR!).

So my own feeling is that it is putting the cart before the horse to
worry too much about indexing still-near-empty archives! The growing
content itself, and its growing use, will drive the further
optimizations in indexing and retrieval, not the other way round.

But inasmuch as worries about indexing may be delaying some people's
self-archiving, by all means let us make a robust and general indexing
system available, so that particular retardant, at least, is behind us
and we can get on with it...

If ANU soes indeed have tens of thousands of articles in its Eprint
Archives soon, it will already have taken a huge step for the entire
research community, showing the way for all!

Best wishes,

Stevan


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: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[Jim Till]

As is his custom, Albert Henderson has focused his attention on his own
perception of only one of the reasons (the "Library crisis") included in
my short list of major reasons why the primary research literature should
be freed (see below).

So far, no novel reasons have been mentioned.  Are there any?

Jim Till
University of Toronto


On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Albert Henderson wrote [in part]:

[ah]> on Sat, 11 Aug 2001 Jim Till  wrote:
>
[jt]> But, what about reasons WHY the primary research literature should
[jt]> be freed?  Here's my first attempt at a summary of some of the main
[jt]> reasons:
[jt]>
[jt]> 1.  It should be done:
[jt]>
[jt]>  - Information gap: Libraries and researchers in poor countries
[jt]> can't afford most of the journals that they need.
[jt]>
[jt]>  - Library crisis: Libraries and researchers in rich countries
[jt]> can't afford some of the journals that they need.
[jt]>
[jt]>  - Public property: The results of publicly-funded research
[jt]> should be publicly-available.
[jt]>
[jt]>  - Academic freedom: Censorship based on cost rather than
[jt]> quality can't be justified.
>
[ah]>[snip]
>
[jt]> What other important reasons have I neglected?
>
[ah]> The most important motive behind the self-archiving
[ah]> argument is that universities wish to unload the
[ah]> profit-sapping burden of conserving knowledge. They
[ah]> wish to reduce, perhaps eliminate, spending on
[ah]> libraries.

[remainder snipped]

Re: Congress Acts to Shut Down Government Web Site Used for Journals Research

[Steve Hitchcock]

Mary Jean Johnson's notice about PubScience is out of date. According to
the latest issue of the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter 8/16/01
(http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos/read/message.html?mid=1604307847&sort=d&start=0)

"... the Senate has rejected the House measure and restored PubScience
funding in its own recent spending bill. Next month the House and Senate
must agree on a final version of the bill."

 Andrea Foster, Senate Bill Offers Tacit Approval of Scholarly Web Portal
 Scorned by House
 http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/08/2001080901t.htm

You'll need a subscription to the Chronicle to view this item as it's not
part of the free section.

Steve Hitchcock
Open Citation (OpCit) Project 
IAM Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ,  UK
Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel:  +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865


At 12:34 17/08/01 +0100, m...@global.co.za wrote:

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from: m...@global.co.za

_

The following message was enclosed:
  Dear Sir, I will be writing to you
  concerning the NTIS dissemination plan,
  Kind regards,
  Mary Jean Johnson
  Cape Town

  South Africa
  email: m...@global.co.za (h)
  m...@capechamber.co.za (w)

_

  From the issue dated July 20, 2001



  Congress Acts to Shut Down Government Web Site Used for
  Journals Research

 A Web site operated by the U.S. Energy Department that allows
  scientists to search journals for citations and abstracts in
  the physical sciences is in jeopardy because of a bill
  approved last month by the House of Representatives. The bill
  is accompanied by a report that recommends eliminating the
  service.

  The service, PubScience, allows researchers to examine more
  than 1,000 peer-reviewed journals free and at the same time,
  instead of searching multiple Web sites, publications, and
  references (http://pubsci.osti.gov).

  PubScience is the Energy Department's most popular Web portal,
  receiving millions of search requests a year, said Walter
  Warnick, director of the department's Office of Scientific and
  Technical Information. The department spends about a
  half-million dollars a year to operate it.

  However, a report accompanying the Energy Department's 2002
  appropriations bill, H.R. 2311, asks the department "to
  carefully review its information services such as PubScience
  to be sure that such efforts remain focused on appropriate
  scientific journals."

  A House aide said that the service also competes with private
  companies that index scientific journals.

  The report, which was written by the House Appropriations
  Committee, mirrors his remark.

  The Energy Department is not legally required to abide by the
  report. But the cautionary language combined with steep budget
  cuts for the department's technical-management program make
  eliminating the service a foregone conclusion if the bill is
  signed into law, an Energy Department official said.

  The Senate is expected to approve a comparable spending bill
  for the Department of Energy, but it is unclear whether its
  legislation will include similar language on PubScience.

  The PubScience text was inserted in the House report after
  lobbying by the Software & Information Industry Association on
  behalf of member companies, including Chemical Abstracts
  Services, Reed Elsevier, and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts,
  according to the association.

  "The Department of Energy has entered into the role of
  secondary publishers," said David LeDuc, a lobbyist for the
  software association. "There's existing private-sector
  services. We would like to have the public sector stop
  competing with these services."

  But Stephen Miles Sacks, editor and publisher of Scipolicy --
  The Journal of Science and Health Policy, said PubScience is
  the only Web service that compiles abstracts from about 19
  small, niche scientific publications, including his.

  He called the House action "irresponsible and damaging to the
  advancement of science and medicine."


_

Chronicle subscribers can read this article on the Web at this address:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i45/45a02902.htm

If you would like to have complete access to The Chronicle's Web
site, a special subscription offer can be found at:

   http://chronicle.com/4free

_

You may visit The Chronicle as follows:

   * via the World-Wide Web, at http://chronicle.com
   * via telnet at chronicle.com

_
Copyright 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Re: Self-Archiving Refereed Research vs. Self-Publishing Unrefereed Research

[Arthur Smith]

David Goodman wrote:
> The publication of material in an free archival system will permit much
> more open and effective review and comment than the present system does.

Permit perhaps - but will it actually happen? So much is published these
days that the vast majority is unlikely to ever receive a single
thoughtful comment unless specifically requested by a reviewing
authority of some sort. The Math Society set up a preprint system that
allowed commentary - and received at most a handful of comments on a
collection of several hundred papers. That experience has been very
typical - the journal "Electronic Transactions of Artificial
Intelligence" specifically set up such an open review system, with
commentary published along with articles, but still receives only a tiny
number of unsolicited comments from researchers.

> In the case you postulate, how long do you think it will take until the
> discrepancy is noticed and publicized? I'd say less than one day.

If the original article received little publicity, the discrepancy may
never be noticed, or will itself be unlikely to receive much publicity
unless a tragedy happens. The natural state of scientific research
papers is to receive essentially no publicity at all; they are
distributed and archived and read at random by people from a wide
spectrum of backgrounds, some very knowledgeable about the field and the
journals in question, some practitioners who may try to apply the
knowledge they gain, some simply members of the lay public.


> [...]
> We all could add analogous situations. How does the beginner learn
> these things?

Through coming to know a hierarchy of authoritative sources - for what
it's worth, the lay public relies on mass media at the top level, and
then more science-oriented popular books or publications (Scientific
American, space.com) or even the specific journals cited in the media
(Science and Nature, JAMA, NEJM, etc.) for greater understanding. Aside
from general reputation, the criteria for a source to be seen in this
way is (1) responsibility for the content it publishes, and (2)
presentation in a useful context (e.g. great articles have to be much
easier to find than the needle in the haystack).

A raw database for which nobody but the author is responsible supplies
little of this potential for authority.

A raw database with a thin layer of criticism for which only the critics
are responsible for their comments is hardly better (is there any
working example of such an open system? There are the "slashdot" or
"kuro5hin" models, but that means thinking about peer review in a
completely new light too - and those news/discussion sources have some
pretty substantial defects).

> They learn from the criticism in the literature (and from education). Open
> archives would facilitate this, not hinder it.

Criticism (and education) is but another form of communication, for
which the same issues of authority and responsibility arise. Who do you
read first? Who do you trust?

The point is we have now a system, likely more expensive than it needs
to be, but on the other hand pretty cheap in the whole scheme of things,
that supplies these layers of authority to the literature, through
hierarchies of journals, media, and other sources. We could work on
fixing this existing system (and most conscientious publishers are
working hard to be more timely, more fully electronic, and provide more
services such as interlinking), or we could focus attention on a great
idea (such as author self-archiving) that may not solve any of the real
problems in communication of scientific and scholarly information.

Arthur (apsm...@aps.org)

Re: Producer Give-Aways Vs. Consumer Rip-Offs

[Stevan Harnad]

As I suspected, Peter and I are in almost 100% agreement. My cautionary
suggestion (to prominently tag consumer-ripoff-facilitators so as to
distinguish them unequivocally from producer-giveaway-facilitators) was only
made in the hope of preventing misunderstandings on the part of others
who, unlike Peter, have not yet given this crucial distinction enough
thought.


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


On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Peter Suber wrote:

> Thanks for writing. I accept the distinction between
> give-away literature and non-give-away literature, and made a similar point
> myself in my June 8 issue (fifth story):
>
> http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos/read/message.html?mid=1603288833&sort=d&start=0

> Let me put my position positively, not negatively. The scholarship
> that should be free and online is that which its authors want to be free
> and online. Since scholarly authors are not paid for journal articles
> anyway, they lose nothing by making their work available for free, and they
> gain readers (and impact, as you've argued). Book authors, and certainly
> musicians, can hope for royalties from their work. More power to them. I
> hope that authors of scholarly books will prefer wide readership and impact
> to royalties (which are improbable for most anyway); but this is their
> choice. Scholarship is more useful online than in print; and if online,
> then free is better than priced, and affordable is better than
> expensive. When authors and publishers of online scholarship choose to
> limit readership in exchange for revenue, I hope they can find a way to
> respect readers' fair-use, back-up, and migration rights, and I hope their
> price is affordable; but so far, this combination is very rare. Note that
> my list of readers' rights is limited; I don't say they have a right to
> read or possess priced works without paying. By the same token, the
> legitimate functions of copy protection are also limited, and I wish
> publishers would back off from absolute copy protection to forms that only
> protect their legitimate interests and are otherwise compatible with
> readers' rights. This is complicated and controversial, but the good news
> is that free online scholarship makes it all unnecessary. For works that
> are fully free and online, we don't have to worry about fair use or copy
> protection.

Re: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[David Goodman]

It's not exactly a novel reason, but I would certainly add under 1-

that it works  faster and more efficiently in getting the information
disseminated.
Even the reviewing (of whatever form it takes) should be faster.

It may also work better at getting the information organized and
findable than the current less-than-rational division by journals and
the consequent indexing.


Jim Till wrote:
>
> As is his custom, Albert Henderson has focused his attention on his own
> perception of only one of the reasons (the "Library crisis") included in
> my short list of major reasons why the primary research literature should
> be freed (see below).
>
> So far, no novel reasons have been mentioned.  Are there any?
>
> Jim Till
> University of Toronto
>
> On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Albert Henderson wrote [in part]:
>
> [ah]> on Sat, 11 Aug 2001 Jim Till  wrote:
> >
> [jt]> But, what about reasons WHY the primary research literature should
> [jt]> be freed?  Here's my first attempt at a summary of some of the main
> [jt]> reasons:
> [jt]>
> [jt]> 1.  It should be done:
> [jt]>
> [jt]>  - Information gap: Libraries and researchers in poor countries
> [jt]> can't afford most of the journals that they need.
> [jt]>
> [jt]>  - Library crisis: Libraries and researchers in rich countries
> [jt]> can't afford some of the journals that they need.
> [jt]>
> [jt]>  - Public property: The results of publicly-funded research
> [jt]> should be publicly-available.
> [jt]>
> [jt]>  - Academic freedom: Censorship based on cost rather than
> [jt]> quality can't be justified.
> >
> [ah]>[snip]
> >
> [jt]> What other important reasons have I neglected?
> >
> [ah]> The most important motive behind the self-archiving
> [ah]> argument is that universities wish to unload the
> [ah]> profit-sapping burden of conserving knowledge. They
> [ah]> wish to reduce, perhaps eliminate, spending on
> [ah]> libraries.
>
> [remainder snipped]


--
David Goodman
Biology Librarian
and Digital Resources Researcher
Princeton University Library
Princeton, NJ 08544-0001
phone: 609-258-3235
fax: 609-258-2627
e-mail: dgood...@princeton.edu

Re: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[Stevan Harnad]

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.

-

Re: Elsevier's ChemWeb Preprint Archive

[Weeks, James (ELSLON)]

Questions and comments regarding the CPS have been cross-posted by list
owners to various other relevant lists. For this reason please forgive this
similar cross-posting in response.

This message is posted to:

{american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org, chem...@ic.ac.uk,
oai-gene...@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu}



Firstly, I would like to thank everybody for their comments regarding the
evolution of the Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS). I would like to briefly
address some of the points that have been raised.

Jim Till has provided some very revealing analysis of the submissions to the
CPS
(http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind01&L=september98-forum&F
=l&P=29519). It will certainly be interesting to repeat this analysis when
more preprints have been submitted.

To this, I would like to add that each article that is submitted to the CPS
has its own discussion group where users can comment on the content of the
article. It is encouraging that there has been sustained use of these
discussion groups. For example, 45 of the 282 preprints submitted now have
more than 3 threads in their discussions. I think it will also be
interesting to monitor how this feature is used.

Regarding the issue of compliance with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) I
would like to confirm that we have constantly referred to the initiative
when developing the CPS. This is certainly a high priority because
ChemWeb.com has developed the CPS as a service for the worldwide chemistry
community.

It is our intention that the CPS will be compliant within the next two
months.

I hope that this has helped to address some of the issues raised. We would
of course welcome any feedback or comments on the service.

Please do not hesitate to contact me personally if you have any queries or
comments.

Best regards,

James Weeks

__

James Weeks
Chemistry Preprint Server Coordinator

ChemWeb Inc.
84 Theobald's Road
London WC1X 8RR
United Kingdom

Tel:+44 (0) 20 7611 4480
Fax:+44 (0) 20 7611 4301
Email:  james.we...@chemweb.com

http://preprint.chemweb.com
http://www.chemweb.com

Meet us at the ACS National Meeting - Chicago - August 27-29 - Booth 337
__

Re: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[Jim Till]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Arthur Smith wrote [in part]:

[jt (1d)]>- Academic freedom: Censorship based on cost rather than
[jt]> quality can't be justified.

[as]> (1d) I'm afraid I don't understand - can you describe a scenario
[as]> where cost is involved in censorship somehow?

My proposed four main reasons why the primary research literature should
be freed were, in brief:

(1a) Information gap; (1b) Library crisis; (1c) Public property; and,
(1d) Academic freedom.

Re (1d): please bear in mind that a definition of the verb "censor" is
"make deletions or changes in".

I can think of a number of researcher-side (and also of end-user-side)
examples of cost barriers to the dissemination of the (high-quality)
primary research literature.  Here's one example of such a scenario,
within the context of the "author-give-away" literature.  That is, the
author doesn't want to make a profit.  The author simply wants to give a
publication away.

Scenario: The top brand-name journal in the field (one that has, as it's
explicitly-stated primary role, the advancement of a particular research
discipline), has peer-reviewed a preprint and finds it acceptable for
publication as it is.  But, the journal doesn't have (for reasons of
cost/revenue) an electronic version that's freely available online.  And
(again, for reasons of cost/revenue) this same journal won't accept the
preprint for publication if it's already been self-archived by the author.
Also (for the same cost/revenue reasons), it won't permit post-publication
self-archiving in any open archive.  And, when asked to do so, it refuses
to modify it's current "licence to publish" agreement, one which forbids
post-publication self-archiving by the author.

And: the author's own peers and host institution regard anything not
published in this particular top brand-name journal as second-rate in
quality (even if, in the view of that same journal's own peer-reviewers,
the preprint is actually first-rate).

What should the author do, in order to avoid this (cost/revenue-based)
dissemination barrier?  Some possible options: (i) Thank the journal for
peer-reviewing the preprint, and simply self-archive it in an open
archive, together with a comment that it was considered to be acceptable
for publication by the brand-name journal (how to validate such a claim?).
(ii) Self-archive the preprint, but not inform the brand-name journal
(requires deception). (iii) Withdraw the submitted preprint, and re-submit
it to a lower-impact journal that either has a version that's
freely-available online, or permits open self-archiving of preprints
and/or postprints.

The third alternative (which is the one that I'd personally prefer)
results, I'll argue, in a form of censorship.  First, the article has been
deleted from (because it didn't enter into) the "top-quality" brand of
primary research literature, for reasons based on cost/revenue, not
quality.  Second, it's dissemination has been significantly delayed, again
simply for reasons of cost/revenue, not quality.  Perhaps these particular
consequences won't be regarded as serious enough to justify use of the
word "censorship"?  Is there another word that might be more appropriate?
"Blockage"? "Interference"?

> > 2.  It can be done:
> >
> That's debatable (as we've been doing here for some time). But even so,
> because something can be done, is that a reason it should be? I thought
> you were listing problems to be solved, not solutions in search of
> problems...

Please note that my "should" reasons preceded my "can" reasons.  Problems
that should be solved, and can be solved (I'll argue) merit inclusion in
an "A-level" category, distinct from those problems that: B) should be
solved, but can't, and, C) can be solved, but shouldn't.

Jim Till
University of Toronto

Re: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

 I would add an extension to the public property argument: a bit like roads, 
fundamental public knowledge ought to be considered as a basic infrastructure 
for all kinds of other activities, including further public, fundamental 
research as well as private, business oriented research.  Roads, after all, 
serve botht the public and private sectors at once and neither could get 
along without roads. Roads are not par of a market in the usual sense of the 
word; fundamental knowedge neither.

A similar argument has been used with regard to free source code operating 
systems. If you want a healthy development of niche, commercial, software, 
you need a good, open platform allowing everyone to compete on an equal 
footing. As Corel found out, you cannot fight against MS-Office on top of 
Windows. Companies could not compete in a healthy manner if one of them also 
owned the roads; countries cannot enter the innovation game if they do not 
have access to the literatue on acount of its costs.

In short, this public property is not simply public property; it may well be 
public property playing a fundamental infrastructural role in our societies 
and for the whole planet.

What do you think?

Best,

Jean-Claude Guédon

PS I heard a strange piece of news recently: a fellow apparently named Albert 
Henderson has found himself incapacitated in some manner. I do not know the 
exact cause, but what is clear is that his computer is spewing off a number 
of messages from a fixed bank of statements, a bit like the mechanical Eve in 
Villiers de l'Isle Adam's novel, L'Eve future. These statements, many of them 
quite outrageous in their claims, and some actually funny, are found all over 
the networks, a bit like the chinese cookies messages one finds on Unix 
systems. I began to notice this phenomenon when I saw the same repetitious 
claims recur regularly over this list.  The worst part is that he appears no 
longer capable of stopping his computer.

Does any know how to help break the kind of infinite loop in which this 
fellow's computer appears to be caught. If he is still capable of thinking, 
he may be getting a little embarrassed by it all, and he might be very 
grateful for such charitable help.

Le 16 Août 2001 13:46, vous avez écrit :
> on Sat, 11 Aug 2001 Jim Till  wrote:
> > There's been much discussion, via this forum, about HOW the primary
> > research literature might be freed.  (By "primary" research literature, I
> > mean original contributions by active and appropriately-qualified
> > researchers, where new knowledge, such as novel concepts, novel data, or
> > novel interpretations of existing data, are published).
> >
> > But, what about reasons WHY the primary research literature should be
> > freed?  Here's my first attempt at a summary of some of the main reasons:
> >
> > 1.  It should be done:
> >
> >  - Information gap: Libraries and researchers in poor countries can't
> > afford most of the journals that they need.
> >
> >  - Library crisis: Libraries and researchers in rich countries can't
> > afford some of the journals that they need.
> >
> >  - Public property: The results of publicly-funded research should be
> > publicly-available.
> >
> >  - Academic freedom: Censorship based on cost rather than quality
> > can't be justified.
>
> [snip]
>
> > What other important reasons have I neglected?
>


-- 
Jean-Claude Guédon
Département de littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
CP 6128, Succursale Centre-ville
Montréal, Qc H3C 3J7
Canada

Tél. : 1-514-343-6208
Télécopie : 1-514-343-2211
Courriel : jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca

Re: Reasons for freeing the primary research literature

[Arthur Smith]

Jim Till wrote:
> [...]
> My proposed four main reasons why the primary research literature should
> be freed were, in brief:
>
> (1a) Information gap; (1b) Library crisis; (1c) Public property; and,
> (1d) Academic freedom.
>
> Re (1d): please bear in mind that a definition of the verb "censor" is
> "make deletions or changes in".
>
> [...]
>
> What should the author do, in order to avoid this (cost/revenue-based)
> dissemination barrier?  Some possible options: (i) Thank the journal for
> peer-reviewing the preprint, and simply self-archive it in an open
> archive, together with a comment that it was considered to be acceptable
> for publication by the brand-name journal (how to validate such a claim?).
> (ii) Self-archive the preprint, but not inform the brand-name journal
> (requires deception). (iii) Withdraw the submitted preprint, and re-submit
> it to a lower-impact journal that either has a version that's
> freely-available online, or permits open self-archiving of preprints
> and/or postprints.
> [...]

But author self-archiving, in itself, doesn't resolve this problem
either! There IS no solution if the only decision to be made is at the
individual researcher level. But at a higher level the possible
solutions are either (1) a change in journal policy (and the number of
journals with such restrictive policies seems to be dropping gradually)
or (2) a change in the hierarchy of "top brand-name" journals to favor
the ones with more open policies, which seems somewhat less likely, but
still possible. Other than that, there's no (honest) way to resolve this
"censorship" dilemma. So the real place to work on this problem is with
the publishers themselves, somewhat the way the "Public Library of
Science" people are doing.

Arthur