Here is a review of Peter Suber's excellent FOS Newsletter.
> Excerpt from Péter Jacsó, "Péter's Picks and Pans", _Online > Magazine_, March/April 2002, pp. 79ff. Jacsó's column isn't one of the > free online articles from that issue, so here's a fair-use slice. > > March/April issue of _Online Magazine_ > http://www.onlinemag.net/mar02/contents.htm > > Péter's Picks & Pans > > My first pick is the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter archive > edited by Peter Suber, which provides lucid, well-balanced summaries about > developments in electronic publishing, digital copyright, and new digital > services and products of scholarly communication. The second pick is the > new, smartened-up version of FindArticles.com, a free full-text database of > nearly 500 scholarly and trade journals and general interest magazines > licensed by LookSmart from the Gale Group. The Pan is Wikipedia, an > encyclopedia meant to be built from scratch as a worldwide community > project by contributions, corrections, and additions from anyone, anytime > without any substantial guidelines or formal editorial process. It may be > fine for providing an outlet for those who pine to be a member in some > community, but it looks more like a prank, to see how the (wo)man of the > street and the press fall for it. > > FOS NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE > > The FOS Newsletter (www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos) is the brainchild of Peter > Suber, a professor of Philosophy at Earlham College. Don't stop reading > here--he is well versed in arguing against the incompetency defense for > competent people (as practiced by "cunning and dishonest lawyers"), in > using Dialog for teaching philosophy, and in discussing the pros and cons > of various XML schemas. His background serves him well in the extremely > lucid, concise, practical, and balanced reporting of developments in many > aspects of electronic publishing, digital copyright, and the future of > scholarship. FOS is the acronym he coined for Free Online Scholarship. It > covers research papers, conference papers, dissertations, essays, books, > and reference sources in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and > is available free of charge on the Web. > > Each issue of the newsletter consists of summaries of the latest > developments in the field. These summaries are not merely indicative or > informative abstracts, but critical summaries, with links to several > related sites for background and contrasting opinions. Amidst the many > press releases promoting digital products and services masquerading as > articles--even sneaked into refereed research papers--it is refreshing to > read the opinions of a scholar who consistently looks at both sides of the > coin, cuts through the clutter, and points to areas worthy for digging > further to find gold. Time and again, he is the first to report on gems of > digital scholarship. I found myself fervently disagreeing with him only > once, as discussed in the pan section. > > Luckily, the newsletter is available also as a searchable archive hosted by > Topica (www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos/read). The weekly issues, including > about 500 items, can be keyword-searched using Boolean operators (the > default is AND if you don't use operators). There is no field searching, so > the entire text of the archive is searched. Even when you are at the FOS > archive, only the first query searches FOS; a follow-up search is conducted > in the entire Topica message collections. Use the BACK button to return to > the original query cell for Search in this List. Alternatively, add suber > to your subject search, copyright infringement suber. Although the help > file does not tell you, truncation is possible, so you can use copyright > infring* suber to retrieve both infringement (two items) and infringing > (two items) from the FOS archive. > > Matches are not highlighted in full text, but you can use your browser's > Find command to locate the passages with the matching term. A > comprehensive, very good glossary complements the archive, providing > definitions for hundreds of terms, acronyms, and projects related to > digital scholarly publishing. The newsletter keeps you up-to-date, and is > much more reliable than some of the fee-based alerting services on > commercial database services. They too often forget to reduce their SDI > fees even when the update frequency of a database is drastically reduced or > the database is not updated for several months in a row. > > The well-balanced, evaluative summaries make me spend hours every week > following the threads accompanying each item, as did Theseus returning from > slaying the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Traditional print publishers would > charge hundreds of dollars for such a weekly newsletter. I hope Suber will > have the stamina to maintain the newsletter at this level. Ariadne was > rewarded by a bridal crown for her good deeds (albeit not by the primary > beneficiary of her guidance). Hopefully, this pick column will increase the > number of subscribers to this excellent digital newsletter, encouraging the > author to keep publishing it. > > [...]
