Stevan Harnad wrote:
> > Support for this possibility has been adduced from the remarkable
> > success of the NSF/DOE-supported Los Alamos Physics Archive
> > (http://xxx.lanl.gov), a free, public repository for a growing
> > proportion of the current physics literature, with over 14,000 new
> > papers annually
Seems like you pick a new number out of a hat each time. There are already
over 18,000 new papers deposited in calendar '98, and we're expecting roughly
25,000 this year (there's no point averaging in previous years when we're
still in a monotonic linear growth phase, it was under 14,000 back in '95),
as I mentioned in my message at end sept to forum.
> > deposited as unrefereed preprints, and for some (no one knows how many),
> > their authors never bother replacing them with the final revised
> > draft that is accepted for publication.
Really very few, and perhaps none in the case of substantive error correction
(as you've argued, what author would leave in perpetuity incorrect or
embarrassing statements? -- what they leave on the archive is intentional,
and if it differs from the journal version in any substantial way it's more
often than not it's because the author wants it that way [perhaps due to size
or other limitations imposed by the journal]).
Paul Ginsparg
[I stand corrected: it's 25K per year, not 14K! I was trying to be
ultra-conservative with Paul's own figures, which are enormous
whether you take the high end or the low end. -- S.H.]
Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:17:43 BST