Re: EPRINTS = PREPRINTS (unrefereed) + POSTPRINTS (refereed)

From: Steve Hitchcock <sh94r_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 14:24:20 +0100

At 09:21 18/05/00 +0100, Thomas Krichel wrote:
> Steve Hitchcock writes
>
> > Paul Ginsparg defined an eprint as "something self-archived by the author".
> > Isn't that the clearest distinction, and an obvious one for this forum to
> > draw?
>
> I tend to think of an eprint as a "public-access scientific document
> in electronic form". The insistance on "author self-archiving" obscures
> the fact that there are many eprints that are not archived by the
> author but by an agent of the author, for example an academic institution
> or a scholarly society.

I suspect this is a view held by many, but it doesn't differentiate eprints
from other terms, and leads to the misunderstandings about which this
thread was initiated. In addition, what is "public-access"? Everything in
the library domain is public access, even a 10k/year journal, it's just not
very easy to access for most.

In the context of the Open Archives initiative, for example, there is no
debate about author self-archiving. The mission of the OAi is already quite
specific: it is "A forum to discuss and solve matters of interoperability
between author self-archiving solutions". In view of Thomas' comment, I
wonder if the significance of this OAi statement has been widely understood.

Thomas is right, there are other means and models of archiving, illustrated
by the emerging medical archives such as PubMed Central where,
incidentally, use of the term eprint seems to be carefully avoided (PMC is
a "repository of scientific articles").

The term "author self-archiving" doesn't obscure anything. In fact it
highlights the issues and agenda very clearly indeed. We are unlikely to
sustain eprints = preprints + postprints unless it is based on author
self-archiving.

Steve
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT