I'm trying to keep track of the incentives being used to promote the
ChemWeb.com chemistry preprint server (at:
http://preprint.chemweb.com).
One of these is that each week's highest-ranked preprint, and the
most-viewed preprint, are identified.
How are the articles ranked? It appears that readers are providing the
rankings. A drop-down menu is available, with the instruction: "Please
select from the drop down menu the number of stars you think this preprint
deserves". The menu provides a range from 1 to 5 stars.
This week's highest-ranked article received 4 stars (and 202 views);
while this week's most-viewed article recorded 552 views (and 3 stars).
Highest ranked:
http://preprint.chemweb.com/medichem/0009001
Most viewed:
http://preprint.chemweb.com/envchem/0007001
As noted in earlier messages of mine about this particular preprint
server: apparently, after publication in a journal, the preprints will be
removed from the server and replaced by an abstract and a link to the
journal article. (Then, the full text of the published article may not be
freely available).
There may be an incentive (especially for the authors of highly-rated
preprints archived at this particular server), *not* to submit them for
publication (unless they have already been self-archived elsewhere by the
authors, prior to submission to a limited-access journal?).
By the way, according to the ChemWeb.com News Bulletin, the number of
submissions to this preprint server was 34 on Aug. 4, 2000, and 50 on
Sept. 18, 2000.
Jim Till
Toronto, Canada
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT