----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 5:11 AM
Subject: Auto-Archiving Conference Proceedings
> On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Ken Rouse wrote:
>
> > Various contributors to this forum
> > have commented on the resistance of scientists in some fields
(chemistry,
> > for example) to Steven Harnad's proposals for exploiting internet
> > technology to "free" the scholarly literature. A modest way to begin
> > breaking down that resistance, I believe, might be the following:
the
> > establishment by professional societies of servers that would make all
the
> > conference papers produced at their meetings freely available
electronically
> > to all who need them--and in a timely fashion! This would pre-empt the
> > present one year or more lag in the publication of conference papers in
> > print journals.
>
> A good idea, and already within reach to any society that wishes to
> implement it. The interoperable archiving software to do it all is
> about to be made available; it is (and will remain) free, and so is
> all the other software it uses. It is available from:
>
> http://www.eprints.org/software.html
>
Many (perhaps even most) papers given at scientific meetings aren't ready
for publication. They are about work in progress. There are reasons for
giving these papers.
A good one is to exchange ideas with one's peers on how to improve the
research in progress. A not so good one is that some folks can't get to
meetings unless they give a paper.
Either way, the author often talks from notes - not from a manuscript. In
fact, some of the worst papers I've sat through were read from a manuscript.
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT