On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Stuart A Yeates wrote:
> > (3) The goal is to free the refereed literature, across
> > disciplines, now. Once the literature is thus freed the
> > process will be irreversible.
>
> Do you mean free as in liberty or free as in free beer ?
>
> This particular bone of contention has effectively split what used to be be
> known as a free software movement, but is now known as the free software/open
> source movement.
Free in the way advertisements are free (which I suppose is more like
free beer -- when you're giving away your own home-brew).
But this refereed brew is definitely not free in the sense of "liberty"
(that would be the vanity press). It is constrained by and answerable to
peer review. Hence it is not relevantly like software either.
But once it successfully passes that quality-control process, and is
certified as such, the author can and should maximize the access to,
and hence the impact of this give-away refereed research by
self-archiving it online, free for all.
http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/
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Stevan Harnad harnad_at_cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad_at_princeton.edu
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Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
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Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT