On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Martin Melaugh wrote:
> Has any academic expressed a worry about the possible reaction of a journal
> publisher if they are made aware that a 'pre-print' version of an article
> has been made available on the web? A colleague suggested to me that he
> would be anxious about self-archiving if there was any chance of the
> publisher refusing to publish the paper version.
You are asking about the policy often called the "Ingelfinger Rule" and
practised by some (not all or even most) journals (e.g., The New
England Journal of Medicine, Science, the journals of the American
Psychological Association).
This topic has been discussed before in this Forum (see the Archives)
and I have written about it in several papers:
Harnad, S. (2000) E-Knowledge: Freeing the Refereed Journal Corpus
Online. Computer Law & Security Report 16(2) 78-87. [Rebuttal to
Bloom Editorial in Science and Relman Editorial in New England
Journal of Medicine]
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.scinejm.htm
Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in
the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing. Lancet (in press)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.lancet.htm
Suffice it to say that such policies are not legal matters, like
copyright, but mere policies. The policies are unjustified and
unenforceable (editors and referees, all researchers like ourselves,
have no interest in enforcing such policies, and becoming net-sleuths,
trawling for look-alikes for every submitted paper from the day it is
submitted to the day it is accepted, for no reason that serves the
interests of research); moreover, these policies are changing (Nature,
unlike Science, has already dropped the Ingelfinger Rule; there are
indications Science may follow suit.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad harnad_at_cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad_at_princeton.edu
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
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Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT