On Sat, 17 Feb 2001, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>>[jt] Various research 'literatures' might be defined, based mainly on
>>[jt] which particular search engine one is using
>[sh] I hardly think the decisive factor will be the engine. What will
>[sh] matter will be whether it's up there at all. That's why it's so
>[sh] important to get the current refereed literature all up there (and
>[sh] freely accessible), in interoperable OAI-compliant Eprint Archives,
>[sh] fast!
I agree. Indeed, I added the first part of this caveat to my message (the
caveat was snipped; a more complete quotation from my earlier message
follows):
>[jt] What if there's no consensus about a definition of the research
>[jt] 'literature' in the future? Various research 'literatures' might be
>[jt] defined, based mainly on which particular search engine one is using
>[jt] (and, of course, on the stability and accessibility of those
>[jt] archives that the search engine does detect).
Stevan Harnad also wrote:
>[sh] Compares, and finds what?
Julie M. Hurd's point (as I understood it) was that different models of
scientific communication can be based on different 'basic units of
distribution' (e.g. the refereed article, the peer-reviewed journal, the
e-print, the data).
Stevan Harnad's concluded that:
>[sh] I'll settle for the existing peer consensus on the existing refereed
>[sh] literature, and once we have all of that up there, tagged and free,
>[sh] I'll take potluck with the rest...
I agree that this would be a very desirable outcome!
>[sh] Here's the Hurd list from ISI:
>
> 1. Hurd, JM. Perspectives issue on ... The changing communication
> system of science: Behavioral and organizational aspects -
> Introduction and overview. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR
> INFORMATION SCIENCE, 2000 DEC, V51 N14:1276-1278.
>
> 2. Hurd, JM. The transformation of scientific communication: A
> model for 2020. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION
> SCIENCE, 2000 DEC, V51 N14:1279-1283.
[remainder snipped]
The Journal of the American Society for Information Science is a Wiley
InterScience publication. I was only able to access abstracts, via:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/issuetoc?ID=75503369
I haven't been able (so far) to obtain access to the full text of any
articles in this journal. My access has been restricted, even though I
have registered, and do have access from home, via a proxy server, to a
Licensed source (the University of Toronto).
The abstract of paper #2 (#1 has no abstract) does look rather interesting
(as do the abstracts of several of the papers in the series that follow
these two).
These examples do illustate rather well the desirability of Stevan
Harnad's 'settle for' strategy (see above).
Jim Till
University of Toronto
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT