> [sh]> What two criteria? Certainly the archives should be interoperable
> [sh]> (that's what www.openarchives.org is about, and what www.eprints.org
> [sh]> software is for), and certainly the citation-linking and
> [sh]> impact-ranking should be across all the distributed corpus, just as
> [sh]> the harvesting is. But apart from that, the only other criteria
> [sh]> (apart from topic) are "unrefereed/refereed" and, for the latter,
> [sh]> the journal brand-name (just as before).
>
> My two suggested criteria for evaluating an eprint archive (or, if you
> prefer, please regard them instead as 'design & usability guidelines' for
> an eprint archive) are:
>
> 1) its suitability as part of an (envisioned) universal archive
> [an 'inter-operability' criterion?], and,
A list of "Open Archives" is available from:
http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/Register/BrowseSites.pl
Although, at the most extreme, any web-based archive could be harvested
using a suitable sledgehammer.
Without further development and adherence to metadata standards a /good/
universal archive is not possible from existing archives (we need better
defined semantics which, alas, is something archives are at the mercy of
authors).
> 2) its suitability for yielding citation data
> [an 'impact-ranking' criterion?].
Which, from my technical point of view, is the reference lists for the
articles. As far as I'm aware no archives currently do this (I know
cogprints provides the facility for authors to give this information, but
does not re-export yet). Watch developments from OpCit!
One might also add the facility to export "hit" data, as an alternative
criterion (or any other raw statistical data?).
> I understand that Stevan is suggesting a third:
>
> 3) its suitability for distinguishing between reports that either have, or
> have not, been peer-reviewed and/or published in a 'brand-name' journal
> (either before, or after, being included in the eprint archive)
> [a 'sign-posting' criterion?].
Which, ultimately, is a question of the "quality" of the archive - it is the
archive that must ensure:
a) Authors are correctly citing their work.
b) That the serial being cited is deemed to be a 'brand-name' (would Stevan
rather have his Science or New Scientist paper shown to the world? A
decision that will most likely be made by the archive and its maintainers!)
All the best,
Tim Brody
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT