At 08:00 PM 6/6/01 +0100, David Goodman wrote:
>3. The structure of the archive will encourage the growth of a layer of
>commentaries, summaries, layman's explanations, and so on. This will
>lead non-specialists to develop the ability to understand and read the
>primary literature.
I am sceptical about this. In the paper medium it was always difficult to
persuade suitably expert people to spend their time preparing this kind of
"tertiary" literature, even though they got paid a little for doing it --
they get no credit in terms of tenure, promotion, etc., for doing so. I
don't see how the fact that the archive is electronic and free will alter
that situation so I don't agree that it will "encourage" these very
desirable developments.
I agree withe the rest of David's points, several of which are both
non-trivial and non-technical (that is, they require people to change,
rather than the provision of some new software fix)
Fytton Rowland.
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Fytton Rowland, M.A., Ph.D., F.I.Inf.Sc., Lecturer,
Deputy Director of Undergraduate Programmes and
Programme Tutor for Publishing with English,
Department of Information Science,
Loughborough University,
Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK.
Phone +44 (0) 1509 223039 Fax +44 (0) 1509 223053
E-mail: J.F.Rowland_at_lboro.ac.uk
http://info.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/staff/frowland.html
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT