Re: Self-Archiving Refereed Research vs. Self-Publishing Unrefereed Research

From: Arthur Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 15:27:36 -0400

Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, George Lundberg wrote:
> > [...] I would be greatly averse to having
> > my doctor treating me based on some ??published self-archived article.
> > Therein lies one of the principal rubs in this discussion.
> [...]
>
> Or is this still just the usual conflation of the self-archiving of
> refereed research with the self-publishing of unrefereed research?

Who does the un-conflating? The authors? How do readers trust them? Or
do readers have to un-conflate themselves? And I think George Lundberg's
point is more than just the mixing of refereed and un-refereed research
- even among that which is refereed, is it responsible to present
essentially in the same context work which has passed only the minimal
review appropriate to high-level research communication, and work that
has been editorially selected and repeatedly reviewed as suitable for
presentation and recommendation to physicians for use in practice?

That's not to say that author self-archiving is inherently bad - it's
just that there is real value in the "un-conflating" or more accurately
"selection" of "filtering" provided by journals, beyond "refereeing".
And that value is inherently linked to the control and distribution of
the material involved, so S/L/P is a natural funding mechanism - though
we among others hope we'll be able to find new ones.

                        Arthur Smith (apsmith_at_aps.org)
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT