Re: The Ultimate Danger of SkyReading/Writing

From: Albert Henderson <chessNIC_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 18:30:09 +0000

Stevan refuses to acknowledge that libraries are the
free source of the refereed literature. When he floated
his idea around 1990, publishers had little online and
the library crisis propaganda campaign was still fresh.

Today, major publishers have their journals online.
To access them online, one must simply be joined to a
decent library.

In short, there is no need for self-archiving refereed
articles, except perhaps as an author's way of
responding to requests for "reprints."

Moreover, authors lack the skills and training of
publishers and librarians. There is no chance that _all_
authors can be coaxed into 'archiving' _all_ their
papers in an orderly fashion. Unruly contributions,
including unrefereed drafts and quackery, will be the
norm. More often, great lacunae in what we like to call
the scientific record will be an intractable problem.
The researcher who depends on author 'archives' will
suffer.


Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
Received on Mon Dec 03 2001 - 18:30:33 GMT