These two papers by Eugene Garfield -- founder of the Insitute for
Scientific Information, Current Contents, Science Citation Index,
and originator of the Citation Impact Factor -- might be of interest to
the Open Access community:
"I believe that posting and sharing one's preliminary publications
[is] an important part of the peer... review process and does
not justify an embargo by publishers on the grounds of 'prior
publication'. It was not the case before the Internet, and except
for unusual clinical situations, has not changed because of the
convenience of the Internet." (Garfield, 2000)
Garfield, E. (2000) Is Acknowledged Self-Archiving Prior
Publication? Presented at Third International Symposium
on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Mar 17 2000
http://www.wvu.edu/~thesis/Presentations/Garfield-Web-Publishing.pdf
Garfield, E. (1999) Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not
Prior Publication. The Scientist 13(12): 12 (June 7, 1999)
http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1999/June/comm_990607.html
I am of course in complete agreement with Eugene Garfield --
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm#harn45 --
and would demur only on one point -- minor for what Gene is saying, but
rather major for what should be motivating researchers to self-archive in
the first place -- namely, that self-archiving DOES provide far greater
visibility in the on-line age than on-paper publication alone does. This
too is documented (but it in no way changes the thrust of Gene's very
correct observation, and advice to authors and publishers).
Lawrence, S. (2001a) Online or Invisible? Nature 411 (6837): 521.
http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/
Lawrence, S. (2001b) Free online availability substantially increases a
paper's impact. Nature Web Debates.
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html
Odlyzko, A.M. (2002) The rapid evolution of scholarly communication."
Learned Publishing 15: 7-19
http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/odlyzko.pdf
Harnad, S. & Carr, L. (2000) Integrating, Navigating and Analyzing
Eprint Archives Through Open Citation Linking (the OpCit Project).
Current Science 79(5): 629-638.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/97/index.html
Harnad, S. (2000) E-Knowledge: Freeing the Refereed Journal Corpus
Online. Computer Law & Security Report 16(2) 78-87. [Rebuttal to Bloom
Editorial in Science and Relman Editorial in New England Journal of
Medicine]
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/01/index.html
Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the
Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing. Lancet Perspectives 256
(December Supplement): s16.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/03/index.html
Harnad, S. (2001) "Research access, impact and assessment." Times Higher
Education Supplement 1487: p. 16.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/83/index.html
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
or
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess
and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
Received on Sat Aug 31 2002 - 13:59:06 BST