[Moderator's Note: Normally it is unsportsmanlike to use the
moderator's prerogative to prepend a pre-emptive reply to a comment,
but as Albert is clearly not reading the postings to which he is
replying, time will be saved if it is wearily pointed out in advance
that (1) Albert's minor point about certain potentially hazardous
clinical research was already taken into account -- explicitly and
in advance -- in Dr. Garfield's own quotation below, and that (2)
Albert's secondary defense of the Ingelfinger Rule in all other
fields of research as journalistic "scoop"-protection is precisely
what the cited references on the Ingelfinger Rule and the New
England Journal of Medicine below were rebutting -- if any rebuttal
of such an arbitrary defense of suppressing access to scientific
research on pop-journalistic grounds was wanted. It is noteworthy
that Nature magazine dropped the Ingelfinger rule some time
ago
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publishers-do and there are
indications that Science magazine too will eventually have to follow
suit -- leaving only the New England Journal of Medicine still
trying to keep its authors playing by the Rule... SH]
> "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)
Stevan Harnad fails to give Eugene Garfield full credit
below. Dr Garfield is indeed an outstanding information
scientist and innovator. He is also President and Editor-in-
Chief of The Scientist, a newspaper that emphasizes advances in
research. <
http://www.the-scientist.com/masthead.htm>
News organizations that aim to "scoop" breaking news, like The Scientist,
The New York Times [NYT] and The Medical Tribune, are often frustrated
by the "Ingelfinger rule" of the New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM]
and other primary journals. The rule, named after the NEJM editor who
devised it, calls for rejecting any submission that was released in any
medium including press releases, interviews, etc. Observing the rule,
scientists won't talk to reporters about work which they plan to submit
to NEJM et al. In 1991, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman of the New York Times
ran an article -- more like a 'rant' -- excoriating the Ingelfinger rule
under the title "With lives at stake, issue is secrecy of data."
The reason for the rule given by NEJM, et al., is that unvetted
research may yield false conclusions. While this poses little danger
in some fields, in biomedicine it may be a menace to public health
and safety. Moreover, it is clear that many news organizations are
irresponsible, given to breathless announcements that the general public
takes to be endorsements of cures for cancer, heart disease, old age,
etc. While I don't think The Scientist and NYT are in the category of
breathless irresponsibility, it is clear that they and most preprint
readers are not equipped to evaluate research claims as thoroughly as
the editors of NEJM et al.
Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Stevan Harnad
> Re: Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior Publication"
>
> 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 exceot
> 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
Received on Wed Sep 04 2002 - 00:37:51 BST