John,
[reply interleaved below]
> > Where does long term citation come into this?
>
> Long term citation is irrelevant to current communication.
This implies an extraordinarily narrow and uninformed model of communication (let's leave it at that).
.....................................
> > Preservation is a legitimate concern
> > of researchers considering the self-archiving route.
>
> Again you have missed the point - the purpose of self-archiving is
> communication not preservation. You are thinking with the paper
> publication model where the refereed article played all the roles required
> by researchers, it communicated, it quality controlled, it was archived,
> etc. Today these roles are falling apart, the eprint communicates, the
> refereed version quality controls, the online search services (including
> the RDN gateways/portals) enable finding, etc.
I might have missed the point, but it is jumping to conclusions to assume this. I'm challenging the idea that the 'purpose' of eprints is communication sans preservation, rather than failing to understand that they are separate. I didn't bring up the question of refereeing at all, unless I'm mistaken.
I'm also not interested in preserving paper-based communication where it makes no sense to do so. This aspect of the Harnad model, where paper journals are seen as the primary form of dissemination, is yoked to the past.
My concern is with the fact of poor take up of the eprints idea. There is the possibility (not often considered) that other people in the community want something from the technology and the process that the Harnad solution (and yours) does not supply.
*******************************************************
Philip Hunter, UKOLN Research Officer.
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY
Tel: +44 (0) 1225 323 668 Fax: +44 (0) 1225 826838
Email: p.j.hunter_at_ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
OA-FORUM:
http://www.oaforum.org/
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Received on Tue Jul 15 2003 - 18:24:18 BST