OK, I appreciate the distinctions you're emphasizing. Would the first
be clearer if it simply said "made it possible for peer-reviewed
journals to distribute their contents" etc.? and would that second be
clearer if it simply dropped "self-publishing and" ?
John
On Dec 3, 2003, at 9:48 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> I don't disagree on Stevan's point about peer review, below, and
>> Stevan, I'd be grateful if you'd point out to me, offline, exactly
>> where the conflation appears, so I can correct it.
>
> Hi John:
>
> Here are the 2 ambiguous passages:
>
> the internet has made it possible for scholars to self-publish,
> and for peer-reviewed journals to distribute their contents widely
> and quickly--in other words, to make high-quality, peer-reviewed
> information freely available soon after its creation.
>
> Self-publishing and self-archiving would moot many of the things on
> that list (for example, the claim to "make available to the broader
> public the full range and value of research generated by university
> faculty")
>
> You do say "and," but for most readers, who will have no clear idea of
> the difference between self-publishing (vanity press) and
> self-archiving
> (of refereed publication), they will be read as synonyms or close
> variants,
> whereas in fact they are opposites.
>
> It needs to be made clear that open online access does not mean
> self-publishing!
> It means providing open online access to what one has published
> (elsewhere).
>
> A distinction also has to be made between publishing in an open-access
> journal
> (such as PostModern Culture or Psycoloquy), of which there are still
> very few
> (about 600 to date according to http://www.doaj.org/ ) and
> self-archiving
> one's toll-access publications (23,400 journals) as the latter
> represents
> over 95% of the literature in question, the one we are trying to
> provide open
> access to!
>
> It's probably clear in your mind but, believe me, everyone else's mind
> is far
> from clear -- on this and many other matters pertaining to open access!
>
> But your proposal to the provosts is a very welcome and timely one.
> Let's
> hope it will set them in motion. (Nothing much has happened since that
> last
> meeting at CalTech, at the provost level, in any case!).
>
> Cheers, Stevan
Received on Mon Dec 08 2003 - 13:52:53 GMT