Re: No Reply to Next Two Postings

From: (wrong string) édon <jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 20:56:10 +0100

Let me nevertheless correct your misreadings of my position.

On Mon October 4 2004 07:55 am, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> As I detect signs of a trend toward tumbling into intemperateness if the
> exchange continues, I will not reply to the two postings by Jean-Claude
> Guedon that follow this one. The attentive reader can, I think, draw his
> own conclusions from what has already been said. The rest would just have
> been repetition.
>
> One substantive point, however, should be noted. At some point Jean-Claude
> Guedon introduces his "overlay journal" notion into the discussion of
> institutional self-archiving. It must be pointed out that this notion
> betrays a profound misunderstanding of the very nature and essence of
> institutional self-archiving:
>
> The purpose of institutional self-archiving is to make all the articles
> published by the institution's authors in peer-reviewed journals today
> Open Access (OA), today. It is the peer-reviewed journal articles
> that are self-archived. These have already been peer-reviewed and
> published. Hence they are not looking for peer-review, or a publisher,
> or an "overlay journal." They are only looking for OA, so that all their
> would-be users can access and use them.
>
> Jean-Claude seems to keep thinking of self-archiving as something authors
> do with their unpublished, non-peer-reviewed preprints, rather than with
> their published, peer-reviewed articles, something that still requires
> peer-review and publication by "overlay journals." This is an error,
> and it is not what OA is about, or what self-archiving is for.

False. Self-archiving has to do with peer-reviewed articles. However, articles
can be peer-reviewed more than once and articles can be peer-reviewed by
editorial boards that do not belong to any established journal, but which can
nonetheless demonstrate an ability to review existing writings. BMC does this
with its Faculty of 1,000. The idea can be extended and refined. Once again,
Stevan the fact that he is so focused on his "just line" - I suspect he will
call me a deviationist one of these days - that he fails to take all possible
hypotheses into consideration.
>
snip
>
> Hence the "overlay journals" proposal is really just another speculative
> hypothesis about the course that journal publication might or might
> not eventually take. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the nature
> and purpose of institutional self-archiving, which is to provide OA to
> all articles published by the institution's authors (mostly in non-OA
> journals) in order to maximize their usage and impact.

Not a speculative hypothesis, but, on the contrary a strategy or a scenario to
achieve OA in yet another way.
>
> This straightforward, atheoretical, non-hypothetical rationale for
> institutional OA self-archiving -- already well-demonstrated empirically
> to be both feasible and to produce the desired benefits -- should be
> strictly separated from any speculative hypotheses about the future
> course that journal publication might or might not one day take.

And here we go with the "just line" once again. I am glad I do not live in the
Soviet Union and I am not embroiled into some debate that would end up with
my poor little self being hanged or shot for lack of orthodoxy. Come, come,
Stevan!
Received on Mon Oct 04 2004 - 20:56:10 BST