The medium-independent essential function of a journal is and always
has been that of peer-review service-provider, certifying the outcome
of the peer-review, if successful, with the journal-name and associated
track-record for quality (a "metadata" tag). The rest is and always has
been just the arbitrary features of the storage and dissemination medium
(which was for long print-on-paper).
"Distinguishing the Essentials from the Optional Add-Ons" (2001)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1437.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#3.3
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm
This essential quality-control/certification function will remain
the essential function of journals regardless of medium-change or
cost-recovery model change. The disaggregated/deconstructed journal model
is incoherent, imagining that the essential function of a "journal" is
something other than what it really is -- and vastly underestimating
the power of search-engines designed to navigate all and only the
journal-tagged literature.
"Re: Alternative publishing models - was:
Scholar's Forum: A New Model..." (1999)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0216.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/2005/07/15/C4.html
But this is all beside the point. What we need now is for journal
articles to be objectively self-archived, not for journals to be
subjectively deconstructed.
Stevan Harnad
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005, Heather Morrison wrote:
> John Smith has published a fascinating article explaining the
> Deconstructed Journal Model (DJM) in the May/June issue of Research
> Information, at:
>
> http://www.researchinformation.info/rimayjun05djmodel.html
>
> My thoughts on the DJM: at present, as John mentions, this model is
> more complex than traditional publishing. I wonder, though, whether
> this is because the model actually incorporates more than one
> variant. In practice, once one variant is selected and put into
> place, perhaps the DJM won't seem all that complex at all. For
> example, an author could place an article in the repository, notify
> the CA (certifying agency), who would then arrange for peer-review
> and editing, and the final certified version could then be placed in
> the repository.
>
> The overlay journal concept would be another method to accomplish the
> certification process. Perhaps one could develop a diagram to show
> the overlay journal approach, where the overlay journal oversees the
> certification process. This, too, would then seem a simpler model
> than it appears at present.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Heather Morrison
>
> "The academic library of the 21st Century will be less concerned with
> collecting the primary literature than with helping readers to
> navigate through the literature and disseminating research results
> that are generated within its own institution. The challenges are
> great, but so too are the benefits to research, the academic and
> library communities, and society in general."
>
> From:
> Prosser, David C. (2005) Fulfilling the Promise of Scholarly
> Communication a Comparison Between Old and New Access Models, in
> Nielsen, Erland Kolding and Saur, Klaus G and Ceynowa, Klaus, Eds.
> Die innovative Bibliothek : Elmar Mittler zum 65.Geburtstag, pp.
> 95-106. K G Saur.
> http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003918/
> (Thanks to OA News for the alert to David Prosser's article).
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial
> License. To view a copy of this license, visit
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ca/ or send a letter to
> Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA
> http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/
scholarlycommunicationt
> oolkit/toolkit.htm
>
Received on Mon Jul 18 2005 - 19:04:33 BST