Re: Non-Discoverability or Non-Existence?

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:45:33 +0100

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007, John Smith wrote:

> If I wanted to find out what has been published in the past two
> weeks in repositories on Scholarly Publishing how would I go about it?

Articles are published in journals, not repositories, and, as mentioned
repeatedly, most of what is published in journals is not yet being
deposited in the repositories (and won't be, until it is mandated). (So
why on earth would anyone want to find out what happens to have
been published *and* deposited in a repository about topic X in the past
2 weeks? One might as well ask to be alerted about what happens to have
been published about X on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of even-numbered months!)

So: Search for what has appeared in journals (via a standard journal
article index, with full coverage) and if you find items that look
interesting, and you don't have subscription access to them, *then*
trawl for *those items* on the web via Google, etc. (and expect to
find only about 15% of what you are seeking).

> search is obviously limited to that which has been indexed.

And what is indexed from OA space is limited to what has
been deposited in OA space...

> Finally there is the problem of quality... if journals as we
> know them disappear... we need... 'overlay/virtual journals'

What was proposed was not for journals to disappear, but for
supplementary copies of their articles to appear -- by being
deposited in institutional repositories. That's what's needed (not
'overlay/virtual journals' -- whatever that means).

Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Jul 23 2007 - 18:51:10 BST