On 03/09/2008 17:03, "Peter Millington"
<Peter.Millington_at_NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK> wrote:
While author's final post-refereed draft is sufficient and acceptable
for open access and research purposes, it is not the best. The best
is the published version (publisher's PDF if you will).
But it definitely isn't the best for text-mining purposes, which is
where we're aiming for, isn't it? The technology and the knowledge of
the future and all that. Step aside from the world of publishing and
citing, remember what science is all about and take the big view.
The quotes (given in 2006) from three leading experts on the
technicalities of text-mining, when I asked them whether PDF is an
acceptable (and usable) option, or whether we should be continuing to
encourage authors to deposit their own, final version in some other
format (Word, LaTeX, etc):
John Wilbanks, Science Commons (when asked about the possibility of
`scraping' PDFs for text-mining: "Scraping is the right word, because
having to work with PDF is really scraping the bottom of the barrel."
Peter Murray-Rust, Cambridge: "Getting to XML from PDF is like
starting with the burger and trying to get back to the cow."
Cliff Lynch, CNI: "PDF is evil."
If an article has been published by the time someone wishes to cite
it, then they cite the published article with all its page numbers
etc (plus the URL of the repository version so that everyone can read
the thing). If people wish to cite an article where there is not yet
a definitively published version, but they have miraculously found an
open access postprint, they can always adhere to age-old practice and
say `Journal of XXX, in press'. When people did that in the `old
days' (my era) it was a pain, because locating the article really
meant waiting for BIOSIS or Index Medicus to come out in print, or
trekking off to another university's library, if your own library
didn't subscribe to the journal. Nowadays, locating it online from an
`in press' citation is a doddle.
Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK
Received on Wed Sep 03 2008 - 21:50:43 BST