Re: Author's final draft and citing

From: (wrong string) édon <jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:54:08 -0400

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Quoting means extracting a passage from a text and inserting it
within another text one is writing. It is often placed within
quotation marks, but not always as quoting conventions obey complex
and variable rules. Citing means giving a reference for a quoted
text, or for some facts or opinions found in another article, book,
etc. This distinction has been dealt with repeatedly in the past.

Even if I follow Stevan's distinction, I need both to quote and cite
(in Stevan's sense of the words) when I work and I cannot be
satisfied with only citing. I am not the only to have this need.
Consequently, not having access to the citable version prevents me
from doing all of my work because the precise location of what I need
remains unknown to me. However, if an IR declares that an article
under its stewardship is also citable, then, I can do all my work,
including giving a precise location for a quotation, or a fact, or an
opinion, etc. This simply means that I recognize the IR as a
publication instrument, i.e. it makes documents public and not simply
as a collection of texts open to reading and nothing else. In fact,
limiting IR texts only to reading would contravene the requirements
for something to be truly in open access.

At this junction, the question of which version(s) is (are) reference
versions emerges. I submit that articles archived in IR's can become
references as much as the version appearing in a journal.

There is a well-known precedent for this. Articles are sometimes
reprinted in a different journal or an anthology. Once this is done,
either version can be cited and is cited. Sometimes, it is the
reprinted version that becomes the better known citation.

Stevan may not like this line of reasoning because it blurs the
distinction he tries so hard to maintain between journals and IR's.
His thesis is that IR's and journals can coexist simply because they
do not fulfil at all the same functions. However, this is Stevan's
thesis,  not a universally accepted situation and it cannot be
mistaken for a fact. A more sensible representation of reality is to
state that the functions of journals and IR's, although not
identical, overlap. We can then discuss the amount of overlap.

To say this amounts to claim a publishing role for IR's and for
self-archiving. I claim that role. The fact that IR's can be
harvested by powerful search engines supports the thesis that
depositing an article in an IR is a form of publishing. Only if IR's
worked like the drawer of my desk (which I gladly leave in open
access to anyone wanting to access it), could we say that it is not a
form of publishing. IR's are not shy silos of knowledge that just sit
there, in open access, but with no way to attract attentiuon to
themselves. on the contrary, they can be found and used thanks to
some Google scholar or OAIster.

The relationship between an article published in a journal and
another version residing in a repository is quite different from that
between an original piece of art and a copy. I believe Walter
Benjamin has meditated significantly on this topic (The Work of Art
in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility). The article in the
repository is not a copy of an original article; it is a version of
an article. The journal article is also a version, another version,
and nothing more. The article is identified by its title XXXX and its
author(s) YYYYY and its content. This is how copyright law would
identify it. The ways in which a given version is branded depends on
a number of variables (authors' names, authors' institutions, journal
titles, etc. ).  For the moment, IR's do not yet know very well how
to brand, but nothing prevents thinking about ways to achieve this
result. Personally, I believe we should be thinking hard about this
precise issue.

jcg


Le mardi 30 septembre 2008 à 15:29 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :

 On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 1:25 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon
<jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca> wrote:

> Regarding point 2, how does one cite the "published work" if one has no
> access to it, and has only access to a version which is not paginated
> in the same way (e.g. Elsevier articles cannot be archived in the
> publisher's format)?

Assuming this refers to quoting rather than citing, this query was
already explicitly answered in my prior posting (and many past
ones): Published works for which one lacks the pagination should
be quoted by section heading and paragraph number. (In fact, these
digital days, it is probably better to quote paginated works that
way too!)

> In many disciplines, citing requires mentioning the page number of
> the citation. What to do if that remains inaccessible. And please,
> do not tell me that you then write to the author(s).

I am not sure whether Jean-Claude is referring to citing or quoting
(i.e., specifying the location of a specific passage).

For citing, use the usual bibliographic information: author, year,
title, journal, volume, year, page-span. (Bibliographic information
is available from many free indexes, e.g., PubMed.)

For quoting passages, use the method described above.

(Write to the authors only if you have something substantive to say
to or ask of them.)

>This point has been made many times too, but without ever receiving a
> correct answer, i.e. an acknowledgement of its unsolved nature.

The point has been completely answered, many times. No problem.
Nothing to solve.

> One solution for this problem is simply for IR's to declare (after
> inspection) their version to be citable.

What on earth does this mean? If a work is published, one cites the
published version. If I post a copy of the Mona Lisa on my website,
what does it mean to declare that version "citable"? That I no
longer need to state that the original resides in the Louvre? Or
that my copy is now declared an "original"?

Stevan Harnad

> Le mardi 30 septembre 2008 à 10:29 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
>
> This question has been raised many times and it has a simple, clear
> and correct answer, in two parts:
>
> (1) Do not conflate the question of what to CITE -- that is always the
> canonical published work itself, if the work is published -- with the
> question of what version of it you managed to ACCESS.
>
> (2) If you cannot afford access to the publisher's proprietary
> version, then you access the OA version deposited in the OA
> Repository, but you always cite the published work (and,
> preferentially, add the URL of the accessed version too).
>
> That's it. The only two other minor details are:
>
> (3) If the work is unpublished, or not yet published, you cite it as
> unpublished, and, again, add the URL of the version that you accessed.
>
> (4) The two reasons why it is vastly preferable that OA mandates
> should specify that it is the author's peer-reviewed, accepted final
> draft (the "postprint") that is deposited in the OA repository,
> rather than the publisher's proprietary PDF is (4a) that far more
> publishers endorse setting access to the author's deposited postprint
> as OA immediately, rather than after and embargo, and (4b) PDF is the
> least useful and functional format, for both human users and for robot
> data-mining.
>
> Some comments below:
>
>> From: Repositories discussion list
>> [mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_jiscmail.ac.uk] On Behalf Of S Nieminen
>> Sent: 22 September 2008 07:25
>> To: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_jiscmail.ac.uk
>> Subject: Author's final draft and citing
>>
>> How have your academics reacted to the fact that it is often the
>> un-paginated author's version that needs to be put in the repository
>> instead of the pretty publisher's version?
>
> Pagination is a red herring. In quoting excerpts, specify locus with
> section heading and paragraph number.
>
>> I'm having to speak to a
>> number of people shortly and this will come up more and more. Some
>> research staff are worried that the draft does not "look good" or that
>> they won't get cited from papers that have not page numbers etc.
>
> An OA postprint "looks" infinitely better than an inaccessible
> publisher's PDF to would-users who cannot afford access. And they
> certainly generate more citations (for the canonical, published work).
>
>> Research seems to show a great increase in number of downloads for OA
>> papers, however, are author draft versions getting cited more? How would
>> this happen? Do people read the draft paper and THEN chase up the
>> published version whether freely available or not?
>
> No, they read and use the accessible draft and cite the canonical
> published work.
>
> Stevan Harnad

Jean-Claude Guédon
Université de Montréal
Received on Tue Sep 30 2008 - 22:39:19 BST