Posted with permission. -- SH
GENE GARFIELD:
Dear Stevan: Do you happen to know Charles Durand?
At one point he appears to have been at the Univ of
Sherbrooke in Quebec, but I have not been able to
locate his email or other address or phone?
In a recent posting he attributed a statement to me
that was not true.
Here is the message I tried to send him but it was
returned as undeliverable.
Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfield --
codex.cis.upenn.edu
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266
Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com
3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302
President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
400 Market Street, Suite 1250, Philadelphia, PA
19106-2501
Past President, American Society for Information
Science and
Technology (ASIS&T) www.asist.org
In a paper (doi: 10.2167/cilp085.0) you posted on
the www you claim that I said
"If It's Not in English, It's Not Worth
Reading"
You refer to a 1998 paper of mine, but there is
nothing in that paper about this topic.
Furthermore, I never said or believed what you
attribute to me. Please inform me exactly where you
obtained this misquotation.
This is a complete distortion of what I have said
about the use of English as the lingua franca of
science. I am fully sympathetic with desires of
Francophones to promote the use of the French
language in daily life. Now in the era of
electronic publication I would encourage those who
are able to publish bilingually to do so
since there is usually enough space on the web for
such bilingual postings.
I became aware of your views just today from a
posting at:
http://www.ameriquebec.net/actualites/2009/02/02-pour-le-francais-dans-nos-u
niversites.qc
STEVAN HARNAD:
Hi Gene,
The issue of the posting is not so much language of publication
(though it does discuss that too) but the language of notices
on walls in Francophone universities in Quebec: Sometimes they
are in unilingual English -- which is regrettable, but it is
sometimes unavoidable, if the source of the notice is an
American university that does not produce French versions. This
is something that is felt less acutely in France, where the
language is strong and safe, than in Quebec, where its survival
may be at risk. (There is, however, little excuse for notices
produced by the Francophone University itself being in
unilingual English. That has a note of laziness and
inconsiderateness, if not of contempt. I think you might be
able to understand that plaint.)
I am sure you never wrote anything like what was quoted above.
That's typical hyperbolic distortion on 2nd hand repetition.
The issue was probably about how ISI selects journals for
coverage. ISI criteria are probably objective ones, based on
readership, regularity, maybe citations, and it may simply be a
demographic fact that it was mostly English-language journals
that met those criteria at that time. Since then, coverage is
cheaper and broader because of the online medium, but it's
probably still true that most of the "core" journals in
most(scientific) fields are in English.
Those statistics, not of ISI's creation, are of course a far
cry from the distorted quote above.
If you give me permission, I could post our exchange on AmSci,
to set the record straight.
The essence seems to be:
(1) Charles Durand repeated a common
misinterpretation and misquotation of your view and
writings.
(2) You had written that ISI had to base coverage
on objective criteria on journal usage and
reliability, as it could not index them all.
(3) In most fields, this meant that a majority of
the journals covered, especially the "core"
journals, were English-language ones
(4) This was not a value judgment but a demographic
fact.
(5) Lately, the online medium has made it possible
to widen ISI coverage.
(6) But it still remains a demographic fact that in
most fields, especially science, the "core"
journals are in English.
Best wishes,
Stevan
Received on Sun Feb 08 2009 - 02:48:15 GMT