Re: Self-Archiving in a Repository is a Supplement, not a Substitute, for Publishing in a Peer-Reviewed Journal

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 07:54:10 -0500

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Colin, yes, this question has been much discussed in the Forum (not
just for years, but for well over a decade now, well before the major
OA developments of today), here , here and here. The answer is simple
and I fervently hope it will not elicit another round of the usual
back-and-forth:
(1) Always cite the published version if the cited work is indeed
published. (The published version is the archival work; the OA
version is merely a means of access to a version of it. It is not the
published work.)

(2) Always give the URL or DOI of the OA version for access purposes,
along with the citation to the published version.

(3) In citing (in the text) the location for quoted excerpts, use the
published versions page-span if you know them; otherwise use
section-heading plus paragraph number. (Indeed, it is good to add
section-heading plus paragraph-number in any case.)

What follows is the pertinent extract from the APA Style Manual:

      -To cite a specific part of a source, indicate the page,
      chapter, figure, table or equation at the appropriate
      point in text. Always give page numbers for quotations.
      Abbreviate the words page and chapter in such text
      citations:
                 (Cheek & Buss, 1981, p.332)˙˙        
        (Shimamura, 1989, chap. 3)   
            
                For electronic sources that do not provide page
      numbers, use the paragraph number, if available, preceded
      by the ¶ symbol or the abbreviation para. If neither
      paragraph nor page numbers are visible, cite the heading
      and the number of paragraph following it to direct reader
      to the location of the material.
                 (Myers, 2000, ¶ 5)(Beutler, 2000, Conclusion
      section, para.1)


(Contrast (1) how the rather trivial and obvious practical advice I
gave the APA years ago has been sensibly incorporated into the Manual
with (2) the endless trivial and pointless niggling in some of the
prior exchanges on this topic in this Forum!) 

Stevan
On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 5:04 AM, C.J.Smith <C.J.Smith_at_open.ac.uk>
wrote:

      Stevan,

       

      In terms of journal papers, what do you advise if
      somebody wants to reference a quote from a particular
      page of a final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript
      they˙˙ve found in a repository? Obviously the page
      numbers may differ to the final published PDF, but if
      they don˙˙t have access through a subscription to that
      final published version then they cannot find out what
      the equivalent page numbers are. I˙˙ve recently created
      the following FAQ for our repository, but I˙˙d be
      interested to hear whether you agree this is the best
      approach:

       

      <start>

       

      How do I cite articles I find on ORO?

       

      When you click on an item in ORO, you will see (under the
      main title in blue) a reference to the official published
      version. Always cite this published version, as this will
      result in the author(s) receiving proper recognition
      through services that track citation counts (e.g.
      Thomson's Web of Science).

       

      While you should always cite the published version when
      referencing the article as a whole, there may be
      instances (for example if you need to refer to a specific
      page of the article for a quote), where you will need to
      cite the ORO version. This is because the page numbering
      in the ORO version might not match the page numbering in
      the final published version. If you need to do this,
      here's how:

       

      Smith, C (2009). How to reference papers in ORO. Open
      Research Online. Available at:
      http://oro.open.ac.uk/xxxxx. Replace the 'xxxxx' with the
      item ID from the URL.

       

      In such cases, if you or your institution has access, the
      preference would be to click through and use the specific
      page reference from the published version. However, even
      if citing the ORO version, please try to cite the
      published version as well so that the author(s) receive
      proper recognition, as mentioned above.

       

      <end>

       

      I suspect this issue has been discussed at length on this
      list and others in the past, so if you˙˙d prefer to reply
      personally rather than clog the list up with
      previously-discussed items that˙˙s fine by me!

       

      Thanks,

       

      Colin

       

       

      Colin Smith
      Research Repository Manager
      Open Research Online (ORO)
      Open University Library
      Walton Hall
      Milton Keynes
      MK7 6AA

      Tel: +44(0)1908 332971
      Email: c.j.smith_at_open.ac.uk
      http://twitter.com/smithcolin
      http://oro.open.ac.uk


____________________________________________________________________________


From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 04 March 2009 20:15
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Self-Archiving in a Repository is a Supplement,
not a Substitute, for Publishing in a Peer-Reviewed Journal

 

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Klaus Graf
<klausgraf_at_googlemail.com> wrote:

2009/3/4 Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_gmail.com>:


>SH: 

> Repository deposit is definitely not for papers
      that cannot meet the
> peer-review standards of journals; the "preprint"
      is not a preprint if it
> will never be acceptable to a journal.


KG: 

      (2) Repositories are not only for journal articles.

 

 The query was, as was plain from what was asked, from someone
who had tried and and failed to meet the peer-review standards
of the several journals to which they had submitted their
paper, and wanted to know whether deposit in an OA repository
like CogPrints  would count as a publication. I replied, quite
correctly, that a repository is not a publisher but an
access-provider, hence it is not a substitute for publishing.
An unpublished paper, deposited in an OA repository, remains an
unpublished paper.

 

      (3) OA isn't only for journal articles and
      scientific data.

 

 I stated in my reply that an OA IR isn't only for published
documents and data (which in some fields includes multimedia):

 

      "An OA Repository is also a good way to provide
      supplementary information about a published
      article; it can also provide access to
      postpublication revisions, and updates, and even
      unpublished commentaries on other articles and
      commentaries -- but the rather is more like
      blogging than formal publication.... In addition,
      before publication, even before submission, one can
      deposit the unrefereed "preprint: of the article in
      an OA Repository, in order to elicit feedback as
      well as to establish priority. The preprint too can
      be cited, as always, as "unpublished manuscript",
      but its repository URL can be added for access
      purposes."

 

You can put your diary and your family pictures in an OA IR
too, but that's not the reason OA IRs were created, and that is
not the raison d'źtre of the OA movement.

       

      (4) Not all disciplines and countries have journals
      with formal peer review.

 

 And your point is?

 

Of course published books are welcome in OA IRs too, and so are
preprints of books to be published or submitted. Nor will (or
should) IRs try to legislate about whether a journal (or book)
is refereed or vanity-press. That's for the assessors of one's
CV to judge. The essence of the query was simply whether
deposit of an unpublished document thereby constitutes
publication, eo ipso. And the reply was that it does not.

 

Moreover, the query was about a Central Repository (for the
cognitive sciences), called CogPrints, and CogPrints is very
specifically reserved for papers that have been refereed or are
being refereed. It is not a repository for unpublishable
documents, first, because authors can put those on their own
websites or on commercial vanity-sites, and, second, because OA
(at 15%) has not yet had notable success in inducing authors to
deposit OA's primary target content, refereed journal articles.
It does not enhance the probability of capturing OA's primary
target content if mostly empty repositories today are instead
filled with unpublished and unpublishable "grey literature."
(Once the mandates have done their work, and OA's target
content is reliably speeding toward 100%, the superaddition of
the grey literature -- and diaries and family photos -- will do
no harm; that's what metadata are there to sort out. But right
now, the just introduce noise where we need signal.)


      (5) It is misleading to speak of "peer-review
      standards of journals"
      because they differ from journal to journal and
      discipline to
      discipline.

 

And your point is?

 

Stevan Harnad

 

       

 

 

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Received on Thu Mar 05 2009 - 12:55:14 GMT

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