Tony, this is apples and oranges. Of course peer review and
editing add
value. Anyone who thinks otherwise is . . . oh, I don't
know; probably the
member of an Open Access sect. But to assert that the line
between
submission, including simple posting (aka self-archiving)
and publication is
narrowing is to state the empirical fact, not to advocate
it. Copies of
articles are slipping out of their authorized copyrighted
containers
everywhere.
Here is an experiment worth doing. Take the highest-ranked
articles that
are at least one year old from each major journals publisher
and Google
around. How many can be found in some form (preprints,
working papers,
final papers, etc.)? And maybe you can get the assistance
of the U.S.
intelligence service to identify all the attachments to
private emails that
one researcher sends to another. This is not the OA of the
advocates;
nothing here Varmus or even Harnad would much care for.
This is Shawn
Fanning's OA: Napster, peer-to-peer, no central authority.
OA is a fait
accomplis. Please don't shoot the messenger.
Joe Esposito
On 6/29/06, Mcsean, Tony (ELS) <T.Mcsean elsevier.com> wrote:
>
> It may not be true of all physics and mathematics
either.
> Earlier this year at an ICSTI meeting I heard an
eminent
> crystallographer say during a plenary discussion that
in 40 years
> as author, reviewer and editor he had never known a
paper that
> hadn't been significantly improved by peer review and
editing.
>
> Tony
>
>
> Tony McSean
> Director of Library Relations
> Elsevier
>
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