Ian.Russell writes
> 1) Strictly speaking, arXiv is an electronic preprint
server so
> the papers there may not be the published version. Are
> researchers in physics happy to use that version?
I can't comment on this since I am not a physist. In my time
as
an economics researcher I have seen so many mistakes in
journal
papers I don't believe in peer review at all.
There is one particular (quite well known) economist I have
read
several papers off, all contained severe problems, he just
made
up the Maths just to please him. The world would be much
better
place if there would be more public review of papers.
> Would researchers in human medicine be happy to use a
version
> of unknown providence?
Papers are still signed by authors, so the provenance is
clear.
> Would librarians be happy with that situation?
The happiness of librarians is not particularly important.
> 2) The content that I am familiar with on arXiv almost
always
> associates a posted article with a journal. Authors
very
> quickly add 'submitted to Physical Review E' or
'Published in
> Classical and Quantum Gravity' (or whatever journal) to
their
> preprint. Why? Well to get the authority / credibility
/
> imprimatur / brand identity of the journal. This is
tied to -
> but not exclusively gained by - the peer review process
of the
> journal.
That's not a reason to buy a copy of the journal.
> It is very important to note that for many, many years
(going
> back to pre-web) journals have NOT been the method of
primary
> dissemination in some subjects. arXiv may provide
access to
> content, but trustworthiness and authority - for the
time being
> at least - still comes from journals (whatever business
model
> is used).
Journal papers are read by subject experts. They can judge
the
paper on its own merits, and don't need a journal to tell it
is
valuable. All they need is some channel that tells them
about the
latest papers in their field. In RePEc we do this with NEP:
New
Economics Papers, at http://nep.repec.org, a
creation of mine.
> What would happen to academia if the primary mechanism
of
> identifying trustworthy content and assessing the order
in
> which to read papers was taken away?
But I never suggested to remove peer review. Simple economic
sense dictates that those who get the benefit of peer
review,
i.e. authors, rather than readers, should pay for it.
> 3) As someone who represents society publishers I find
Thomas'
> final point very interesting.
Let me add some more elements to this idea.
Research is published to advertize skills of the academic
staff
of an institution. Institutions are in the business to
maximise
attention to the research results that are produced locally.
When
the library of institution buys access to a journal, over
90% of
the material in that journal will contain material coming
from
other institutions, then it subsidizes attention to research
results from other instutions. You don't need a PhD in
economics
to see that this makes no economic sense. A rational
institution
will pay nothing for research produced elsewhere and will
spend
all its efforts to make its results widely available.
> I would be even more interested to hear any ideas for
> mechanisms to facilitate the flow of money away from
library
> acquisition budgets to scholarly societies.
Attention as per the previous paragraph comes not only from
prime
publication, but can also come from hosting and supporting
aggregates of contents, enabling new peer review tools etc,
and
that would be ideally done with scholarly societies.
However, this will not happen because library staff don't
have
the required IT skills. That in turn is the failure of
library
schools. In my own school I have been trying insist on more
technology courses, but my preachings are falling on death
ears.
With cheers from Novosibirsk (cloudy, 20C)
Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/ho
me/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
phone: +7 383 330 6813 skype:
thomaskrichel
|
