Stevan,
I am concerned with user access, and most of my work is devoted to
arranging this for paid and free resources, and showing users when and
how to find and use them. (Arranging for sufficient money for the
current publishing system is difficult, but it's only one problem among
many. A completely chaotic self-publishing system might cause even worse
problems in arranging access, but if that's what happens, librarians
will help the users cope with it.)
I want free access so that there can be general availability of the
literature: what you and everyone else write (both your refereed papers
and what you merely post). I see it as my role to provide information
wanted by the users. The users evaluate the information, and it's for
the faculty to teach the students how to do so. I help them by
explaining to users the differences between the sorts of information
available. If those who publish in a field think conventional peer
review helpful, they will arrange for it.
And your last paragraph does answer the question I asked. -- David
Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, David Goodman wrote:
...
> I am a researcher. David is a librarian. I want online access to my
> peer-reviewed research freed so as to maximize its research impact and
> uptake. David wants access freed so as to relieve his overloaded
> journals budget. We can be sure that researchers would not be happy
> to have library budgets relieved at the expense of having their research
> freed of peer review!
>
...
> >
> > Stevan, where do you stand on that?
>
> A system of free access to WHAT? Of course I would be delighted if
> researchers at last started self-archiving at least their
> pre-refereeing preprints! That was what the Subversive Proposal of
> 1995 had proposed:
> http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/
> I haven't the slightest doubt that, once they do, the refereed
> postprints will follow close behind, exactly as they did with the
> Physicists:
> http://opcit.eprints.org/tdb198/opcit/q3/
> http://www.eprints.org/results/
>
> Stevan Harnad
--
Dr. David Goodman
Biology Librarian
and Digital Resources Researcher
Princeton University Library
Princeton, NJ 08544-0001
phone: 609-258-3235
fax: 609-258-2627
e-mail: dgoodman_at_princeton.edu
Received on Tue Dec 18 2001 - 20:52:07 GMT