On Fri, 25 May 2001, Jim Till wrote:
> At the arXiv archive, one section of the FAQ section (under Miscellaneous)
> addresses the question: "Why don't you release statistics about paper
> retrieval?". (See: http://xxx.lanl.gov/help/faq/statfaq).
>
> The short answer provided is: "Such 'statistics' are difficult to assess
> for a variety of reasons".
So are citation statistics. So?
> "It could be argued perhaps correctly that statistics may provide some
> useful information at least on the relative popularity of submissions,
> since the distributed access and other factors may be subsumable into some
> overall scale factor. But even this information is ambiguous in many
> cases, and publicizing, even when accurate, could merely accentuate
> faddishness in fields already excessively faddish".
Correct. So?
> "Most significantly, however, there is a strong philosophic reason for not
> publicizing (or even saving) these statistics. When one browses in a
> library it is very important (in fact legislated) that big brother is not
> watching through a camera mounted on the wall; for the benefit of readers
> it is very important to maintain in every way possible this sense of
> freedom from monitoring in the electronic realm".
Hit rates do not monitor WHO is hitting X, just HOW MANY are hitting X.
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Professor of Cognitive Science harnad_at_princeton.edu
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT