Re: "Are Chemical Journals Too Expensive and Inaccessible?"

From: Rzepa, Henry <h.rzepa_at_imperial.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:50:12 +0100

On 10 Sep 2004, at 09:24, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> "Representation and Use of Chemistry in the Global Electronic Age"
> Peter Murray-Rust, Henry S. Rzepa, Simon. M. Tyrrell and Y. Zhang
> http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/obc/

Peter uses the term "extended" publication. If you extend publication
with "data" , particularly as an integral part of a document (a
"datument") then rather subtle consequences accrue for archival.

A trivial one first: The publisher argued that our use of colour in
our original diagrams was not "integral to the scientific case being
made". Our intended retention of colour in the self-archived version
presumably implies the possibility of slightly different perception of
this version of the article for people reading it this way. At what
point does this possibility become scientifically significant?

More important is that the original (author prepared) article was
actually written in HTML/XML, and hence much data was included in
this original. To prepare it for the journal production process,
we convert this to Word, from which the journal then produces proofs;
during this process of course, much of the value of the original data is
lost.

There is no need for this particular transform in the self-archived
version, which therefore contains the data in "re-usable" form,
something which cannot be said with the traditional print/Acrobat
publishing process.

So in effect, the self-archived version is a true superset of the
"definitive" published version. As the "added value" of this
version increases (eg as tools for handling it become more common
and sophisticated, see for example
http://www.wolfram.com/products/publicon/)
so the "published" version may well become perceived as a low-value
version. In data-rich areas such as chemistry, this possible bifurcation
has some interesting implications.

Henry Rzepa

--------

Pertinent Prior AmSci Topic Threads:

"Refereed Research Archiving and Data Archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1582.html

"Peer reviewed research publication and data-access"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1582.html

"OECD Committee for Scientific & Technological Policy: Declaration on Access to
Research Data from Public Funding"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3511.html
Received on Fri Sep 10 2004 - 16:50:12 BST

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