Re: Withdrawal from Open Access

From: Arthur Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:24:01 -0400

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Surely the most common case is that the article contained or was based on a
mistake that the authors now find embarrassing. Such things often are
revealed in peer review, so if these proceedings were subject to only skimpy
or no review there could easily be such problems. Do these OA proceedings
have any mechanism for authors to add corrections to their articles after
they have been posted?

      Arthur Smith

Arthur Sale wrote:
>
>
>
> I have recently come across two cases of an author asking for
> their paper to be withdrawn from the proceedings (online, OA) of a
> conference.
>
>
> I am pursing these cases as I can to find out why. I assume that
> the conferences did not have an appropriate license agreement
> allowing them to make the paper OA, though few authors would pay
> much attention to that anyway.
>
>
> There are a variety of possible reasons; perhaps reader of this
> list can suggest others:
>
> 1. The authors want to publish their paper in a journal as
> well to get double counted value in their cv from their research.
>
> 2. Conferences dont count for anything in their field, but
> journal articles do.
>
> 3. As above in 1 and 2, and the authors have been scared by
> publishers words about prior publication invalidating submission.
>
> 4. The work is plagiarized, fraudulent, or is a case of
> multiple papers spread over one research nugget, and the authors
> do not want to be found out.
>
> 5. The authors do not believe the Internet is suitable for
> scientific publication and discovery.
>
> 6. The authors are in their 60s or 70s and set in their ways
> (not Internet-savvy).
>
> ...
>
> It is worthwhile trying to understand these counter-intuitive
> actions. There may be lessons to be learnt.
>
>
> Arthur Sale
>
> University of Tasmania
>
Received on Tue Oct 28 2008 - 13:25:12 GMT