kmetzner at acad.com wrote:
> This question hits dead on the central single most important function of
> refereed journals. It is the journals and their editors, boards, referees, and
> publishers that guarantee the integrity of the record, the 'archive of science,'
> or the 'minutes of science'. And copyright is the legal underpinning of this.
Distinction must be made between the integrity of PRODUCTION and the
integrity of MAINTENANCE. Whether monitoring of integrity of production
is needed when there is plenty of space in "Silicana" and adequate
electronic search facilities, is debateable. If an author wants his/her
work to be read it is in his/her interest to get it accredited in some
way. One way, is to already have a good name in the field. No further
external accredition needed. [Indeed, sadly much current peer-review
accreditation is "lazy" (e.g. overburdened reviewers instead of reading
the work just check on the author (citations, institution, etc.)].
> That is why the author of a scientific research paper is the last person who
> should keep the copyright after it is accepted in a refereed journal.
Copyright, which involves possible remuneration for monitoring and
production rather than for authorship (not the "right" to change one's
work), is a separate, highly debateable, issue. (After a few years, the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences assignes copyright to
authors.)
By
> submitting the paper for publication in such a journal the author in effect
> submits an 'affidavit' that 'this is what I have discovered at this time'.
By submitting his/her work ANYWHERE (paper or electronic) the author
is making such an affidavit.
The
> author should not be in a position to be able to change the final version
> accepted by the journal; supply later separate errata, addenda, corrigenda, etc,
> OK, but change the original, absolutely not; anymore than you can change a
> patent document once granted.. That would undermine a central function of the
> journal enterprise.
Neither the author, OR ANYONE ELSE, should be in a position to
change the original. On this we are agreed. Whether preventing this
happening is "a central function of the journal enterprise" is, again,
debateable.
Sincerely, Donald Forsdyke. Discussion Leader. Bionet.journals.note
______________________________________________
http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/homepage.htm
> DRF wrote on Subject: Electronic publishing
> Electronic publication in the biological sciences is an idea whose
> time has come. But what steps are being taken to ensure that material,
> once deposited, is not interfered with. Who guards the guards? Who
> guards Paul Ginsparg who runs a service for the physics community?
> I would love, for example, to publish an article discovering the
> structure of DNA which I would date 1952, the year
> before Watson and Cricks' famous paper.
> The only way to cover this point would seem to be to have
> simultaneous deposition in multiple sites (>2), and have a search engine
> of some kind constantly monitoring the sites to ensure that all copies
> remain identical. This would be something like GenBank,where depositions
> of DNA sequences are made simultaneously in the USA, Europe and Japan.
> There is also the question of how to cite this
> information. Rather than some abstract number, why not follow the
> pattern of joural citations. e.g. Harnad, S. Cogprints 1999, 4:10-1610.
> In this case the "volume" number (4) would be the month and the "page"
> numbers would be the day and hour-min (preferably corrected to GMT).
> Thus the citation would contain an implicit time-stamp.
