> From: "D. R. Forsdyke" <forsdyke at post.queensu.ca>
>> you seem to retain the idea
> that papers MUST be accredited so that the poor reader will not have to
> sift through all the garbage, and that this MUST be retained as a
> function for the regular paper journals. In fact, if an author NEEDS
> accreditation (i.e. his/her "good" name in the field is not enough),
> then the professional "Societies" are the logical orchestraters of
> quality certification; there is no need for the publishing house "middle
> men" to do this.
You've lost me: If I'm a doctor trying to keep up with how to treat my
cancer patients, how is a professional society going to help me
sort good treatments from garbage (unless it publishes a peer reviewed
journal that certifies them as such)? You're mixing up research
accreditation and personal accreditation here: A society might be able
to certify doctors, but only qualified experts can certify the documents
in a field of current research expertise. Or do we consider all other
areas of research, scientific and scholarly, as less important than the
life-and-death matters of medicine?
> Actually, I find journal peer-review as currently practiced more akin
> to censorship than quality control.
It would be interesting to hear how many years of experience in editing
that finding was based on: How much wading through raw manuscripts to
sort out what is worth reading and trying to build upon has led you to
this conclusion, and whatever your trick is, please share it with us!
> With search engines of various
> kinds, indexes of citations, indexes of professional pedigrees, etc.
> most readers in the electronic media will have all they need to find
> what is worth reading. There is a splendid opportunity for the
> publishers to provide services in this respect, something like the
> Current Topics Series put out by one publishing house.
If we can produce high quality without answerability in this area, then
this will be the first and only area of human endeavour in which that
strategy will have succeeded. Human nature being what it is, it takes
the path of least effort when it can, regressing on the mean or even
meaner. I do not personally have the time to troll through all those
least-effort products and find what (if anything) still meets the
standards (such as they are) of the refereed, tagged literature of
today. (No, I don't think your suggestion, which amounts to sorting it
out through advertising, would help either...)
> Finally, you seem hooked on the idea of one final "authenticated"
> copy.
Nothing of the sort. I am a great advocate of public archiving of BOTH
unrefereed preprints, comments, exchanges, etc, AND the refereed
literature, and clearly tagging each accordingly. Revisions and updates,
both refereed and unrefereed, are welcome along this "scholarly
skywriting continuum" too. But it's a matter of "both/and," not
"either/or." And the skyways need to be sign-posted for the poor
hitch-hiker in the PostGutenberg Galaxy who does not have infinite time
on his hands.
Harnad, S. (1990d) Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum
of Scientific Inquiry. Psychological Science 1: 342 - 343 (reprinted in
Current Contents 45: 9-13, November 11 1991).
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad90.skywriting.htmlftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/HTML/harnad90.skywriting.html
> Darwin and Hooker engaged in correspondence, which is now
> published. The correspondence was dated and by various tests does not
> appear to be forged. Their views changed later, and so that these do not
> always correspond with what was in the correspondence. However, from the
> point of view of the historical record, their work was first. ANY form
> of record does this. There are plenty of busy people out there who do
> not read the early literature, rediscover the wheel, and then claim
> credit for it. Sometimes Nobel prizes (and the associated power and
> influence) follow (e.g. see N. Jerne's recapitulation of Ehrlich's work
> in immunology). The matter is not trivial.
And is already covered by the possibility of publicly archiving
everything online, which we all applaud. But it by no means follows
that there is not the room or need for something MORE in cyberspace
too, something very much like what we used to call the peer reviewed
journal literature in the Gutenberg era...
Harnad, S. (1995g) Sorting the Esoterica from the Exoterica:
There's Plenty of Room in Cyberspace: Response to Fuller.
Information Society 11(4) 305-324. Also appeared in:
Times Higher Education Supplement. Multimedia. P. vi. June 9 1995.
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/THES/harful1.html
Harnad, S. (1996a) Implementing Peer Review on the Net:
Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals. In:
Peek, R. & Newby, G. (Eds.) Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic
Frontier. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Pp. 103-118.
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad96.peer.review.html
Harnad, S. (1998) Learned Inquiry and the Net:
The Role of Peer Review, Peer Commentary and Copyright.
Learned Publishing 4(11): 283-292
Shorter version in 1997: Antiquity 71: 1042-1048
Excerpts also appeared in the University
of Toronto Bulletin: 51(6) P. 12.
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad98.toronto.learnedpub.
html
http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/EPub/talks/Harnad_Snider.html
Harnad, S. (1998h) The invisible hand of peer review. Nature [online]
(c. 5 Nov. 1998)
http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/invisible.html
Longer version:
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/HTML/nature2.html
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Professor of Cognitive Science harnad at princeton.edu
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Computer Science fax: +44 1703 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
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