For the avoidance of any doubt (I hope!), let me make it 
clear.  Writing something down on one piece of 
paper is not publishing it, in any sense. Stevan Harnad 
seems to be implying that because there is copyright in a 
statement, that means it is published.  Not so.  The 
concept of copyright can exist entirely independently of 
whether something is published and does so exist in many, 
many millions of instances.  The extent and limits of 
copyright are different for something that is published, 
compared with the extent and limits of copyright for 
something that isn't.

Bernard Naylor


On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 13:22:08 +0000 (GMT) Stevan Harnad 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Bernard Naylor wrote:
> 
> > We need to be clear that a communication with deliberately 
> > limited circulation (category 1 as defined by Stevan 
> > Harnad) is not published in any sense of the term.  It is 
> > emphatically not "published" in the legal sense - though it 
> > is protected by copyright, as is any unpublished 
> > manuscript.  Limited circulation of one's thoughts is a 
> > well understood device for testing one's views on people 
> > who (one judges) might have useful comments to make towards 
> > the process of refining them, before they are "published", 
> > that is, offered to the world at large.
> 
> Category (1) included, but was by no means limited to "deliberately
> limited circulation." Writing a text down on 1 single copy of paper
> falls in category (1) (copyright can be asserted, and protected, and
> yes, indeed, this falls under a formal legal sense of "publishing"
> q.v.).
> 
> Circulating that paper to a small chosen number of colleagues is also
> in category (1), including circulating it via email. In the case of a
> text that is a report of scholarly or scientific research that is
> eventually destined to appear in a refereed journal (the only kind of
> text that is at issue in this Forum), the name of such a pre-refereeing,
> prepublication (2) publication (1, sic) is a "preprint."
> 
> It remains only to add that placing a text in a departmental (paper)
> preprint archive, where any visitor can browse it, is also in category
> (1). [I don't know about orally presenting it at a conference; I
> suspect it is, but we stumble on the print-based connotations of
> "publication" and prefer to call it something like "publicising"
> instead.) And placing it in a public online archive is also in category
> (1).
> 
> What makes all of these (1) rather than (2) is not the number of people
> that do see it (that is always finite), nor even the number of people
> that COULD in principle see it (I suppose that is infinite, even with
> one piece of paper). The only separator (logically, legally, morally,
> scientifically, practically, etc,) between category (1) and category
> (2) is the "vanity-press" criterion that Bernard finds so arbitrary
> (perhaps it is!): 
> 
> For this specific literature, and for this literature only (and I hope
> it is will be clear that it is not tautological to remind everyone that
> the literature is the REFEREED RESEARCH literature), the dividing line
> between publication (1) (unrefereed preprints) and publication (2)
> (refereed reprints) is indeed refereeing, and certification thereof.
> 
> Do not waste time trying to apply this distinction (1/2) to the rest of
> the literature (e.g., books); the rest of the literature is
> non-author-give-away: Potential revenues (royalties, fees) and their
> potential loss must be taken into account for that literature, and
> assume a much greater weight in deciding what to call what. Hence what
> is defined as "publication" (priority, vanity, etc.) there will have
> little to do with what we are discussing here, and everything to do
> with saleability.
> 
> > With respect to Stevan Harnad's category 2, refereeing is 
> > not an intrinsic requirement, except in so far as Stevan 
> > Harnad seeks to make it so.  Many intellectual statements 
> > have been, and are proclaimed to the world, on paper, 
> > without ever being refereed. 
> 
> Correct. But what is the point? 
> 
> First, we are talking here only about the refereed literature (and its
> embryological precursors). Yes, unrefereed preprints can report great
> things, and be right, and establish priority, and change the world. But
> that is the exception rather than the rule. To be taken seriously, most
> scholarly and scientific research has to be peer-certified. (The
> "refereeing," may vary from field to field, sometimes formal peer
> review, sometimes editorial review, but in any case "vetted" rather
> than "anything goes," and the vetting is normally certified by a known
> and reliable "quality-control tag, e.g., Proceedings of the National
> Academy of Science.)
> 
> The norm for reporting scientific and scholarly research is to publish
> it in a peer reviewed journal.
> 
> > It is done without thought of 
> > reward and to characterise it as "vanity publishing" seems 
> > to me to be simply "name calling".  
> 
> To "publish" only the pre-refereeing preprint, be it ever so correct,
> would indeed be "vanity publishing," but the rightness (if it was
> indeed right, and we had a way to know it was right) would completely
> outweigh the vanity.
> 
> But such cases, I repeat, are the exception, not the rule. In an ideal
> world, we would not need peer-vetting for quality: The right results
> would just shine out of their own accord.
> 
> > The important and 
> > distinguishing feature is not that a statement is refereed, 
> > though I do believe firmly that refereeing does serve a very
> > useful purpose, albeit not an intrinsic or absolutely 
> > essential purpose, in the process of scholarly 
> > communication.  The fundamental feature of scholarly 
> > publication, which has been well recognised for centuries, 
> > is that an intellectual statement is offered to the whole 
> > world so that anyone can test it and judge it.
> 
> Correct. But at the scale at which people are doing and reporting
> research today (and probably even at smaller scales), the watchword is
> "caveat emptor" until it has received a reliable QC tag. (Yes, there
> are exceptions, but peer review is a system built to handle the bulk of
> the literature, and not to wait and hope for the self-validating,
> self-evident exceptions.)
> 
> To a first approximation, is a world where so many "intellectual
> statements" are being "offered to the whole world so that anyone can
> test it and judge it," the researchers of the world, with their finite
> time and resources, have to have a basis for deciding which of it is
> worth trying to read, judge, and test. One searches in vain for the
> reliability of a statement on its sleeve. (Perhaps that's why it's
> called vanity press...)
> 
> > E-print repositories are a relatively new feature on the 
> > scene and we do need to settle, without too much delay, 
> > what they imply. I shall need a good deal of persuading 
> > that an intellectual statement, refereed or not, which is 
> > deposited in an e-repository, is not "offered to the whole 
> > world so that anyone can test it and judge it".  
> 
> But it is, in both cases! The question is: which statements to risk
> taking at their word, in all this mass of statements? That's were the
> refereed stage of the embryological transition from (1) to (2) comes
> in.
> 
> > There is 
> > therefore very little doubt in my mind how this will be 
> > resolved. I think we shall in due course have to accept 
> > that an intellectual statement which is deposited in an 
> > e-repository is published.  
> 
> We already do. Published in sense (1).
> 
> > Of course, this could well have 
> > serious implications for the way we view certain existing 
> > elements in the chain of scholarly communication, in 
> > particular, print-on-paper journals which publish 
> > intellectual statements which have previously been 
> > offered to the world, by deposit in an e-repository.  
> > Sooner or later, we shall have to get round to facing up to 
> > that.  The sooner the better in my view.
> 
> Physics has already faced up to it. Unrefereed preprints are preprints
> and peer-reviewed postprints are postprints. When only the preprint is
> available, you make do with that, guided perhaps by the author's name
> and reputation (based on prior peer-reviewed work!); when the postprint
> is available, that is the locus classicus, and the reference point for
> citations.
> 
>     Harnad, S. & Carr, L. (2000) Integrating, Navigating and Analyzing
>     Eprint Archives Through Open Citation Linking (the OpCit Project).
>     Current Science 79(5) 629-638.
> http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.citation.htm
> 
> I think Bernard is conflating book publication with
> refereed-journal-paper publication, and rare, successful unvetted
> exceptions with the vetted rule, in the special case of the refereed
> research literature.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Stevan Harnad                     [log in to unmask]
> Professor of Cognitive Science    [log in to unmask]
> Department of Electronics and     phone: +44 23-80 592-582
>              Computer Science     fax:   +44 23-80 592-865
> University of Southampton         http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
> Highfield, Southampton            http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
> SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM           
> 
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
> access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
> American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00):
> 
>     http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
> 
> You may join the list at the site above.
> 
> Discussion can be posted to:
> 
>     [log in to unmask] 
> 
> 

----------------------
Bernard Naylor                  Email: [log in to unmask]
University Librarian            Tel: 023 8059 2677
University of Southampton       Fax: 023 8059 5451
Highfield
Southampton, SO17 1BJ



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