On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Thomas Bacher wrote:
> This is what University Presses need to become -- the formatter, keeper, and
> distributor (with the university library) of the intellectual goods. If that
> were to happen, funded of course by the university, then the university
> could avoid paying twice (once to the researcher and twice to the publisher)
> for intellectual property. The university would also save money in the long
> term. I believe it will come to this model within the next five years.
This proposal is unfortunately incoherent, and can only lead to
confusion, if it is made as a blanket proposal for the give-away and
non-give-away literature alike.
(This must somehow be a profound and subtle point I'm stressing here,
regardless of how trivial and self-evident it has always seemed to
me, because of how intelligent, thoughtful people keep systematically
missing it, despite endless repetitions of solemn mantras about it!):
Don't mix up the give-away and non-give-away intellectual goods! One
size of solution does NOT fit both, on the contrary, what is optimal
for one is awful for the other, and vice versa.
Yes, the university and university library (and university press) are
the natural locus for archiving and distributing the give-away
intellectual goods of its researchers, but they are decidedly NOT the
right locus for its non-give-away intellectual goods. The latter goods
are meant to bring their authors (and perhaps their authors'
institutions) revenue, e.g. royalties, from their sale or licensed
access.
Let's call a spade a spade: Most books are written to be sold, and with
the hope of making some money from the sale (although there are
exceptions, cf. Harnad, Varian & Parks 2000), whereas no refereed
journal paper is.
Harnad, S., Varian, H. & Parks, R. (2000) Academic publishing in
the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free?
Culture Machine 2 (Online Journal)
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Varian/new1.htm
http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm
The solution for these books cum would-be money-makers is certainly not
to give up the possibility of the prestigious imprimatur of the
publisher of the author's choice, and turn instead to his university's
home-brew (unless that University happens to be that prestigious
publisher of choice).
Nor is the picture that clear even for the non-give-away literature:
peer-reviewed journal papers too need to be refereed and certified by
the high-quality/high-impact journal of the author's (and research
community's) choice. That refereed paper can then be self-archived in
the author's institutional Eprint Archive, to be sure, but let us not
imagine that that archive is also the publisher/QC-certifier. It is no
more that in the give-away case than in the non-give-away case, unless
we simply want to convert all university publication into university
vanity-press publication.
(And please don't propose internal institutional peer-review as the
quality-controller: the conflict of interest is too great, and that's
not what "peer review" means. A university is not an island unto
itself.)
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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
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