Thanks Stevan,

So, we can reassure academics by teaching them how to cite repository
versions properly: i.e. not to, but to just add the link to the
repository version onto the citation of the published one. 

Has anyone put together such guidelines on citing repository items? Are
we saying the same thing about how to cite repository items?

Kind regards
Jen


Jenny Delasalle
E-Repositories Manager
Research & Innovation Unit
University of Warwick Library
Gibbet Hill Road
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Tel: (+44) (0) 24 765 75793
http://go.warwick.ac.uk/repositories

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 30 September 2008 15:30
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Author's final draft and citing
> 
> This question has been raised many times and it has a simple, 
> clear and correct answer, in two parts:
> 
> (1) Do not conflate the question of what to CITE -- that is 
> always the canonical published work itself, if the work is 
> published -- with the question of what version of it you 
> managed to ACCESS.
> 
> (2) If you cannot afford access to the publisher's 
> proprietary version, then you access the OA version deposited 
> in the OA Repository, but you always cite the published work 
> (and, preferentially, add the URL of the accessed version too).
> 
> That's it. The only two other minor details are:
> 
> (3) If the work is unpublished, or not yet published, you 
> cite it as unpublished, and, again, add the URL of the 
> version that you accessed.
> 
> (4) The two reasons why it is vastly preferable that OA 
> mandates should specify that it is the author's 
> peer-reviewed, accepted final draft (the "postprint")  that 
> is deposited in the OA repository, rather than the 
> publisher's proprietary PDF is (4a) that far more publishers 
> endorse setting access to the author's deposited postprint as 
> OA immediately, rather than after and embargo, and (4b) PDF 
> is the least useful and functional format, for both human 
> users and for robot data-mining.
> 
> Some comments below:
> 
> 
>  On 9/29/08, Delasalle, Jenny <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > I like to quote the Versions toolkit which mentions in a survey 
> > response that most academics prefer to cite the final, 
> published version...
> 
> Of course, and so they should. But we are talking about what 
> to do if you cannot ACCESS the publisher's proprietary 
> version, and the answer is, access the author's OA postprint 
> version -- but cite the canonical published work, as always.
> 
> > whichever version they have read (p9:
> > http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/versions/VERSIONS_Toolkit_v1_final.pdf)
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> > Whilst you're speaking to academics, you could survey them 
> to ask what 
> > they would do...
> 
> Good question, but the right answer is, as always: "If the 
> work is published, I cite the published work." And the URL of 
> the OA version should be added to the citation, as the 
> accessed version.
> 
> >  But there is no evidence that I know of to indicate that 
> anyone will 
> > cite any papers they have read in a repository.
> 
> There is abundant evidence that they cite them, as preprints, 
> and once published, as the published work. While only the 
> unpublished preprint is available, they cite that, as an 
> unpublished preprint. As soon as the paper is published, they 
> cite the published version. While they can only access the 
> preprint or the postprint, users access that; if they can 
> access the publisher's proprietary version, they access that.
> 
> Henneken, E. A., Kurtz, M. J., Warner, S., Ginsparg, P., 
> Eichhorn, G., Accomazzi, A., Grant, C. S., Thompson, D., 
> Bohlen, E. and Murray, S.
> S. (2006)
> E-prints and Journal Articles in Astronomy: a Productive 
> Co-existence ArXiv, Computer Science, cs.DL/0609126, 22 
> September 2006, in Learned Publishing, Vol. 20, No. 1, 
> January 2007, 16-22
> http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0609126
> 
> > For those with no
> > option (no subscription access), a bland looking draft of 
> the article 
> > is better than not being able to read it at all, though.
> 
> Yes, but if it is published, the published version is still 
> the one to cite.
> 
> > One more point to note here: what do we mean by a "citation"? Our 
> > academics are chiefly concerned with citations in journals that are 
> > indexed by Web of Science. But there are other kinds of citations: 
> > links from others' web pages and reading lists, and from papers in 
> > less prestigious journals or in disciplines not well covered by WoS 
> > and grey literature
> 
> This is mixing apples and oranges: A scholarly/scientific 
> citation is just that: The citation, by a scholarly work or 
> another scholarly work (usually text to text). This is true 
> whether or not ISI happens to index the work. Citations to 
> and from non-ISI journals, as well as to and from books, are 
> all classical citations.
> 
> Web links, however, and reading lists are certainly scholarly 
> impact metrics, but they are not citations.
> 
> > that will help to raise the academic's profile in general 
> and help in 
> > the sharing of scholarly knowledge, even if not raising their 
> > citations directly.
> 
> The perspicuous way to put this that citation counts are only 
> one among a multitude of potential scholarly impact metrics:
> 
> Harnad, S. (2007) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK 
> Research Assessment Exercise. In Proceedings of 11th Annual 
> Meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and 
> Informetrics 11(1), pp.
> 27-33, Madrid, Spain. Torres-Salinas, D. and Moed, H. F., Eds.
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13804/
> 
> Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Swan, A.
> (2007) Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web:
> Publication-Archiving, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics. 
> CTWatch Quarterly 3(3). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14418/
> 
> > Our academics are often worried that the content of an early draft 
> > does not reflect well on them (it varies across the 
> disciplines), but 
> > the post-print/accepted version that we ask for is identical to the 
> > published one in its content.
> 
> Bravo: That is the optimal institutional self-archiving policy.
> 
> > The main issue we have is that our
> > academics either never created an accepted version (aka 
> post-print) or 
> > never kept one when they had it.
> 
> This is only a problem for older articles. For recent, 
> current and future articles, all authors have their final 
> drafts, and those are the primary targets of OA.
> 
> > Often, it seems, the draft is submitted and then revisions are 
> > discussed in e-mails and telephone conversations, so only 
> the earliest 
> > draft ever existed, which is one that I can well understand 
> them not 
> > being comfortable with sharing, even if they kept it. Indeed, some 
> > have written their submitted version in a publisher's template so 
> > there is publisher copyright content from the earliest draft.
> 
> The solution is simple: If the corrections were not 
> incorporated in the author's last draft, scrape them from the 
> PDF proofs and convert them back to text in the postprint.
> 
> This is all just obvious scholarly practice in the online era.
> 
> > In such circumstances, it is difficult to persuade an 
> author that they 
> > need to create an accepted version for repository deposit, 
> > incorporating the changes later discussed: I don't know of a single 
> > author who has done that.
> 
> You need not. Leave it to scholarly practice. Unscholarly 
> authors will quickly realize that if they do not make sure 
> their OA version is correct, they will be incorrectly cited 
> and quoted. Just make sure they deposit their final drafts, 
> and enjoin them to make sure they contain the corrections, 
> and leave the rest to them. The institution is not the 
> publisher of the work, just a provider of supplementary access.
> 
> >  So, you can easily argue against academic resistance on the points 
> > you raised, but you can't force them to deposit if they're 
> too busy to 
> > consider it worth their while, if a suitable version never 
> existed (I 
> > feel that publishers are disingenous here in allowing deposit of 
> > versions that don't exist!) or if they're happy to sign away their 
> > copyright and delete early versions.
> 
> Publishers have nothing to do with this question, which is 
> simply on of practical scholarly practice. Don't worry about 
> it: individual practice will catch up with evolving scholarly 
> best practice in the OA age.
> 
> > You can hope to show that those who
> > do deposit are gaining reputation and citations over those 
> who don't, 
> > whilst over time it will become accepted practice to keep/create 
> > suitable versions to deposit in the repository (even to negotiate 
> > copyright agreements). Or you can make the academics an offer they 
> > can't
> > refuse: a mandate that is enforced... assuming that you have such 
> > powers
> > :-)
> 
> The mandate should be adopted in any case. And the deposited 
> postprint should be the one used for all assessment purposes. 
> Leave the rest to scholars' good sense...
> 
> 
> > From: Repositories discussion list
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of S Nieminen
> > Sent: 22 September 2008 07:25
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Author's final draft and citing
> >
> > 	How have your academics reacted to the fact that it is 
> often the 
> > un-paginated author's version that needs to be put in the 
> repository 
> > instead of the pretty publisher's version?
> 
> Pagination is a red herring. In quoting excerpts, specify 
> locus with section heading and paragraph number.
> 
> > I'm having to speak to a
> > number of people shortly and this will come up more and more. Some 
> > research staff are worried that the draft does not "look 
> good" or that 
> > they won't get cited from papers that have not page numbers  etc.
> 
> An OA postprint "looks" infinitely better than an 
> inaccessible publisher's PDF to would-users who cannot afford 
> access. And they certainly generate more citations (for the 
> canonical, published work).
> 
> > Research seems to show a great increase in number of 
> downloads for OA 
> > papers, however, are author draft versions getting cited more? How 
> > would this happen? Do people read the draft paper and THEN chase up 
> > the published version whether freely available or not?
> 
> No, they read and use the accessible draft and cite the 
> canonical published work.
> 
> Stevan Harnad
>