On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Bob Cottis wrote:
> I agree entirely, but the question of corrections can be handled in a
> timely way, even for 'dated' papers. All that is needed is to permit
> comments to be linked to the paper, and then either the author can
> correct his/her own errors, or readers can point out problems or
> whatever else. There is, of course, the question of whether the
> comments are also dated (I feel they should be) and whether or not
> they should be refereed (I am ambivalent on this).
The great thing about electronic media is that you can often have your
cake and eat it. There is no reason why refereed and unrefereed comments
could not be attached to a document at the same time. Unrefereed
comments would allow timely discussion but might not be treated with the
same respect and gravity as refereed comments (refereed comments might be
archived along with the document whereas unrefereed ones might be more
transient for example). Unrefereed comments might well form the input to
the refereeing process so that only the good ones are kept but the public
can at least see everyone's input if they're interested.
As long as the user was made aware of the difference in status between
them, I can't really see a problem. I could even imagine a scenario where
a single document might have refereed comments attached that had been
refereed by two completely different sets of referees representing
different communities and the user was free to choose which set of
refereed comments he prefered. This would work really well if the
comment mechanism is detached from the document itself (like the
group comments in the old versions X Mosaic).
Electronic documents are in a much better position than documents printed
on dead trees to take advantage of comments because it is much easier for
an end user to follow hyperlinks to comments than it is to search through
all the latter issues looking for relevant letters/corrections (which are
often not indexed separately). And certainly in my work I'd often find an
unrefereed comment that appeared immediately much more useful than a
refereed comment that didn't appear for months or years. Immediacy is
just as valuable as quality to some people.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
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Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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