On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Prof. Charles Oppenheim wrote:
> On the question of "if I cannot copy it, it's not academic and not
> worth citing" - anyone is perfectly entitled to cite or not cite what
> he or she likes, but to use as the criterion whether it can be copied
> or not seems irrational. The quality of the item is what counts.
Then again what's the quality "value" of an item which few people will be
able to get access to? If there are two information sources available
with similar information I'd go for the one with the best access
mechanism. And I know that other's agree with me; just look at the IETF
where people shy away from pay-ware and proprietry standards if there is a
freely available substitute available, or one of my Profs. when I was an
undergrad that recommended that we buy the cheaper alternative of two
similar textbooks (neither of which he had any vest interest in).
Citations and references are there so that people can follow the path you
followed to reach your hypothesis/experiment/results/conclusions and so
IMHO the materials you cite should be as freely available as possible.
Still, each academic to his own.
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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