Scholar's Forum ... Some comments
I only came to know of the 'Scholar's Forum' e-publishing model
(http://library.caltech.edu/publications/ScholarsForum) indirectly via a
note to VPIEJ-L from Stevan Harnad. However now I know of it I would like
to comment on it.
Whilst I welcome the 'Scholar's Forum: A new model for Scholarly
Communication' as a move towards a new model for scholarly publishing I do
have some strong reservations about it. These fall under two main
headings, firstly it is not radical enough, secondly some of the features
it claims as 'unique' are not so.
...Not Radical Enough
It is not radical enough because it tries to retain the idea of the
journal as the centre of the scholarly publishing model. I had the same
problem with an early version of my own proposed model the 'Deconstructed
Journal' (in Electronic Publishing '97 - New Models and Opportunities -
Proceedings of the ICCC/IFIP 1997 Conference on E-Publishing). I knew then
the paper influenced model was the wrong one for the net but I could not
entirely let go of the idea I was trying to the replace the journal -
whereas what I was doing was replacing the entire scholarly publishing
model of which the journal is just a part. Until one realises this it is
difficult to do more than reproduce a variant of the paper model in an
electronic form. In the DJ model the roles of the 'journal' are split into
three and these are divided between:
- Net based services - in the new version (see below) these are called
Subject Focal Points or SFPs which point to (but do not own) items of
interest to their subscribers.
- Independent evaluator organisations who give a 'seal of approval' to
the items submitted to them but do not own or publish the items.
- Organisation like universities, learned societies, etc, which provide
the servers that make the items available.
This model is completely de-centralised, both in the sense of having no
need for a central database (an idea that seems left over from days of the
central mainframe) and in the sense there is no central co-ordinator or
publisher. The DJ model is truly distributed which much better matches the
underlying model of the net itself. Also the rule of the journal publisher
is broken by separating the quality control (content) - what I also call
'conferring recognition' - from the making available (i.e., publishing or
distributing) role.
My paper 'The Deconstructed Journal: A new model for academic publishing'
is to be published in 'Learned Publishing' Vol 12, No. 2, April 1999 (in
press) and is also available at
http://www.ukc.ac.uk/library/papers/jwts/d-journal.htm
I finally let go of the idea of the journal by no-longer referring to the
net-based selection and pointing services as 'journals' and instead rename
them 'Subject Focal Points' or SFPs (reverting to the name I originally
used when giving presentations about this model back in 1994).
...Features not Unique
Section V in the paper 'Scholar's Forum' claims this new model has unique
features. Some of these features were already in my published 1997 model.
For example:
- Non-exclusivity of the published papers (this idea is central to the DJ
model where the SFPs do not own the items they point to)
- Use of consultants or independent technical writers to help with the
quality control (form) aspect (covered in the DJ model because neither
the SFPs nor the evaluators 'publish' the material so this
'copy-editing', etc, has to be done separately).
- Copyright retained by authors or their institutions (central to the DJ
idea of non-ownership by the SFPs)
Other ideas claimed as 'unique' in the 'Scholar's Forum' paper, have been
suggested before. Many of the relevant papers are cited in my latest paper
(URL above).
Regards,
John Smith.
University of Kent at Canterbury.
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