Tony Barry wrote:
> Just because certain institutions were responsible for particular
> activities using print literature does not mean that these will remain
> immutable under a transformation to an online form.
>
> I can easily see a future where a document sits on a server, multiple
> sources of metadata decribing it and pointing at in on other servers and
> rating information on yet another variety of servers with the end user
> buying a database service which collects metadata from one of the servers
> on the basis that one of the rating servers rated the document above a
> certain threshold.
These are some rather bold predictions--which may indeed come true. But again,
they may not. The publishing/library relationships will change with the web, as
they are at this moment. It may turn out that publishers and libraries render some
services that we take so much for granted, that we can't notice them until they
are gone.
In your scenario, I can easily imagine that the "rating servers" could be hijacked
in much the same way as some citation indexes have been.
Citation indexes show all the places where an article has been cited. For example,
if you find an article that interests you, you can find all the other articles
where your paper has been cited. An extremely useful research tool.
Unfortunately, some schools have used citation indexes for tenure and promotion
purposes. As a result, some authors have cited other's papers that have nothing in
common in a quid-pro-quo arrangement. Why would the web be less immune to such
practices?
It's just too soon to make any predictions, and I feel we have to keep our options
open.
Jim Weinheimer
Princeton University
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