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Electronic journals are almost certainly going to prove ephemeral on the
time-scale of academic research and we really should be placing hard copy in
copyright libraries (and on sheets of paper [remember it?], not CDs). Otherwise
important work will be lost sooner or later.

Worse still, electronic research papers and data can be retro-massaged all too
easily so that people can hide errors, cover up cheating, and claim priority on
ideas. This has worried me badly since the whole electronic journal concept
first appeared, but no-one else seems to have felt the same qualms.

This danger, too, would be avoided by an obligation to place hard copy in half a
dozen or so libraries.

Harry Kenward.


--
Harry Kenward, Director, Environmental Archaeology Unit, Department of Biology,
University of York, PO Box 373, York YO10 5YW UK. (Tel. 01904 433848/49;
Fax: 01904 433850; email [log in to unmask])