Thanks for this Tehmina. I'm sure that Suzanne, knowledgeable lady that she
is, was indeed alluding to Open Access archives. I was just keen that her
shorthand reference
won't be picked up by the hugely powerful publisher lobby and exploited as
further evidence that the Open Access movement's agenda is to put publishers
out of business, rather than make research findings freely available to all.
...and I'm certainly in favour of the proliferation of blogs and other
self-publishing as a speedy way of disseminating ideas and opinions - just
so long as all this information is treated with proper scepticism. There are
too many recent examples (cold fusion, MMR) of over-optimistic or
mischievous "findings" being confused with scientific fact, for the
scholarly community to want to throw out the baby of peer review with the
bathwater of paid-for access.
Coming from Southampton, the UK pioneer of Open Access archiving, I'm sure
you are aware that it is the stated policy of institutional repositories
clearly to identify whether an archived item is a peer-reviewed research
article, or a Masters dissertation (like James Allen's) or indeed a set of
raw data or other "unpublished material", so that the reader knows how much
weight it should be given.
As I have tried to demonstrate, the aim of OA is to open up free access to
professionally edited, peer reviewed research findings, rather than take
over the work of learned societies and other scholarly publishers.
******************************************
Prof Bruce Royan www.concurrentcomputing.co.uk
41 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh, EH10 4BL, UK
+44 131 4473151 +44 77 1374 4731
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Tehmina Goskar
Sent: 03 February 2006 12:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open access archives ( was: Disruptive Technologies)
I had assumed that is what Suzanne was alluding to: the increasing
awareness and use of open access archives, rather than the
compunction to publish via an established publishing house. This
does not preclude peer-review. I would hope that the onus will be on
the author to get their work peer reviewed in any circumstance. That
said, I've read many an article whose peer reviewers must have been
dead to have got to publication. I feel there is room also to use
the web sensibly for non-peer reviewed research dissemination.
Research projects or organisations that use blogs to spread news and
information about research developments provide good fora for
publishing stuff that either isn't suitable for an article or else
has sprung from the desire to self-publish findings and opinions,
unedited. The research project I am currently engaged in is trialing
the use of a blog to disseminate our research
(www.scambimedievali.org.uk). It's in its early stages at the moment.
I'd like to bring to MCG's attention, very recent research completed
on this subject, by James Allen whose dissertation contains some
interesting findings.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00005180
Tehmina
On 3 Feb2006, at 12:32, Bruce Royan wrote:
> What is "already on the way", is that more and more universities and
> research institutions (1) are archiving copies of their researchers'
> peer-reviewed, published articles onto online Institutional
> Repositories, so
> that they can be accessed for free. This is done with the agreement
> of an
> increasing number of publishers (2), who are beginning to realise
> that it
> won't harm their journal sales, and is inevitable anyway if the
> Research
> Councils hold their nerve and make it a condition of funding (3).
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