Stevan,
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> Where's the point of disagreement?
My disagreement was with your vehement reply to the question whether
placing an item in an IR was 'publication'
"Absolutely not! "Publication" in the UK RAE and in every other sensible
venue, means (in the case of research articles) publication in a
reputable peer-reviewed journal"
> If unrefereed, unpublished papers deposited in IRs are to be called
> some sort of publication at all, then that sort of publication
> already has a name: Vanity Press (or Self-Publication). (I prefer
> "preprint" or "ms. in prep", because it has a more hopeful ring to
> it, heralding things to come, like, maybe, publication!)
It is not 'vanity press'. The purpose or intention of vanity press
publication is soley the enhancement of the author's image because his/her
work is published. In the case of much of this unrefereed material in IRs
the author is making information available for communication to his/her
colleagues to inform them and possibly enhance their work. To call it
'vanity press' is to demean perfectly good material.
Further, once we move away from the concept of 'impact factors' and use
individual article citation analysis instead, peer review will merely be
the first stage (and not necessarily the most important) in assessing the
real value of someone's work.
Regards,
John Smith,
Universiy of Kent.
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