Re: EPRINTS = PREPRINTS (unrefereed) + POSTPRINTS (refereed)

From: Thomas Krichel <T.Krichel_at_SURREY.AC.UK>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 09:21:14 +0100

  Steve Hitchcock writes

> Paul Ginsparg defined an eprint as "something self-archived by the author".
> Isn't that the clearest distinction, and an obvious one for this forum to
> draw?

  I tend to think of an eprint as a "public-access scientific document
  in electronic form". The insistance on "author self-archiving" obscures
  the fact that there are many eprints that are not archived by the
  author but by an agent of the author, for example an academic institution
  or a scholarly society.

  The problem with self-archiving by authors is the growing tendency
  of authors to deposit their papers in homepages. It is debatable
  if this sort of activity is real "archiving". What we need is to
  have more agents, acting on behalf of authors that will hopefully
  make more long-term archiving possible. The archiving through
  an agent is what I call "formal" archiving, and I oppose it to
  the tendency of "informal" archiving in homepages. My impression
  is that formal archiving is relatively declining, whereas informal
  archiving is on the increase. I see the OAi as an attempt of formal
  archivers to regain initiative.


  Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                   RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
  offline 2000-06-04 to 2000-06-11
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT

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