Re: The archival status of archived papers

From: Bob Parks <bparks_at_wueconc.wustl.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 09:08:37 -0600 (CST)

Stevan Harnad writes:
>
>
>It cuts both ways. Yes, authors should not start archiving willy-nilly
>every raw draft and every afterthought. But they should not feel

The word DRAFT implies correction and updates. In economics, where
working papers and revisions of them are extremely common, one would
NOT want a previous DRAFT of a paper available since it might be wrong,
and had been corrected, and it would injure both the reader and the
author to have the incorrect version present. Ginsparg and I traded
a lot of notes about this when EconWPA was born - Paul kept a revision
date, but not the prior drafts and I think that arxiv still works that
way.

I think that if you make the previous drafts remain forever, authors
will be reluctant to post DRAFTs at all. OED defines draft as
          A preliminary sketch or rough form of a writing or document,
          from which the final or fair copy is made.

which begs change to the draft.



>constrained in doing corrections and updates whenever they are needed
>too. Authors should know, though, that from the moment they place a draft
>into a public open-access archive, it may be read, cited, and pointed to
>-- that specific draft -- in perpetuum. That is part of what it means
>to have archived something publicly.
>

On this I would disagree. But the point is to further open access
to research, and putting in a constraint that all prior DRAFTs are
available in perputity will make for less archiving of working papers.
Maybe not for other professions, but certainly in economics, business,
and political science (subjects about which I have knowledge).

The persistent URL should, as with arXiv, point to the most recent
draft and penultimate drafts should be in the trash.

BOb


>I'm sure scholars will easily get a sense for this, as they have for
>everything else. In the beginning some will fumble and treat the
>archive as labile first drafts or lapidary touch-me-nots, but experience
>and feedback will calibrate everyone's practice and reflexes. The
>Archives just have to make sure they do not pre-judge or short-circuit
>any important options a priori.
>
>Stevan
>
>> A/
>>
>>
>> >Stevan Harnad
>> >
>> >On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Mark Doyle wrote:
>> >
>> > > Greetings,
>> > >
>> > > On Tuesday, November 26, 2002, at 08:27 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > Now it is conceivable that the eprints architecture can be slightly
>> > > > modified, so that the old, suppressed URL for the deleted paper
>> > > > automatically redirects to the new draft if someone tries to access
>> > > > the old one. That I have to let Chris reply about. Here I have merely
>> > > > explained the rationale for not having designed the archive so a paper
>> > > > could be deposited, and then modified willy-nilly under the same URL.
>> > > > For that would not have been an archive at all, and user complaints,
>> > > > about trying to use and cite a moving target, would have far
>> > > > out-numbered
>> > > > depositor complaints about what to do with after-thoughts and
>> > > > successive
>> > > > drafts.
>> > >
>> > > Well, that is one way to look at it. On the other hand, arXiv.org uses
>> > > version numbers and the persistent name/id and URL (say hep-th/0210311
>> > > and http://arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/0210311) always points to the latest
>> > > version
>> > > with links to the earlier versions.
>> > >
>> > > I believe you are advocating a poor design choice here. One cannot
>> > > overemphasize
>> > > the importance of human-friendly persistent names that are easily
>> > > converted
>> > > to URL's for linking and quick location. Patching the system to
>> > > redirect to the
>> > > latest linked version is a hack. Is one actually able to download
>> > > the earlier version (which is what was cited)? Generally, a better
>> > > approach
>> > > is to give a good persistent name to a "work" and not a single
>> > > manifestation
>> > > of that work (whether it be a particular format or a particular
>> > > version) and
>> > > then give a reader a single point of entry into the system that can be
>> > > bookmarked
>> > > or cited reliably which gives a choice of what to download. Cutting off
>> > > access
>> > > to an earlier, citeable version is a mistake. Archives should not
>> > > delete items
>> > > or make them hard to access - rather they should show items in context
>> > > and give easy access to an item's history and versioning with a single
>> > > identifier for the work taken as a whole.
>> > >
>> > > Cheers,
>> > > Mark
>> > >
>> > > Mark Doyle
>> > > Manager, Product Development
>> > > The American Physical Society
>> > >
>>
>
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| Bob Parks                                          Voice: (314) 935-5665 |
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| Washington University                                                    |
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Received on Tue Dec 03 2002 - 15:08:37 GMT

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