I think the overlay journal concept is much more within practical reach
than people realize. Why is there this unspoken assumption that green is
any more practicable than, say, the overlay concept?
Witness:
http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt
Why not devote precious dollars to this? Or the brunt of the dollars?
Also, I am told that arxiv.org has been willing to expand its subject
coverage. Why not use that as a repository for final, refereed versions
articles?
I'm not asking hypothetical questions. I think the questions are quite
important for a manager at something less than a Harvard or MIT, whose
dollars, and staff time, are already stretched. I know where I'd put the
emphasis.
I also know from hard experience how quickly publishers can pull the
plug on provisions not in their financial interest.
Brian Simboli
Leslie Carr wrote:
> On 7 Oct 2004, at 12:38, Brian Simboli wrote:
>
>> But: why not cut to the chase? Why stumble over some pocket change en
>> route to picking up the one thousand dollar bill that lies ahead on the
>> sidewalk? Why not directly engage in infrastructural initiatives that
>> will concurrently resolve access, affordability, preservation, and any
>> number of other interwoven issues?
>
>
> If you haven't got enough money for a cup of coffee, pick up the change
> - if you haven't got enough access (or impact) start self-archiving
> now!!!
>
> I see this issue (and the recent discussions on this forum) as actually
> being a manifestation of the Research vs Development argument. There
> are some things that we know how to do, and we should do now to improve
> our world. There are other things that we don't quite know how to do
> yet, and we should research into those things. We should get funding to
> put the former into practice and funding to find out how the latter
> could be put into practice. (We might get these monies from different
> funding bodies with different agendas.)
>
> Self archiving is easy. We know how to do it. We have developed more
> than enough interoperable software platforms to make a really big
> impact on the literature and the way we can use it. We should be paid
> to install these systems and start using them!
>
> Preservation is difficult. No-one knows how to solve all its problems.
> We should be paid to examine how this could be achieved, and think
> about the various roles of the creators and funders and managers of
> digital resources and speculate about their future relationship to
> intellectual property.
>
> But it must be a fundamental tenet of R&D that no practical, useful
> service should ever be harnessed to or held hostage by speculative,
> research code - not until the issues are well understood and it ceases
> to be a matter of research and intellectual enquiry. We should do the
> research, we should ask the questions, we MUST find the answers, but we
> should not delay or degrade our useful developments with our unfinished
> research.
> ---
> Les Carr
> University of Southampton
--
Brian Simboli
Science Librarian
Library & Technology Services
E.W. Fairchild Martindale
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(610) 758-5003
E-mail: brs4_at_lehigh.edu
Received on Thu Oct 07 2004 - 14:18:41 BST