Hypotheses Non Fingo

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:02:26 +0100

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, J.W.T.Smith wrote:

> My basic interpretation of the 'Harnad model' is that Stevan wants every
> researcher to locally (or remotely) make available an open copy of either
> the submitted draft, final draft or published version of their research
> publications. It operates in parallel with the current journal model and
> uses the quality control services of existing journals.
>
> However, by using this existing quality control service it is, in fact,
> parasitic on the current model. What Stevan does not want to acknowledge
> is that this parasitism will ultimately destroy the current journal model
> (who is going subscribe to a journal when all its articles are available
> for free?).
>
> From my above analysis it is clear that having mandates (for self
> archiving) will not not only increase the number of research articles
> freely available (a good thing) but will also accelerate the end of the
> 'traditional' journal and force the evolution of a new form of academic
> publishing to replace it (in my opinion also a good thing :-) ).

Dear colleagues,

Hypotheses non fingo.

There is no Harnad model.

    Research is published in c. 24,000 peer-reviewed journals (c. 2.5
    million articles per year). (Datum, not hypothesis.)

    Not all would-be users can access all those articles online. (Datum,
    not hypothesis.)

    Self-archiving supplements access, for those would-be users. (Datum,
    not hypothesis.)

    Self-archiving is correlated with higher and earlier download and
    citation impact. (Datum, not hypothesis.)

    Only c. 15% of those annual articles are being spontaneously self-archived
    today. (Datum, not hypothesis)

    When self-archiving is mandated, it rapidly rises toward 100%. (Datum,
    not hypothesis.)

    No evidence has been reported to date that self-archiving causes
    cancellations. (Datum, not hypothesis.)

        *Self-archiving might eventually cause cancellations and a change
        in journal publishing model. (Hypothesis)

        4.2 Hypothetical Sequel
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

Mea culpa. Hypotheses non fingo.

There is no Harnad model.

    Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005)
    Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence
    and Fruitful Collaboration.
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/

Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Oct 10 2006 - 13:37:24 BST

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