You're right that I've refocused on the small part of your comment where
we have a disagreement (and we DO have some disagreement there) rather
than on the agreement (because it's attempts to resolve disagreements,
rather than rehearse agreements, that are likely to generate something
new).
Yes, there's urgency about launching the paper fleet into the
PostGutenberg Galaxy as soon as possible, but one of the retardants to
that is (in my view) the absence of peer review up there. Serious
scholars and scientists consequently don't think it's a fit place for
high quality work. And suggestions (like yours, I'm afraid) to the
effect that there may be another way -- perhaps open criticism and
comments on unrefereed papers serving as a guide -- are (in my opinion)
inadvertently acting to preserve this status quo, rather than hastening
the PostGutenberg era.
Stevan Harnad
mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
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