---
abstract: |-
Currently there are six candidate strategies for freeing the refereed research
literature:
(1) Authors paying journal publishers for publisher-supplied online-offprints.
(2) Asking journals to give away their contents online for free and boycotting
those that do not. (3) Library consortial support (e.g. SPARC) for lower-priced
journals. (4) Delayed journal give-aways -- 6-to-12+ months after
publication. (5) Giving up established journals and peer review altogether, in
favour of self-archived preprints and post-hoc, ad-lib commentary. (6)
Self-archiving all preprints and postprints.
(1) - (5) all require waiting for policy changes and, even once these are
available, all require a needless sacrifice on the part of authors. With (1) the
sacrifice is the needless author offprint expense, with (2) it is the author's right
to submit to their preferred journals, with (3) it is (as before) the author's
potential impact on those potential users who cannot afford even the lowered
access tolls, with (4) it is the impact of the all-important first 6-12 months
after publication, and with (5) the sacrifice is the quality of the literature itself.
Only (6) asks researchers for no sacrifices at all, and no waiting for any
change in journal policy or price. The only delay factor has been authors' own
relative sluggishness in just going ahead and doing it! Nevertheless, (6) is
well ahead of the other 5 candidates, in terms of the total number of papers
thus freed already, thanks to the lead taken by the physicists.
altloc:
- http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/minotaur/
chapter: ~
commentary: ~
commref: 'http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318a Roberts et al., "Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature" Science 291 2001'
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creators_id: []
creators_name:
- family: Harnad
given: Stevan
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
date: 2001
date_type: published
datestamp: 2001-07-18
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dir: disk0/00/00/17/02
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eprint_status: archive
eprintid: 1702
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full_text_status: public
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keywords: 'electronic publishing, peer review, self-archiving, copyright'
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:45
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publication: Ariadne
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refereed: FALSE
referencetext: |-
Roberts et al., Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318aPubMedCentral at http://pubmedcentral.nih.gov/BioMed Central at http://www.biomedcentral.com/Stevan Harnad, How and Why To Free All Refereed Research From Access- and Impact-Barriers Online, Now, at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/science.htmStevan Harnad, The Self-Archiving Initiative Freeing the refereed research literature online at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/naturenew.htmUniversity Eprint Archives at http://www.eprints.org/Roberts et al.'s article, Science's Response: Is a Government Archive the Best Option? at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318bStevan Harnad, AAAS's Response: Too Little, Too Late at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/291/5512/2318bNature Web debates - Future e-access to the primary literature at http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/SPARC - The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition at http://www.arl.org/sparc/home/Harnad, S. (2000) Ingelfinger Over-Ruled: The Role of the Web in the Future of Refereed Medical Journal Publishing, Lancet Perspectives 256 (December Supplement): s16. at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.lancet.htm Nature Web debates - Authors willing to pay for instant web access at http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/walker.htmlarXiv.org e-Print archive at http://arxiv.org/Science Magazine - Is a Government Archive the Best Option? at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318bA concrete proposal for an automatically refereed scholarly electronic journal at http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/427333.htmlPrima-Facie FaQs for Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, "I worry about self-archiving because..." at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#8Harnad (2001). A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of freeing access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum at http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.htmlHarnad, S. (2001) For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now. at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm Science Magazine - Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318aNew England Journal of Medicine at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/344/22/1710?ijkey=GOhd24UhGnM26&keytype=ref&siteid=nejmHarnad, S. (2000) E-Knowledge: Freeing the Refereed Journal Corpus Online. Computer Law & Security Report 16(2) 78-87. [Rebuttal to Bloom Editorial in Science and Relman Editorial in New England Journalof Medicine].
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad00.scinejm.htm Harnad, S. (1998/2000) The invisible hand of peer review. Nature [online] (5 Nov. 1998)
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature2.html
relation_type: []
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reportno: ~
rev_number: 8
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status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:39:48
subjects:
- archives
succeeds: ~
suggestions: ~
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thesistype: ~
title: 'Six Proposals for Freeing the Refereed Literature Online: A Comparison'
type: journale
userid: 63
volume: 28