Re: Discipline Differences in Benefits/Feasibility of Open Access?

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 20:02:35 +0000

On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, JQ Johnson wrote:

> I think my point in Chemistry was that the discipline believed that they
> did in fact have a concern that trumped "maximizing their research
> impact". They had to withold publication (including witholding
> preprints) until AFTER the patent application was filed. They believe
> that they have found a reasonable compromise that fosters maximized
> research impact within the constraints of that system, but it is one
> that does not permit a preprint culture. Without a preprint culture,
> it's much harder to establish eprints or institutional repository, even
> though these are logically separable. One question in Chemistry is
> whether we can find alternative sells (giving up on eprints). For
> example, we might focus on post-peer-publication deposit of raw data.
>
> A similar concern is those disciplines where the intellectual product is
> more like art than science (fine arts, music, dance, etc.). Again, no
> preprint culture, and hence (perhaps) little interest in institutional
> repositories. On the other hand, in some cases they do have a portfolio
> culture. In these and English, the sell will be, I think, the new
> functionality provided by making available AFTER the fact a history of
> the intellectual product -- we'll encourage authors to save the drafts
> of their books or paintings in our repository, and release them as a set
> after the final product is available. Or we'll focus on archival of
> instructional materials.
>
> Back to preprints, though, can we identify other disciplines that do
> have histories of preprints or tech reports? Some areas of psychology,
> obviously. [aside: do you have data from Psyprints on which areas of
> psychology have been fastest to adopt eprints?] Maybe some areas of
> biology. I don't know enough about the grey literature in most
> engineering disciplines (since my university doesn't have an engineering
> school). Do you know of any systematic studies of the grey literature
> in academia?
>
> JQ Johnson Office: 115F Knight Library
> Academic Education Coordinator e-mail: jqj_at_darkwing.uoregon.edu
> 1299 University of Oregon 1-541-346-1746 (v); -3485 (fax)
> Eugene, OR 97403-1299 http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj
>
Received on Sun Nov 24 2002 - 20:02:35 GMT

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