> From: Steve Halliday <SH@soas.ac.uk>
> Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 12:26:07 GMT
>
> Peer review is likely to change. Individuals will put up publications,
> they will be challenged, defended, perhaps modified and challenged
> again. Journal publishers will either become part of this process from
> the outset, or collect papers (we will still probably call them that,
> just as we still refer to type leading) that have stood the test of the
> CyberOnslaught for their recommended archives.
>
> The success of on-line publications will depend on quality and
> reputation. Currently there is so much dross on the net that people are
> reading publications well outside of their field, just to see what is
> happening. This will stabilise as more publications come on-line. The
> first to get there, with quality productions, will establish an
> internet reputation, get themselves into reader's virtual bookmarks and
> fill the CyberNiche. The scramble for the PostGutenberg Galaxy is now on
> - I'm tipping well organised publishing houses and universities, that
> have equipped themselves to conquer the wires, as the new colonialists.
PEER COMMENTARY IS A SUPPLEMENT, NOT A SUBSTITUTE, FOR PEER REVIEW
Halliday's comment contains the seeds of its own refutation: There is
indeed already a great deal of dross on the Net. With more quality
there will inevitably come still more dross. How to sort it out? How to
ensure that the quality (currently controlled by peer review) is
maintained? Quality control in paper scientific publication is not a
combination Darwinian struggle plus popularity poll. Why imagine it
would/should be that on the Net? Peer review is medium-independent.
Peer commentary is a supplement to peer review, not a substitute. If
anyone would know, it's me, having edited a peer-reviewed journal of
open peer commentary for over a decade and a half.
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html
Harnad, S. (1995b) Implementing Peer Review on the Net:
Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals.
In: Peek, R. & Newby, G. (Eds.) Electronic Publishing Confronts Academia:
The Agenda for the Year 2000. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Harnad/harnad95.peer.review
Harnad, S. (1995) Universal FTP Archives for Esoteric Science and
Scholarship: A Subversive Proposal. In: Ann Okerson & James O'Donnell
(Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads; A Subversive Proposal for
Electronic Publishing. Washington, DC., Association of Research
Libraries, June 1995.
ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/Subversive.Proposal
Stevan Harnad
Department of Psychology
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk
phone: +44 01703 592582
fax: +44 01703 594597
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/
ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/11/.libraries/.pujournals
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