On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Steve Black wrote:

> 3.  Editors of journals monitor the preprint archive, and contact the
> authors whose papers they are interested in publishing.  (Conference
> program committees could refer to it, as well).

  As an editor, I certainly would have no problem with this part..
  Scouting articles is a major time sink.

  I noticed last year that many members of the American Philosophical
  Association already post preprints to a web site.

> 5.  When the reviewed and edited paper has been published, a note is added
> to the preprint to inform readers of the published version.

This is the bit that bothers me. Academics have to publish to peer
reviewed journals for P&T. But if the List is considered peer reviewed,
like Libres or Information Research are peer reviewed e-journals, what
incentive would authors have to seek publication in hard copy? They would
have fulfilled the P&T requirements.

Publishing with a major publisher involves transfer of copyright to that
publisher.

Once an article was published in a "real" journal, you'd have to remove
the article from the preprint list.

But as we know, Lists get archived. So the preprint versions would
probably still be available. As well, many Lists get reposted to Usenet
News in the .bit hierarchy, and become available to the whole world.

I am not condemning the idea!!! I think it already works in some fields
(as per the philosophers).  The notion that professional writers might
steal your work is, I think not worth worrying about. But students will
certainly borrow bits for essays! I am reasonably sure they already mine
Web sites for suitable material and don't give proper attributions. ;-(

An interesting alternative is the RealSci Academic Resources Channel Web
site (http://www.realsci.com). They select material from the Web, add
abstracts, catalogue it, and then point the viewer back to the original
Web site. They put a copyright statement on their pages, which I think is
a bit misleading, but I am not too worried. It's the enhancements, not the
articles, which consititute an original work. I wonder if ordinary readers
know that though....

cbs
---
       Chris Brown-Syed PhD. Editor, Library & Archival Security.
       <mailto:ad6509@wayne.edu> <http://valinor.purdy.wayne.edu>
     Never give up if the objective is worthwhile - Lionel Gregory.