These two papers by Eugene Garfield -- founder of the Insitute for
Scientific Information, Current Contents, Science Citation Index,
and originator of the Citation Impact Factor -- might be of interest to
the Open Access community:

    "I believe that posting and sharing one's preliminary publications
    [is] an important part of the peer... review process and does
    not justify an embargo by publishers on the grounds of 'prior
    publication'. It was not the case before the Internet, and exceot
    for unusual clinical situations, has not changed because of the
    convenience of the Internet." (Garfield, 2000)

    Garfield, E. (2000) Is Acknowledged Self-Archiving Prior
    Publication? Presented at Third International Symposium
    on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Mar 17 2000
    http://www.wvu.edu/~thesis/Presentations/Garfield-Web-Publishing.pdf

    Garfield, E. (1999) Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not
    Prior Publication. The Scientist 13(12): 12 (June 7, 1999)
    http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1999/June/comm_990607.html

I am of course in complete agreement with Eugene Garfield --
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm#harn45 --
and would demur only on one point -- minor for what Gene is saying, but
rather major for what should be motivating researchers to self-archive in
the first place -- namely, that self-archiving DOES provide far greater
visibility in the on-line age than on-paper publication alone does. This
too is documented (but it in no way changes the thrust of Gene's very
correct observation, and advice to authors and publishers).

Lawrence, S. (2001a) Online or Invisible? Nature 411 (6837): 521.
http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/

Lawrence, S. (2001b) Free online availability substantially increases a
paper's impact. Nature Web Debates.
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html

Odlyzko, A.M. (2002) The rapid evolution of scholarly communication."
Learned Publishing 15: 7-19
http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/odlyzko.pdf

Harnad, S. & Carr, L. (2000) Integrating, Navigating and Analyzing
Eprint Archives Through Open Citation Linking (the OpCit Project).
Current Science 79(5): 629-638.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/97/index.html

Harnad, 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 Journal of
Medicine]
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/01/index.html

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.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/03/index.html

Harnad, S. (2001) "Research access, impact and assessment." Times Higher
Education Supplement 1487: p. 16.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/83/index.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):

    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
                            or
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org

See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess

and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
    http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm