Approved-By:  Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Date:         Tue, 26 Jan 1993 11:05:24 CDT
From:         Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: what is an electronic journal?

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I unfortunately do not have the time to answer at length.

So I will just raise a few points:

  - I fail to see what is the contribution of traditional publishers,
or of almost any other body, in the publishing of electronic journal.
All the real technical work (writing, selection, reviewing,
coordination, etc..) is done by the scientific community. And what is
left can, in an electronic setting, be done with very little means.

  - Considering the tiny future contribution of publishers to the
process, I do not see why they should own copyrights, which is the
only way the payment system can work. The information is produced for
free, and should be available for free (or just the cost of the
transmission medium).  WE DO NOT NEED PUBLISHERS, at least not for
journal, and they know it too (they are scared).
   I am not saying there is no future role for publishers, I do not
know.

  - the proposals I have seen are impressively unimaginative, and
quite totalitarian (I wonder about the political views of their
authors - Benito, I am talking to you...).

  - the role of libraries is (in my uninformed view) to:
     - preserve the information (it has to be much duplicated to be safe)
     - organize the information (preferably in a variety of ways)
     - help retrieval
    A LIBRARY IS NOT A PHONE BOOTH for accessing the information
central service.

> I believed it is an appropriate role for the science library to pay for
> information needed by its clients.  We should, however, encourage a system
> that makes it possible for us to pay for information that is used and NOT pay
> for information that is not used. We need a way to evaluate library
> performance based on user satisfaction instead of counting large numbers of
> documents that may, or may not, ever be used.
>
> Storing information in anticipation of use is not necessarily a role of
> libraries.  It is an historic role, but in the electronic environment it may
> be unnecessary and costly baggage.

 I strongly disagree. Preservation has too be done in many different
ways to be safe (look at nature preservation of genetic information).
You do not want information preserving policies to be centralized
(unless you are politically uncredibly naive, and that applies to
science too). Why should one pay for what has always been free (before
the publisher tag). Publishers need not sollicit... let those who have
something to say write it. The only purpose of solliciting is to
undercut other publishers, not to help the public.

 Selecting papers on the basis of readership is silly. As a scientist
I well know that the correlation between scientific quality and
readership is quite limited. Fashion plays an important role. Major
contributions are often hard to read, and read by few people, and
often quickly superseeded by more readable but then less original
papers.

 Quality evaluation by the masses, as proposed, is the way you got the
high quality TV found in the US and many other countries. Good luck.

  Same remarks apply to indexes and abstracts. There is no reason to
pay the outrageous prices we are currently paying. All we need is a
little bit of organization.

  I am impressed that some of us want to perpetuate structures that
create information poverty. How much are you going to bill third world
countries. I am just incensed by some of the things I have read in
previous transaction.


  The last point is that many scientist are already distributing their
work electronically for free. How well organized are libraries to take
advantage of this (for example my own institute has many reports and
software systems available by anonymous FTP).

  I have to add that I am a research scientist, an author and a
library user, but not a librarian (though I am obviously interested).

  With apologies for anything I may have said a bit too fast.

  Bernard Lang
  INRIA
  Bernard.Lang@inria.fr

"My views are my own, and I share them"
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