Re: Docster & Scholarly Publishing

[Eric Schnell <schnell.9@osu.edu>]

At 04:12 PM 5/24/2000 , Karen Coyle wrote:

 > University of California has just launched a project in "e-scholarship" to
 > facilitate scholarly communication within the University, some of which
 > will undoubtedly bypass the traditional publishing paradigm.

     I'm sorry if this discussion is moving away from the OSS focus, but in 
time it could lead us back around...

    The e-scholarship idea is more in line with what I would like to see, 
but getting all the Universities working in consort becomes yet another 
hurdle.   I feel SPARC (and similar) initiatives are valiant attempts to 
reel publishers in to readjust the current paradigm.  Copyright issues 
would still remain and Docster would still be difficult to implement.

      Let's look at Dan's Docster treatise.  I feel our discussions are a 
type of peer-review of his work, except we are providing PEER (Professional 
Evaluation and Editorial Review)  review *after* it is published.  In fact, 
I feel that our feedback may be a more helpful to him than if he submitted 
it to a traditional journal, had maybe three people look it over.  Some 
publications are meant to live and evolve in electronic formats and are 
perhaps more valuable contributions than those locked down on paper.

      Perhaps, a Docsterlike could be a central site which provides access 
to "grey literature" publications like Dan's.  A value is attached to each 
document based on the number of times it downloaded / accessed / reviewed / 
hyperlinked / etc. Valued publications will be higher on the "charts".  An 
electronic publication citation analysis.

     Just tossing around some thoughts.

-Eric



Eric Schnell
Assistant Professor
Head, Information Technology Services
Prior Health Sciences Library
The Ohio State University
schnell.9@osu.edu / 614-292-4870
http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/eric.html