Comments on: Blog-style annotation and in-depth criticism: New niche for academic journals, in wake of Harvard open-access move? http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:57:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Much ado about the Harvard OA policy « Be openly accessible or be obscure http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-723329 Much ado about the Harvard OA policy « Be openly accessible or be obscure Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:48:14 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-723329 [...] Blog-style annotation and in-depth criticism: New niche for academic journals, in wake of Harvard open-access move? David Rothman, TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, February 17, 2008. Excerpt: Will this kill off academic journals? Not all of them. [...] [...] Blog-style annotation and in-depth criticism: New niche for academic journals, in wake of Harvard open-access move? David Rothman, TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, February 17, 2008. Excerpt: Will this kill off academic journals? Not all of them. [...]

]]> By: Sherman Dorn http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718379 Sherman Dorn Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:07:09 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718379 More thoughts <a href="http://www.shermandorn.com/mt/archives/001183.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>. More thoughts here.

]]> By: gnaw http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718344 gnaw Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:07:39 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718344 As a social sciences student, virtually everything I read nowadays comes as a poorly scanned pdf files of journals and books (though the journals database services that the library subscribes to seem to be getting better). It'd be nice to see something that would print out looking better than my kitchen sink (which is messy and full of unwashed dishes). Or, better yet, it'd be nice to have a e-reading friendly format so I wouldn't have to print everything out in the first place. Last semester alone, I printed out 1300+ pages of text (more than double my allotted print quota, and yes, I do print double-sided. Unfortunately IU doesn't give us any bit of a break for doing so, so most people don't). Oh, and not to mention the hassles of trying to get into the labs during the day! They're always full with far too many people just dinking around on facebook and myspace to kill time between classes. But anyhow, more ejournals would be nice. My Palm and I would love it. And if I ever get smart enough to write something someone else would have reason to read, I'll make sure it's easily accessible online in a plethora of user-friendly formats for readers of all types. As a social sciences student, virtually everything I read nowadays comes as a poorly scanned pdf files of journals and books (though the journals database services that the library subscribes to seem to be getting better). It’d be nice to see something that would print out looking better than my kitchen sink (which is messy and full of unwashed dishes). Or, better yet, it’d be nice to have a e-reading friendly format so I wouldn’t have to print everything out in the first place. Last semester alone, I printed out 1300+ pages of text (more than double my allotted print quota, and yes, I do print double-sided. Unfortunately IU doesn’t give us any bit of a break for doing so, so most people don’t). Oh, and not to mention the hassles of trying to get into the labs during the day! They’re always full with far too many people just dinking around on facebook and myspace to kill time between classes.

But anyhow, more ejournals would be nice. My Palm and I would love it. And if I ever get smart enough to write something someone else would have reason to read, I’ll make sure it’s easily accessible online in a plethora of user-friendly formats for readers of all types.

]]> By: Sherman Dorn http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718294 Sherman Dorn Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:26:50 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718294 Let me follow up on Garson's comment: ISI itself is problematic in terms of the selection of journals (which depends on citations from journals already in the ISI citation indices, a sort of academic country club nomination process). But that's an area that's being addressed to some extent by competition, both some proprietary stats and also by the Herzog Publish-or-Perish software (and its use of different bibliometrics). I need to write an entry in my own blog, but the deeper issue is not the reputational economy of academics (you can look to the physics-community arXiv system and the National Bureau of Economic Research for alternatives that rely heavily on working papers) but the economic support of journals. The Public Library of Science model depends on submission/publication fees levied on authors, which makes sense in a heavily grant-supported area. It makes no sense in the humanities and great parts of the social sciences. Even if you wanted to trust the development of post-publication reputational dynamics, a system such as arXiv needs money for back-end operations. That's the great problem. Let me follow up on Garson’s comment: ISI itself is problematic in terms of the selection of journals (which depends on citations from journals already in the ISI citation indices, a sort of academic country club nomination process). But that’s an area that’s being addressed to some extent by competition, both some proprietary stats and also by the Herzog Publish-or-Perish software (and its use of different bibliometrics).

I need to write an entry in my own blog, but the deeper issue is not the reputational economy of academics (you can look to the physics-community arXiv system and the National Bureau of Economic Research for alternatives that rely heavily on working papers) but the economic support of journals. The Public Library of Science model depends on submission/publication fees levied on authors, which makes sense in a heavily grant-supported area. It makes no sense in the humanities and great parts of the social sciences. Even if you wanted to trust the development of post-publication reputational dynamics, a system such as arXiv needs money for back-end operations. That’s the great problem.

]]> By: Elizabeth Pisani http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718266 Elizabeth Pisani Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:22:21 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718266 I do so hope you are right. Science journals are in desperate need of a shake-up, and Open Access is more than shake-up, it's a tsunami. But some are doing better at scratching out a niche than others. Interestingly,that crusty old dame the British Medical Journal is doing better than most. Having said that, though, I left an <a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/336/7637/185#188595" rel="nofollow">on-line comment</a> on a debate recently, and got no reaction. When the same comment was published in the print version, I was deluged with e-mails from people I had never heard of. So I guess plain old paper still has its place. For more on open access in science: http://www.wisdomofwhores.com I do so hope you are right. Science journals are in desperate need of a shake-up, and Open Access is more than shake-up, it’s a tsunami. But some are doing better at scratching out a niche than others. Interestingly,that crusty old dame the British Medical Journal is doing better than most. Having said that, though, I left an on-line comment on a debate recently, and got no reaction. When the same comment was published in the print version, I was deluged with e-mails from people I had never heard of. So I guess plain old paper still has its place.

For more on open access in science: http://www.wisdomofwhores.com

]]> By: Garson O'Toole http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718253 Garson O'Toole Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:08:31 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/02/17/blog-style-annotation-and-in-depth-criticism-new-niche-for-academic-journals-in-wake-of-harvard-open-access-move/#comment-718253 David Rothman said:<blockquote>I can even see link-related algorithms to help quantify this. The more links you get, and the better the numerical ratings, the more valuable your paper could be in your quest for tenure.</blockquote>The idea of “link counting” has been present for many years in academia. One of the pioneers was Eugene Garfield's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Wikipedia has relevant articles discussing <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index" rel="nofollow">Citation index</A>, <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Citation_Index" rel="nofollow">Science Citation Index SCI</A>, <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Sciences_Citation_Index" rel="nofollow"> Social Sciences Citation Index SSCI</A>, and <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Humanities_Citation_Index" rel="nofollow">Arts and Humanities Citation Index AHCI</A>. Note however that the links compiled and analyzed by ISI predate world-wide-web links. The links are based on citations inside journal publications. Algorithms are executed using the database of linkages to attempt to assess “citation impact” and “journal impact”. There was a research project that once harvested papers from the web and built a citation indexing engine called <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citeseer" rel="nofollow">CiteSeer</A>. According to Wikipedia “CiteSeer has not been comprehensively updated since roughly 2000”. David Rothman said:
I can even see link-related algorithms to help quantify this. The more links you get, and the better the numerical ratings, the more valuable your paper could be in your quest for tenure.

The idea of “link counting” has been present for many years in academia. One of the pioneers was Eugene Garfield’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Wikipedia has relevant articles discussing Citation index, Science Citation Index SCI, Social Sciences Citation Index SSCI, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index AHCI.

Note however that the links compiled and analyzed by ISI predate world-wide-web links. The links are based on citations inside journal publications. Algorithms are executed using the database of linkages to attempt to assess “citation impact” and “journal impact”. There was a research project that once harvested papers from the web and built a citation indexing engine called CiteSeer. According to Wikipedia “CiteSeer has not been comprehensively updated since roughly 2000”.

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