Re: Correction (RE: Thatcher vs. Harnad)

["Pippa Smart" <pippa.smart@googlemail.com>]

If peer review is the way to filter information then where does 
this leave the repositories - will they simply become so much 
noise in the information environment, their content lacking the 
credibility of the journal because they have no peer review 
system? (i.e. only the journal articles within them have 
credibility?) I am sure there will be content of some worth 
within them that has not been published in a journal - so how can 
this be assessed?

Unfortunately peer review is also terribly flawed - 
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/287/21/2784 and 
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/293/5538/2187a but 
is the best system we have at present. Post-publication comments 
only seem to work well in certain disciplines (perhaps the ones 
where people have more time!)

Time constraints require some "barriers" (probably not the best 
term) to provide pre-selected lists to make research more 
efficient - what is required is not a barrier to publish, but a 
barrier to be selected as quality.

Pippa Smart
Research Communication and Publishing Consultant
Tel: +44 1865 864255
Mob: +44 7775 627688
Skype: pippasmart
pippa.smart@googlemail.com

****

On 03/07/07, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> (1) Yes, there is an information glut.
> (2) No, subscription tolls are not the rational way to filter it.
> (3) Peer review is.
> (4) Then the user can exercise choice, guided by the quality-control
> tags of peer review (the journal-name and track-record).
> (5) And open commentary can serve as a further, back-up filter.
> (6) Most of the attempted of defences of toll-barriers continue
> to be (often entirely unconsciously) papyrocentric, failing,
> deeply, to assimilate the nature and potential of the online
> medium for give-away research, written purely for impact, not for
> income.
>
> Stevan Harnad