Re: "Accepted Manuscript"

[Greg Tananbaum <gtananbaum@gmail.com>]

You are surely not the only one who worries about such matters, 
Sandy, although you no doubt articulate your concerns better than 
most.  Let's look at this from another angle, though.  What 
exactly is the potential harm here?  Do we think that a scientist 
is going to read the "wrong" version of a paper and, as a result, 
make catastrophic errors in her own work?  Do we think that a 
student will cite something other than the version of record in 
his honors thesis and get dinged by his advisor?  Do we think 
that a cancer patient will read a draft rather than the finished 
version of an article and, as a consequence, will be misinformed 
about treatment options?  These all seem like rather unlikely 
scenarios from my perspective, though I am more than willing to 
be shown there are other, more realistically harmful 
possibilities I have failed to consider.

I think that as a discipline, scholarly communication is very 
concerned with the notion of authority (not the Stalin kind, but 
rather the definitive source of information kind).  Perhaps our 
real fear here is that eventually the notion of version authority 
will erode completely.  Stevan Harnad would applaud this; Joe 
Esposito might shed a tear.  This mirrors the other lively thread 
bouncing around Liblicense this week.  Lots of versions of the 
same basic paper likely means better access.  It also likely 
means some consumer-side confusion.

The question, at least in my mind, is whether this confusion 
amounts to anything more dangerous than a case of the queasies 
for the scholarly communication space.  Is there the chance of 
real harm - tangible, demonstrable - here?  And, if so, can 
someone articulate it for the list?

Best, Greg

Greg Tananbaum
Consulting Services at the Intersection of Technology, Content, & Academia
(510) 295-7504
greg@scholarnext.com
http://www.scholarnext.com