[UPS] FW: RePEc mentioned in Science article (fwd)

Mon, 08 Nov 1999 20:04:31 +0100

Hi,

As I mentioned before, Marshall from Science was writing something about
UPS without having seen a press release.  In order to avoid disasters
from happening, I wrote an initial version of the press release, which
he has received several days before publishing his article.  Although
the version I sent was not the final one, it definitely did not contain
any of the more serious flaws of the Marshall story.  If someone wants
to check the validity of this argument, I can send the initial release. 
Apart from that, I know that Marshall has been calling around to
interview some participants at the meeting; I do not know who, neither
what they told him.

I agree with Carl that the article seems to miss some essential elements
and concentrates too much on others, for instance:
- Van de Sompel said nothing about "indexing" or so, actually Van de
Sompel didn't SAY ANYTHING at all except he was worried about what was
going to be in Science.  Van de Sompel only SENT an initial version of
the press-release to avoid the worse from happening.  Answering Carl's
metadata comment, I actually think Marshall confuses indexing and
metadata.
- Marshall contrasts UPS with Biomed Central, which is a bad idea
- Marshall has used information connected to the agenda (Santa Fe
Agreement) disregarding the fact that such info was no longer valid and
actually explicitely said on Krichel's site that it was fully
unofficial.
- Marshall doesn't say anything about the prototype work, which has
involved many people for several months.  

So, indeed, this story is far from perfect.  On the other hand, it is
promotion for the initiative and I think we should see it as such. 
There is no way one can effectively control what a journalist is going
to write.  I really tried very hard by sending the man the press
release.  Taken that into account, I think we should actually be glad
that the overall tone of the article is positive.  

Greetings

herbert

Carl Lagoze wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Is it my imagination or does this Science article differ substantially in
> content from the press release that is on the ups web site and which was
> sent to all of us.  First point (for which you can all accuse me of focusing
> on personal interests) is there is no mention of Dienst or common metadata
> throughout this entire article.  Second point, and the one I find more
> disturbing, is that the article focuses on the "Santa Fe Agreement" which
> from my memory we almost all saw as seriously flawed and almost a
> non-starter.  The press release uses the term Santa Fe Convetions which is
> much more accurate.
> 
> Where did the source for this Science article come from?
> 
> Carl
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> Carl Lagoze, Digital Library Scientist
> Department of Computer Science, Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY 14853 USA
> Phone: +1-607-255-6046
> FAX: +1-607-255-4428
> E-Mail: lagoze@cs.cornell.edu
> WWW: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/lagoze/lagoze.html
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Brickley [mailto:Daniel.Brickley@bristol.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, November 08, 1999 1:01 PM
> To: Carl Lagoze
> Subject: RePEc mentioned in Science article (fwd)
> 
> dont know if you saw this already
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 15:33:43 +0000
> From: Thomas Krichel <T.Krichel@surrey.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: repec-tech@mailbase.ac.uk
> To: RePEc-tech List <RePEc-tech@mailbase.ac.uk>
> Subject: RePEc mentioned in Science article
> 
>   From this week's edition of "Science".
>   Do not circulate this widely because it is copyrighted
> 
>   Thomas Krichel                       http://gretel.econ.surrey.ac.uk
>                                    RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>   offline 1999-11-18 to 1999-11-21
> 
> SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING:
> Researchers Plan Free Global Preprint Archive
> 
> Eliot Marshall
> 
> While the National Institutes of Health (NIH) moves ahead with plans
> to create a free database of biological publications, a group of
> research librarians and information experts is trying to concoct
> something more far-reaching.  The leaders--who are following the model
> of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) physics archive--met last
> week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to begin working out the framework for a
> "universal preprint archive" that would include papers from all
> disciplines. By November, according to spokesperson Herbert Van de
> Sompel of the University of Ghent in Belgium, the group hopes to
> release a set of indexing protocols that would permit authors to
> deposit their work at participating sites and readers to retrieve the
> full text at no cost.
> 
> Van de Sompel, an expert on digital libraries, teamed up with Paul
> Ginsparg, founder of the LANL archive, and LANL research library
> director Rick Luce to organize last week's meeting. In attendance were
> more than 20 information specialists representing a variety of
> institutions, from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute
> of Technology to NASA and the U.S. Library of Congress. All support
> the idea of making scientific papers freely accessible to the public,
> although individual participants differ on specifics, such as how to
> handle non-peer-reviewed material.
> 
> The group aims to encourage the growth of preprint repositories such
> as the Los Alamos archive and knit them together with a set of
> protocols.  Ginsparg's project at LANL began in 1991 as an archive for
> physics. Now it contains more than 100,000 papers on math, physics,
> and computer science. Ginsparg declined to discuss the new project in
> detail but said, "The hope is ... [to] catalyze real progress in new
> scholarly publishing models over the next 5 to 10 years" (see
> vole.lanl.gov/ups).
> 
> Several groups have already established preprint archives in their own
> disciplines, some of which have grown rapidly. For example, economists
> have organized several repositories in a site called Research Papers
> in Economics, coordinated by Thomas Krichel of the University of
> Surrey, U.K.  (netec.mimas.ac.uk/RePEc).  And Stevan Harnad of the
> University of Southampton, U.K., oversees CogPrints, a collection of
> papers in cognitive science, psychology, neurology, linguistics, and
> related fields (cogprints.soton.ac.uk). Last week's meeting was aimed
> at stimulating other grass-roots efforts.
> 
> Van de Sompel says they "managed to agree on some important technical
> matters that will enable the creation of cross-archive end-user
> services," which are now being worked out in detail. The format is
> likely to follow a model described in a draft "Santa Fe Agreement"
> released earlier this month by Krichel. This draft, which lacks the
> indexing tags agreed upon last week, establishes a process by which
> archives and data providers can affiliate with the group. For example,
> it requires unanimous consent for changes and declares that the
> objective is "open and cooperative" sharing of data.
> 
> The Santa Fe effort differs in tone from NIH's PubMed Central: It's
> more radical. At present, the latter is gearing up to be a distributor
> of traditional peer-reviewed articles. But the Santa Fe archivists are
> focused on another type of scholarly discourse, one in which editors,
> peer reviewers, and paper will be optional.
> 
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