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Re: Standardized metadata tags for peer reviewed and free.



We're trying to figure out how many peer reviewed articles are made available free of charge by our own members (so far, with just 30 respondents, the total is over 227,000!). I'm sure everyone's aware that there are more than a million such articles on the HighWire service. I'm quite suprised how difficult publishers and hosts are finding it even to work out this figure for their own content.

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 1:17 AM
Subject: Standardized metadata tags for peer reviewed and free.

As the discussion between David Goodman and Phil Davis indicates, the simple questions of whether an article is free or not, peer reviewed or not are almost impossible to answer easily. We need standard metadata tags across ALL types of journals and sites that mark whether an article is free or not and peer reviewed or not. Simple perhaps, but it would support ease of use and identification. Ranganathan's law is basic good sense for publishers and librarians and web indexing systems: don't waste the user's time. While furthering that goal, a side benefit might be some simpler capacity to actually measure the universe of free peer reviewed articles and whether they behave differently than non-free articles and what the variables might be that separate the cited from the uncited.

But first, let's make it simpler for users to identify free peer reviewed articles. It shouldn't be an arcane secret or something only a librarian can figure out. It should be clear and easy to determine which articles are free and scholarly.

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
phone 704 687-2825