Re: Chronicle Article: John Ewing/American Math Society

[Elena A Fraboschi <iumj@indiana.edu>]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> (2) OA is not the same as OA journal publishing (and its cost-recovery
> model); and OA journal publishing is not the way most OA is being
> provided: authors self-archiving their own articles (published in non-OA
> journals) is.

I regret not having the time for a thorough and "perfect" answer but, in
my world, something is better than nothing.  Here is "something".

There once was a bard by the name William Shakespeare I think?  He
"self-archived" all his works, thus paving the way for thousands of jobs
centuries later in order to find out all his works, and nothing but his
works...

"Self-archiving" by authors unfamiliar with "what is acid-free paper?" -
unfamiliar, therefore, with the notion that "permanency" should be
measured by 100 years or more, and not by "While I am at this university,
I assure you that the URL will not change", authors that have the
slightest idea that there is such as thing as metadata that permits
retrieval by search engines...

Please, Stevan, give me a break.  I deal daily with such authors.  
Authors are supposed to know their field, be it medicine, mathematics, or
what have you.  They are not supposed to know computer-ese and library and
information science, in order to publish, disseminate, market, and archive
their works.  Most of the ones who say they do know and can do "a better
job than John Wiley" know less than the ones who say that they know that
they don't know.  :-)

I am being obtuse deliberately.  Maybe that way there is a better chance
of being heard than by spewing platitudes.  

Best, Elena Fraboschi 
(Indiana University Mathematics Journal)