Re: Standardized metadata tags for peer reviewed and free.

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

Chuck is absolutely right that users need a clear indication of 
the status of journal articles, and there are at least three 
projects underway to ensure that readers are given this 
information. The NISO Standards Development Committee has charged 
a US/European group to investigate journal article version 
control identifiers, and two JISC projects are also working in 
the same area: the VERSIONS Project as part of the JISC 
Repositories Programme looking at version identification for 
journal articles in economics, and a scoping study on version 
identification of all types of content in repositories being 
undertaken by RightsCom for the JISC Scholarly Communication 
Group. The first two are longer term projects but the RightsCom 
study should be avilable publicly in April or May. We have 
mechanisms in place to ensure that the three projects know what 
each other is doing.

In undertaking its work JISC is taking no position on whether any 
particular version is of more value to the user than any other. 
It may be that an un-refereed preprint is of value in certain 
circumstances, as happens for example with the arXiv database. 
What is important is that the user can take the status of the 
article into account in reading it. It would be good to know of 
other work on version identification being undertaken elsewhere, 
particularly outside the US and Europe.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

----- 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