COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

--A paper may be posted to the author's Web site but may not be updated to include the results of refereeing and editing, which "reflects the value we have added in the publication process and that the textual integrity of this final paper is best preserved by reference to the published article."--

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind about how this conflict will be resolved, sooner or later? Is there any way that Learned Inquiry itself benefits from such a self-serving restriction?

It is hard to envision the potential conflict of interest between author and university that appears to be worrying Professor Ransdell

"the institution [might] decide... that it didn't want its intellectual property given away by being made freely available on-line, either in an archive like that at Los Alamos or on any other Web site, including its own".

Do I need to remind Professor Ransdell that this is that self-same publish-or-perish literature that promotion and tenure committees are pressuring us all to swell with our work? Now why one earth, once access to that work can no longer be blocked by publisher tolls, would our promotion and tenure committees suddenly become interested in the suppression of free access to it? For surely free (as opposed to paid) access is inherent in the very motivation for the PUBLICation of the fruits of our research in the first place, is it not?

-- Stevan Harnad, Professor, Southampton University (posted 9/17, 11:30 a.m., E.D.T.)

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