2 messages, 290 lines:

(1)----------------------------
Date:         Wed, 24 May 2000 19:09:32 -0400
From:         Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      Re: Harnad vs. Henderson: A view from the bleachers

On 23 May 2000 David Goodman <dgoodman@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU> wrote:

[snip]

> I think they are indeed looking at quality and, Al, that you are not.
> You have been maintaining on this list and elsewhere that everything
> currently published, and more, is worth publishing, even at the current
> costs.

That's simply not accurate. I apologize if I have been
so un-clear.

My position is that much research is poorly prepared.
Authors and referees are poorly informed. Money spent on
such poorly informed research is wasted.

I cannot hold that the work product of poor science is
"worth publishing," even if merit review panels OK the
research and support the article for publication. Its
only saving grace is that some fraction is well done and
another is brilliant.

I might add that editors readily admit a bias against
"negative results" no matter how well prepared and
executed the research might be. This is too bad, because
it lays the ground for more wasted efforts.

Garvey (and others) pointed out that the judgments of peer
review are subject to change as referees become better informed.
(COMMUNICATION: THE ESSENCE OF SCIENCE Pergamon 1979)

The bottleneck in communication created by impoverished
libraries must share the blame for keeping researchers
in the dark and generating poorly prepared science.

THE SOLUTION: The only way to improve the quality of R&D --
and its work product -- is to improve the preparation of
proposals and the knowledge of referees.

> I know that in my subject this statement shows an ignorance of the
> relatively low worth of most of it, and I suspect this is true of many if
> not all other fields. (It might help you realize this if -- off the list--
> you and I were to examine some of the actual material published in any
> field we both understood.)

Spitzer's task force on 'whiplash-related injuries' screened
10,000 citations dated after 1980 from Medline. They found only
239 to be relevant (not a good recommendation for Medline,
which I believe covers barely half the substantive literature).
They eliminated two thirds of the remainder as unacceptable science,
ending up with ONLY 62 good sources.(Spitzer, Walter O., et al. 1995.
Scientific monograph of the Quebec task force on whiplash-associated
disorders: redefining "whiplash" and its management.  Spine. 20, 8S
supplement:1S-73S)

More evaluations like Spitzer's in every field -- more 'library research'
-- would be far better and more useful than wasting more money on poorly
prepared laboratory, clinical, and field studies.

> The provision of the optimal information does not mean provision of the
> maximal information. No researchers could do original research if it was
> also necessary for them to keep track of literally all conceivably
> relevant work. What the librarian's role is, in both reader services and
> collections building, is to help them find the information they need, and
> avoid the information they do not need. The second part of that is the
> harder.

The first recommendation of the 1963 President's Science Advisory
Committee was:

        The technical community must recognize that handling
        of technical information is a worthy and integral part
        of science.... We shall cope with the information explosion,
        in the long run, only if some scientists re prepared to
        commit themselves deeply to the job of sifting, reviewing,
        and synthesizing information; i.e., to handling information
        with sophistication and meaning, not merely mechanically.
        Such scientists must create new science, not just shuffle
        documents: their activities of reviewing, writing books,
        criticizing, and synthesizing are as much a part of science
        as is traditional research."

> But for all the information they need, they are no longer dependent upon
> the scientific journals for distributing it or even for validating it. I
> will not recap all the proposals, and I do not claim to be able to predict
> what the successful system will prove to be. But I do know that we could
> adequately distribute all current research at very much less cost without
> loss of essential function, and I think we will.

The proposals for alternatives all miss the point. They go
sailing off into the nether land of automatic data processing,
as if technology could substitute for the labor of thinking.

What we need is intelligent review. We need more evaluations,
summaries and syntheses, not more document shuffling.

> Libraries do need additional resources. We will not get them if it is not
> thought we will use them wisely. Spending yet more over the indefinite
> future on the present system of scientific journals is about the most
> unproductive use of the money I can imagine. I, like you, want everything
> possible to be available for research. But I know that this can only be
> done if it is made available at a practical cost. If you insist upon
> making it available in a way appropriate only to the most prestigious
> material , the result will be that it will not be made available at all.
> The more esoteric the material, the smaller the audience, the truer this
> is. The more a university library is a research institution, the truer it
> is. Even if some research libaries were funded as you hope, most of the
> educational world would not be able to afford them. The more important you
> general availability is, the more important low cost is. I think it more
> important to disseminate the results of research and scholarship than to
> price them as luxuries.
>
> Al, a personal plea: if you would direct your efforts to finding out what
> researchers and teachers really need now, and helping us get it, you would
> do much more good than if you continue to maintain, contrary to all
> experience over the last decade at least, that what they need is a bigger
> and more expensive version of a cumbersome and outmoded system.

Here again I feel that I am not communicating
effectively. I am not selling subscriptions here. I am
offering "library research" as the solution to the
challenge of preparing effective R&D. You can credit
publishers with the main effort to provide reviews
and translations of major lines of research.

What researchers and teachers really need is a
distillation of the massive production of "findings"
generated as primary research articles, preprints,
conference papers, emails, etc. Many medical journals
have adopted a standard for reports of randomized
clinical trials, asking that the authors discuss the
results in the context of all other relevant reports.
Authors are unable to comply, perhaps because they
lack adequate library resources.

Major corporations mount task forces similar to
Spitzer's (described above) in order to make certain
that their engineers are abreast of all relevant
information. Why should corporations share? Such
reports become a "trade secret" giving them a
competitive advantage.

The task force summary solution has yet to be adopted
by the science agencies that sponsor academic science.
In the meantime, they and university managers should
accept the blame for poor information resources that
undermine progress.

Best wishes,

Albert Henderson
Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532@compuserve.com>

(2)----------------------------
Date:         Wed, 24 May 2000 19:09:35 -0400
From:         Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      Re: Harnad vs. Henderson: A view from the bleachers

on May 23, 2000 Peter Picerno [mailto:ppicerno@choctaw.astate.edu] wrote:

> What strikes me as interesting is that in the entirety of this discussion,
> little mention has been made of one of the more ubiquitous driving forces
> for research and publication -- and that is the requirement for
> publication to be used in the service of the almighty promotion and tenure
> process. I know from my own association with one aspect of 'scientific'
> research that studies are often rushed into print with inadequate
> population samples, shaky statistical manipulations of data, and shoddy
> peer reviews. Some of these studies have appeared in the so-called
> prestigious journals and some have been presented at conferences. This has
> led me to question the validity of the motivation for a lot of research in
> many fields as well as the results. I do not, certainly, mean to denigrate
> research and researchers,

Why not denigrate research and researchers? Who OKs
spending money on research that generates reports
that would be discarded in 10 years? Research is more
costly than publications. Poorly prepared research
wastes far more money than the resulting publication
bloat.

>                             however, I do like to quote an article in the NY
> Times which appeared some months ago (in regards to the AMA publications,
> I think) in which the writer stated that if publication were not a part of
> the promotion and tenure requirements of academia, about two-thirds of the
> world's journals could comfortably cease to exist.

It would be nice if such conjectures were supported by
any sort of facts. If you are referring to the article
by Dr Altman that appeared 24 August (F7), I found that
it was filled with errors. It equated "page charges"
with "vanity publishing," for instance. The front page
story on "Lobbying for Research Money" by Tim Weiner
identified the real devils in science. At least the
journals still rely on peer review, even if referees
are often no better informed that authors.

>                                                      The very fact that many
> academic P-T committees will not regard electronic publishing as a valid
> forum for research further adds to the lumbering and archaic system to
> which Mr. Moore refers. Until academia comes up with other criteria for
> P-T, we will be saddled with an academic arena bloated with journals, many
> of which exist simply as vehicles for publications which are necessary to
> satisfy the requirements of academia.

It would be nice if libraries met the same standard and
satisfied "the requirements of academia" expressed by
academic senates, faculty, researchers, students, etc.

>                                         Since it seems that journals are a
> black hole both in terms of information (good or bad) and in terms of
> cost, the hard cold fact remains that no library -- even in the best of
> circumstances -- could begin to afford even a smattering of journals in
> all of the fields which the library is to support. Hence, librarians must
> make decisions, and those decisions must be made in favor of the majority
> of the university patrons and not a small vested-interest group (or, more
> specifically, one faculty member). If a journal enjoys very little use by
> library patrons, there is every justification for cutting it -- if someone
> has a real interest in the information contained in that journal, there
> are many ways of getting it (I mean, would it be too much to ask that a
> faculty member subscribe themselves -- and usually for a fraction of the
> cost of an institutional membership????).

According to studies going back decades and even
a statement last year to Congress, researchers
ofent use their grant money to buy books and
subscriptions. Too bad they are not obligated to
share them with other members of the university.
But then they would be stealing librarians' jobs.

>                                              As electronic and digital
> information sweeps over us, libraries are less and less apt to continue to
> be warehouses for everything ever published and are more and more apt to
> become information managing agencies. If this is a real trend, then its
> implications for those adherents to print journals and those who wish to
> warehouse them will be many and deep.

My main concern here is Preservation. Computers are
designed to process data for immediate use, not for
the indefinite future. Like brittle paper, the
systemic problems of outdatable systems and fragile
media are time bombs. Unlike brittle paper, this is
well known now, while something can be done.

>                                        Librarians and publishers alike need
> to look towards the future of publishing -- the real future and not a
> stubborn adherence to what has been! -- rather than clinging to a past
> which is slipping away even as we speak (to whit: the fact that this
> entire discussion has been carried on in electronic form rather than as a
> series of letters to an editor!). Accusing university administrators of
> stinginess in funding, accusing librarians of being short-sighted in
> providing for information needs, and accusing publishers of gouging the
> academic community get nobody anywhere other than taking up lots of bytes
> and time.

> What is needed is an asessment of the system of scholarly communication in
> the 21st century: how it will, and already does, differ from what has come
> before it and how that will impact the publishing industry as well as the
> library industry. What is also needed is an asessment of the evaluative
> tools used for granting tenure and promotions to faculty (assuming that
> such statuses will continue in academia) and the reliance of a possible
> out-moded measurement (i.e., the published article) as a factor in such an
> evaluation. We *have* met the enemy -- and it is very possible that it is
> *all* of us!!

Good idea.

The National Science and Technology Policy, Organization,
and Priorities Act of 1976 called for special attention
to dissemination. Its mandates were ignored by every
Administration and the Office of Science and Technology
Policy. The National Science Foundation eliminated its
studies of dissemination in the late 1970s. Only the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (which was
eliminated a few years ago) raised a fuss in 1989. I would
be interested in explanations why and how the law was ignored.

Best wishes,

Albert Henderson
Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532@compuserve.com>