Essay on E-Journals in Times Higher Education Supplement (Stevan Harnad) ERCELAA@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu 11 May 1995 20:51 UTC
Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 17:01:52 +0100 From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> Subject: Times Higher Education Supplement Friday May 12 an essay about electronic journals by Stevan Harnad, and a counter-essay by Steve Fuller will appear in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Multimedia Page. The first paragraph of each of these essays appears below. Both essays can be accessed through the World Wide Web at the URL: http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk:80/~harnad/THES/thes.html There is a reply to Fuller as well, and more commentaries are invited (see Instructions on the Web Page in question). The discussion will also be archived at the Times Higher Education Supplement's Gopher site: http://gopher.timeshigher.newsint.co.uk/ email: izitim@pavilion.co.uk (Tim Greenough, Multimedia, THES) THE POSTGUTENBERG GALAXY: HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE Stevan Harnad Cognitive Sciences Centre Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ It is time to stop making apocalyptic predictions about the coming of the electropublication era and to start providing concrete strategies for hastening the day. But before proposing anything, I have to describe in some detail an important parting of ways that will be taking place as the literature is launched into cyberspace: The "trade" literature (for want of a better word, though Shakespeare was hardly a tradesman) will go one way, whereas the "esoteric" literature (of specialised scholarly and scientific research) will go another. This esoteric/trade distinction must be clearly understood and kept in mind or none of what follows will make any sense... [see URL for rest] Commentary by Steve Fuller (University of Durham & University of Pittsburgh Steve.Fuller@durham.ac.uk fuller@vms.cis.pitt.edu) The electronic medium is undoubtedly revolutionizing academic communication. But it is still unclear who will benefit in the long term by this revolution. Since so much is up for grabs at this point, a clear sense of where we have come from is needed to make sense of where we might be going. To his credit, Stevan Harnad offers such an account, the "Faustian bargain", which is very much part of the folklore of academic life. Its image of the profit-driven publisher provides a convenient scapegoat and remedy for academics who feel that they never quite get their message across to all who could potentially benefit from it. Unfortunately, like all such self-serving stories, its grain of truth is buried under a mountain of mystification... [see URL for rest]