Why dont you have your published papers available online?

Apparently people in these groups are reluctant / not willing to distribute copies of their papers online? Or may be the title of my last posting was not blinking enought?

Other possibilities: Nobody on this newsgroup publishes in geology journals and has a web page. I don't have a web page of my own, nor does there seem to be an archive for biology. Is that true?

There is another case worth considering: that of the papers which are not rated as BAD, but which seem too LONG to a journal editor. Publishing a full-fledged book is not always the solution. A pdf document seems the good intermediary one. It depends on the writer to make it as good as possible, and his/her web paper will follow its own destiny:it will be, as well as the printed journal paper, plagiarized, or forgotten in the references, or misunderstood by the reviewers (and by some readers, for that matter). J.J.

Brave job Jo, but putting in a word for the highschoolers here (fresh). Am I being cynical if I say that peer review is firstly political and secondarily scientific, and therefore of diminished worth? The very fact that consensus (in geology at least) is so monolithic amongst the institutionalised, is statement enough of the primacy of political order and of its sterility. Obeying this first requirement, consensus is not interested in discussion, because discussion is not in its interest (deviation 'corrupts'. Clearly when everyone obeys consensus rules (agrees), there is nothing to disagree about, and therefore nothing much (of value) to discuss. Consensus is (mostly) a machine for 'notching the equaliser' on which corruption of academic necessity, publishers feed. At best it secures for itself, for a while, the security of vested interest; at second best it allows consolidation of an already established position, however from the forward position of progress, it is little more than a condemned carcass to be picked over by aforesaid interests. The transmutation of a fresh, new idea into consensus, is a descent, ...one that stultifies, and, eventually, kills. Progress does not grow out of consensus. There is a distinct hiatus. 'Consensus is Dead: Long live consensus!!'. (A bit like the Phoenix - forever rising out of its own ashes - it has to be reborn each time) df. (Who be ye so grimly vile, devours corrupt consensus flesh....? Shame!!) (Go for it, highschoolers...) <grin>

Yes.

There are very rare occasions when review unfairly rejects a paper for reasons other than the science it presents. In my ten years of reviewing and writing papers, I have not seen a single incident of this sort.

We are slightly moving out of the initial question/topic, but aspects of peer-review constitute an interesting issue too!

Going back to my first question 'why are there so few people posting their papers on the web?' - there is the copyright question, and the meaning (I should say the 'feeling' we have) of it is quite different in the USA and in many other places! I contributed to peer-reviewed or not journals where I was not ask to sign any copyright agreement. I can therefore re-issue the papers on the net (when I do so I ask permission to the editor ... in order to be fair ... and so far they never said no!)! - there is also the issue of turning a paper-printed paper into a web page ... - finally there is also the possibility to post to the web (in a dedicated web site) old papers (now in public domain, that is not ours). I have posted some XIX century papers on a virtual library ...

Your feedback is most welcome on all these issues ... one of my goals remains to push people to make their papers available online (self-archiving and electronic publishing).

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Well, It's a bit of a job, doing a webpage (time/labour of love). Also:- 1. It's a different medium - a different 'template' to learn. 2. The medium invites a different style of presentation for effectiveness - much like the difference between email and a letter. (Picture worth a thousand words) 3. It truly democratises information, which is not in the interest of authorship. (MP3's) Who remembers where they got the original bit of information, or idea? And when? And does it matter? 4. The point of papers (hard copy) is often not what's in them, but the papers themselves (numerical 'notch' value - cf. identical papers masquerading under different titles submitted to different journals (authors often happier consigning their work to dusty shelves, rather than the electric throb of the web - cf. just as you ask 'the number of authors putting their work on the web?' 5. By its nature the web (real people really looking) demands real information, not citations (editorial satisfaction). Papers have to be reconstructed (more work)- if they're worth it. ('chaff' factor) 6. Pay a premium to feature through the gateway of a prestigous rag? Or do your own thing?

I can probably think of a few more, but that'll do for now. It's inevitable it will happen, but the question you're asking is really addressing the peer review issue - the importance of 'who's-looking-at-who'(plotilical/ consensus) over content (science). It's really confronting all those authors out there, dying to pay money to some exploitative organisation who will protect them, and will remain till the publishing houses work out a way to combat webrings df. Anyone want to put their stuff up (on) don's ring? Cheep Cheep? <http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ee/nonsense3.html>

A study done by David Hull showed that neither reviewing nor editorial control statistically affected the chance of opponents getting into print in a particular journal (Cladistics) except for a short time.

However, once a view is well established, those who continually revisit a heterodox subject can find it hard to get published *on that subject* for long periods. Most especially this will apply to methodological debates.

I work among scientists helping them prepare articles for publication. Only twice in nearly ten years has one of them commented to me that a paper was rejected because of some SOB reviewer (and they nearly always know who) who opposed their approach; and then they were able to get published very shortly thereafter elsewhere.

Only once was a paper rejected outright, and that was when a researcher stepped right outside his speciality to draw unsupported conclusions.

That there is a political aspect to science has been known since it was professionalised in the mid 19thC. But it tends to play out in grants, appointments, and institutional reviews, not in publications. IMO.

Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a process: an evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Most countries follow an international copyright convention, so these differences are primarily a matter of individual, personal (mis)understanding.

Even if you do sign a copyright transfer to Publisher X, that does not mean you cannot distribute copies of your paper. It means only that you *might* need to first ask Publisher X for permission, and Publisher X *might* say no.

Publishers rarely do say no, for several reasons. First, they need authors and if they say no, they give authors good reason to go to other publishers. Authors usually do not distribute many copies of their papers (not enough to cut subscriptions), but the copies they do distribute mostly go to other authors who will cite the paper and hence boost the 'impact factor' of the journal. This provides a significant benefit for the publisher.

I recommend 'The Copyright Handbook', published by Nolo Press. You can buy it online: http://www.nolo.com

Una Smith

Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS K-710, Los Alamos, NM 87545

Again it looks like it depends on the journal! I have been in contact with the editor of Revue de Micropaleontologie (before they passed under Elsevier), that is a very good paleontological journal, and I asked him a permission to put some of my papers and colleagues' papers too to the web (on the site of our association); he said 'there is no need to ask permission ... the authors own their papers!'. The journal was printed at about 1500 copies and authors usually ask for a hundred of reprints. Reprints or xerox copies of the papers were circulating everywhere and nobody was complaining!

Some journals or books may run out of copies! We recently ask permission to the AAPG to bring to the web a paper published in 1958 by a retired colleague; the book is not available anymore; they gave us permission to use this work!

There are many possibilities to explore and the good thing with self-archiving apart from distributing your work is that you would be able to find your colleagues' works too ... rather than looking for a specific paper on Ostracods in the Geosci. Mag. you will possibly find an author who published a bunch of papers on this group...

One more question: How many scientists either received royalties for their publications? Which was the rate?

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Errr... royalties? The department had to pay to have mine published. I heard the rate was several hundred per paper.

Commercial mags pay the author. Authors normally pay to publish in a professional journal, or that's the way it was explained to me. There are no ads in the journals to defray publishing costs so the subscription cost is high and they charge to publish.