Publications on WWW

[Marine Biology Laboratory]

Greetings:

I keep seeing my name printed on the screen and wonder if the old 
theatrical axiom that some-publicity-was-better-than-no-publicity is 
in fact true!  Well, since I seem to have broken an egg, may I suggest 
that readers give some thought to helping make the omelet?  Geoff 
recently pointed out an actual on-line journal might be worth 
considering--at least he suggested a title for one.

There are of course broad issues unrelated to the actual information in
the article being discussed here.  I agree that peer review improves all
writing.  Though I wrote all of it, I did not do so in complete privacy,
hidden from editorial inspection.  A previous edition of this posting had
already been distributed/discussed with a number of polychaete workers
locally and made available through as many people as read the local
newsletter (I believe paid readership approaches 100-though not all
polychaete types).  I also realize this did not satisfy the formal ideal
of anonymous peer review typical of paper science journals. I guess this
allows people to ignore the information in there as not validated.  Of
course numerous people have ignored the findings contained in formal peer
reviewed articles.  I invited comments on the contents of the
article--and I continue to invite them. I can only imagine that such
comments will make the topics discussed in the article more complete and
useful.  To date the only such comment of this nature that I recall is
Blake's suggesting an electron microscopic inspection.  I don't have one
of those.

As I have previously commented, the issues of permanence and universal 
public access are poorly served by only one media (historically paper) 
i.e. I still haven't found a copy of Volume 20, 1991 of the journal 
Environmental Control in the U. S. --no access and permanently 
unavailable.  Solution: Distribute on dual media articles deemed 
acceptable for distribution.

I suspect that the rule makers of publications (ICZN, editors) and those 
directly involved as librarians should be included in whatever is 
subsequently discussed.  Like all other cans-of-worms, this one 
benefits from first identifying the worms.  

Bye for now

Tom Parker
mblcsdla at netcom.com