From 53.51 Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: 53.51 (53.51) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:05:25 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:05:30 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: |(Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.) | ================================ | | COMMENTARY | by Eugene Garfield | (Page 12 of newspaper) | |Electronic Publishing Extends Reach Of Scientists And Of The |Scientist | |In his essay on page 10 of this issue, Nobel laureate Joshua |Lederberg describes the many potential benefits to the science |community of electronic publishing. I certainly concur in |advocating its use, as witness my recent decision to mount The |Scientist on NSFnet and the Internet. ... |In any case, regular readers of The Scientist should feel free to |post these files onto their bulletin boards. | |Any reader who wishes to comment directly concerning material |published in The Scientist--or on our new experiment in |electronic publishing--can contact me, via Bitnet, at |garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu; or, via CompuServe, at |70550.130@compuserve.com. If you would like to see more along these lines, contact Eugene Garfield (editor) at those e-mail addresses. -- Don Gilbert gilbert@bio.indiana.edu biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405 From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:05:44 2006 Subject: BioMOO Neuroscience Journal club Message-ID: The first neuroscience journal club for the BioMOO will be held at 12 noon Eastern Standard time, 3-30-94 (wednesday) on the BioMOO. BioMOO is a very active social virtual reality biologic scientific community. It can be reached by Telnet to: bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il 8888 Once there, connect as a guest or establish your own player prior to the journal club. (This is a user friendly environment with a good quick tutorial). When connected follow the signs to the *seminar room* and read the abstract for the neuroscience journal club (type "look abstract"). Please direct any questions to the address below. David McKalip, M.D. Division of Neurosurgery UNC-Chapel Hill dmmckali@gibbs.oit.unc.edu 919-966-1374 From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:05:50 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: > [ Article crossposted from bionet.general,bionet.info-theory,bionet.virology ] > [ Author was Juan Jose Cuellar Toro ] > [ Posted on 9 Sep 1994 10:46:39 -0400 ] > > > Hi > I'm looking for some info about possible realtions between > Arteriosclerosis and Hepatic Cirrhosis , and between Arterotratosis > and Hepatic Cirrhosis. > Any help, paper, reference or anything will be greatly > appreciated. > > > Juan J. Cuellar > jcuellar@inf.utfsm.cl Why not do a MEDLINE search using the above for keywords? By listing them exactly as you have them, any article that has the words Arteriosclerosis _and_ Hepatic Cirrhosis, etc. will be found for you. 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Either this is just more of the same (remember, we were the only ones stupid enough to ever have applied for a "Feasibility Grant"), or CBCRC is trying to break away from the clutches of NCIC. I doubt the latter, because of the same old euphamism for squelching innovation: "However, all applications will be reviewed according to the highest standards of peer review." I'm sending this to my colleagues in the Canadian Association for Responsible Research Funding, and to Radhika. Yours, -Dick Gordon >Jerry and Richard, > >Here is more. Richard, do you know if this is a Government initiativ or >is it afilliated to the NCIC. > >Al > > >______________________________________________________ >Al Wexler PhD, President Tel. (204)942-4000 >Quantic EMC Inc. Fax. (204)957-1158 >1103 - 191 Lombard Avenue wexler@quantic-emc.com >Winnipeg, Manitoba www.quantic-emc.com >Canada R3B 0X1 IDEA RESEARCH GRANTS Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative Background For Applicants CANADIAN BREAST CANCER RESEARCH INITIATIVE 10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 200 Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B1 Phone: (416) 961-7223 Fax: (416) 961-4189 email: cbcri@cancer.ca Website: http://www.breast.cancer.ca. IDEA GRANTS IN BREAST CANCER RESEARCH New Funding Program to Support Innovation The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative is pleased to announce an innovative new program of research support: IDEA Grants. The new IDEA grants will support innovative, new research ideas that are speculative, but have the potential for advancing scientific knowledge. They will support small-scale pilot studies or investigations of concepts to permit the investigator to test out new ideas which although based on good science, are outside of existing conventional research paradigms and could be deemed speculative. The expectation is that these ideas, once explored, will lead to the development of proposals for feasibility grants or operating grants. It is not the intent of the program to provide supplemental, add-on funding in support of existing, ongoing investigations. The IDEA grant will be small in scale, from $25,000 to $50,000 over one year, non-renewable, but the award may be extended over two years if necessary. It is expected that 6 - 12 awards may result from each competition. Another new feature of the IDEA grants program is that the decisions on awards and funding for the IDEA grants will be finalized within 3 months of application. This quick turn-around time will be possible through the use of an abbreviated grant application form, and an accelerated review process. However, all applications will be reviewed according to the highest standards of peer review. It is anticipated that there will be two competitions per year for the next four years.. The first competition will take place April 1, 1999, with funding to begin July 1, 1999. The second competition will take place January 1, 2000, with funding to begin April 1, 2000. Application forms will be available by February 1, 1999, and will be mailed upon your request, including full mailing address, to CBCRI at: (416) 961-7223 (phone) (416) 961-4189 (fax) e-mail: cbcri@cancer.ca IDEA Grants Program Rationale and General Description: Some types of breast cancer research projects cannot be currently funded in Canada: very innovative, new research ideas that are highly speculative, but that have the potential for advancing scientific knowledge. Although applications for AFeasibility Grants@ funding can be submitted to the regular NCIC/CBCRI operating grants competition, these applications tend to develop concepts within existing research paradigms or test methodologies. In breast cancer research, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation did focus its research support towards small Aseed@ grants, but it greatly reduced its program since joining CBCRI as a full partner. No mechanisms permit a researcher to support small-scale pilot studies or investigations of concepts with a view to test out new ideas which although based on good science, are outside of existing conventional research paradigms and could be deemed highly speculative. To address this gap in funding possibilities, the Management Committee of the CBCRI is proposing that a new granting program be established for so-called, IDEA grants. The purpose of the IDEA grants program is to encourage novel, innovative approaches to breast cancer research in any field. These research proposals would encompass new, unique or unusual approaches to the study of breast cancer. The research could involve new paradigms, challenge existing paradigms or look at an existing problem from a new perspective. These projects could include small-scale pilot studies to test out an idea to see if it might work, prior to undertaking a feasibility study. These could be limited term projects to develop and test new hypotheses or new methods. IDEA proposals do not require preliminary or pilot data. The proposals should have a high probability of revealing new avenues for investigation. The expectation is that these ideas, once explored, will lead to the development of full proposals to be submitted to the regular competitions. Applications are invited from all sectors, from community-based groups to biomedical science teams, as well as from the continuum of breast cancer research, from basic science to prevention, treatment and care, psychosocial issues, quality of life, and ethical/legal/social issues. Program Details: 1) Terms and conditions of the grants: Small in scale and limited in duration. Total funding per project: $25,000 to $50,000. Term of projects: one year, non-renewable, but funding could be expended over two years, if necessary, with no additional funding. 2) Competition dates: Two competitions per year, starting in 1999-2000. Reviews and responses within three months of submission. Applicants may apply more than once per year, but under normal circumstances, the principal investigator will not hold more than one IDEA grant at a time. Competition deadlines: April 1st and January 1st. The first competition will be April 1, 1999. 3) Number of IDEA grants to be awarded: From 12 to 24 IDEA grants per year, depending on the value of the awards, which amounts to 6 to 12 awards per competition. Total number of grants over the 4 years of operation of the program: from 48 to 96 awards. 4) Total budget for the IDEA grants program: $2.4 million will be set aside for this IDEA grants program for Phase II (1998-2003) of the CBCRI. 5) Peer review process and committee structure: A multi-disciplinary peer review committee, representing a wide range of research in breast cancer, and including 8 breast cancer research scientists and 2 lay participants, plus an observer from ACOR. Accelerated review process: panel meeting by e-mail and/or teleconference. External reviewers will be asked to submit written reviews if necessary. Recommendations of the review panel to be approved by Management Committee. 6) Structure of proposal: The grant proposals would be restricted to 5 pages to allow for rapid completion and evaluation. The components of the proposal can be found in Appendix A. 7) Review criteria: The proposals would be in any field of breast cancer research and would need to meet most of the same criteria used to evaluate scientific merit in the regular CBCRI operating grants competitions. Details of the criteria will be found in Appendix B. 8) Research Administration: C Funding: Funding of IDEA grants awards: one single lump sum payment of from $25,000 to $50,000. December 1st competition: payment on or about April 1st; May 1st competition: payment on or about July 1st. C Reports: The recipients of grants from the IDEA program would be required to submit a final scientific report upon completion of the project ; an interim annual progress report, if the project extends over two years; and an Aevaluation report@, no later than two years after completion of the project, to clarify what resulted from the project - an entirely new research direction based on the IDEA grant results, or a successful or unsuccessful application for regular operating grant funding, or no result at all because the IDEA grant led to no useful results. These evaluation reports will enable CBCRI to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of this funding program. C Publishing: Investigators are expected to publish their results in the scientific journals. CBCRI research funding should be identified in publications. Researchers will be invited to present their research at scientific conferences organized by the CBCRI. Appendix A: Structure of Proposals (Details) C title page of application with identifying information; C budget form with attached pages for the justification; C one paragraph (half page) scientific abstract of the project; C one paragraph project summary in lay language; C one paragraph that describes the relevance of the project to breast cancer research; C New length: a five page description of the project that would include the rationale and significance of the study, a critical review of the literature, aims and objectives of the project, methods and materials for the project, data analysis and time line for the project; C New: one paragraph (half page) addressing the project=s innovativeness and novel approach: why the project is not only innovative and novel, but is also not appropriate as a "feasibility grant application" to the regular competition; C list of potential external reviewers, with whom the applicants have not collaborated and who would not be in conflict of interest; C one page biographical form for each investigator named (covering education, training, employment history and number of publications) and list of publications in past five years to be appended to this form; C one page that lists all other current research support held (including title, agency, amount, year) with an indication if any funding overlaps with the current request for funds; C appropriate approvals for projects using human subjects, animals, biohazards. Note: summary pages and budgets of other research funding would not be required to decrease the time required to prepare and evaluate the proposals. Appendix B: Review Criteria (Details) C Research strategy: Are the conceptual framework, hypotheses, design, methods and analyses adequately developed and well-integrated to the aims of the project? Does the applicant acknowledge potential problem areas and consider alternative tactics? Preliminary data are not required but may be included. C Innovation: Does the research use novel concepts, approaches or methods? Are the aims original and innovative? Does the project challenge existing paradigms, develop new methods or techniques, address under-explored or unexplored areas? C Scientific Relevance and Impact: Does the study address a critical problem in breast cancer research? What will be the effect of these studies on the concepts or methods that drive this field? Does the proposal make a convincing case for the relevance of the research to breast cancer? To what extent will the project, if successful, make an original and important contribution to the goal of eradicating breast cancer and/or advancing research in the field? C Principal Investigator: Is the PI appropriately trained and well suited to carry out this work? Is the proposed work appropriate to the experience level of the PI and other researchers (if any)? Is there appropriate representation from all the expertise areas needed to conduct the study successfully? C Environment and Resources: Is the scientific environment an appropriate setting for the proposed research? Are the research requirements adequately supported by the scientific environment, necessary resources, and any collaborative arrangements proposed? Is there evidence of institutional support? Will the study permit an investigator to test out a new idea that could not otherwise be explored? It is not the intent of the program to provide supplemental, add-on funding in support of existing, ongoing investigations. C Budget: Is the budget reasonable and well justified for the research proposed? >For French version please see attachment. >STREAMS OF EXCELLENCE RESEARCH GRANTS >Canadian Breast Cancer >Research Initiative >Background For Applicants >CANADIAN BREAST CANCER RESEARCH INITIATIVE >10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 200 >Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B1 >Phone: (416) 961-7223 >Fax: (416) 961-4189 >email: cbcri@cancer.ca > Website: >http://www.breast.cancer.ca. >STREAMS OF EXCELLENCE IN BREAST CANCER RESEARCH >New Funding Strategy To Link Top Canadian Breast Cancer Research >The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative (CBCRI) is pleased to >announce a new flagship program of research support: Stream(s) of Excellence >in Breast Cancer Research. The new Stream(s) of Excellence Grants will >encourage and support multi-disciplinary teams of recognized Canadian >leaders in breast cancer research, working collaboratively and >synergistically at several sites, to move research results more effectively >from "bench to bedside" or from "molecule to population". >The CBCRI recognizes that over the past ten years individual investigators >have made major contributions to discrete aspects of the breast cancer >problem. But most of the fundamental advances, and others on the cusp of >discovery, have yet to be translated into effective, less toxic therapies >for the breast cancer patient. What is needed is a linkage of investigations >across separate research domains, to help advance research more effectively >toward clinical applications. >CRITERIA: >To be funded, a Stream of Excellence proposal will: >· Link separate research domains actively and effectively, under a single >leadership, in a progression toward an ultimate clinical goal >· Be truly multi-disciplinary, by linking at least three distinct >disciplines >· Be comprised of a team of acknowledged "all-stars" in breast cancer >research from several Canadian centres >· Show promise of true synergy in advancing toward treatment goals not >attainable by any individual component >APPLICATION DEADLINES >There will be no ceiling on the budget requested by applicant teams, other >than the overall $1.5 million per year budget allocation for the >competition. Awards will be for four years with a possible fifth year >extension. The application process will be in two stages, with letters of >intent to be received by March 1, 1999 and invited full applications to be >submitted by November 1, 1999. >NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY >To facilitate the necessary networking, CBCRI will make meeting room space >available on Sunday June 20, immediately following the inaugural Canadian >Breast Cancer Researchers' Meeting, being sponsored by CBCRI on June 17-19, >1999 in Toronto. This scientific meeting will bring together, for the first >time, Canadian expertise in breast cancer research, including all >researchers funded by CBCRI. Conference details and invitations will be >forthcoming in the near future. > >LETTERS OF INTENT > STREAMS OF EXCELLENCE PROPOSALS >A Letter of Intent (original and fifteen (15) copies) must be submitted to >the CBCRI by >March 1, 1999. > >The Principal Investigator or Program Coordinator should include a five page >summary of the overall program. In addition, EACH Principal Investigator >should include a one page summary of his/her project, including relevance to >the overall program goal, what role they will play in the program, and how >this program will fit into their overall research program. >The primary goal of the Streams of Excellence Program is to move basic >research findings, or other research findings, forward toward translational >application and ultimate impact on clinical care and treatment of breast >cancer. The Letters of Intent must convincingly convey this intent. >Letters of Intent will be evaluated primarily with respect to this program >goal, and rank-ordered accordingly. >In order to clarify how the proposed team expects to achieve this goal, >Letters of Intent must indicate the following: >C Promise or expectation of Acutting-edge@ research of the highest >scientific excellence, both in the overall collaborative plan and in the >individual project components. This expectation would be provided by a brief >general description of the work proposed. (It is recognized that the >science cannot be adequately evaluated until the full proposal is written >and received. Nevertheless, cutting-edge research will not appear to repeat >something already done elsewhere, or to work out details of research >directions already laid out elsewhere.) >Thus, there should be a clear statement of the problem to be addressed, and >a demonstration of the state-of-the-art nature of the approaches proposed. >C Collaboration and cooperation of at least 3 Aall-stars@ who are well >recognized as top experts in their fields. >Thus, there should be clear evidence of the established expertise in the >proposed area of research. >C Involvement of at least 3 distinctly different disciplinary areas, with >clearly defined linkages. >C Evidence of real collaboration among the components. >Thus, there should be included a description of past, current, and planned >future relationships and interactions of the participating investigators. >C Promise or expectation of developmental movement toward the goal. >Thus, it should be clarified how the future interactions of the >participating investigators will accelerate the acquisition of knowledge >beyond that expected from the same projects if conducted separately. >C Good overall coordination and administration of the project. >The Letter of Intent must include the following as appendices: >A list of expert investigators, domestic and foreign, who would be >appropriate to serve as reviewers of all or part of the intended >application. Please ensure that potential reviewers do not include >individuals who may have a conflict of interest with the program or with the >investigators. Information about prospective reviewers shall include as many >of the following as possible: potential reviewer=s name, his/her Host >Institution, a telephone number, as well as a sentence describing his/her >expertise. At the same time, it would be helpful if you could also include a >list of investigators who should not be contacted as potential reviewers >(present or recent collaborators, for example) with a brief explanation of >the reason for their exclusion. >For each Investigator, provide the following: >1. A brief Curriculum Vitae (no more than 5 pages) including publications >for >the last 5 years, clearly indicating publications which have direct >relevance to this proposal. >2. A listing of all operating funds and career awards currently held or >held >over the last 5 years from the NCIC, MRC, CBCRI, NIH and other granting >agencies. For each grant, indicate principal investigator and all >co-applicants, funding agency, title, duration of award and amount awarded. >3. A listing of all research trainees supervised in the last 5 years, > indicating degrees received, if applicable, and current positions. > > >BACKGROUND FOR APPLICANTS >STREAMS OF EXCELLENCE PROGRAM >CANADIAN BREAST CANCER RESEARCH INITIATIVE >Rationale and General Description: >Over the past ten years, basic research has led to important new insights >into hereditary forms of breast cancer, the relationship between cancer and >cellular aging, the mechanisms by which cancer spreads through the body, and >how cancer can become resistant to standard chemotherapeutic methods. It is >now time to take these fundamental advances, achieved in Canada and >elsewhere, and translate them into clinical applications that will provide >benefits directly to the breast cancer patient. With our new knowledge about >the basic biology of cancer, coupled with a vision of breast cancer as >multidisciplinary human problem, CBCRI should now capitalize on its >investments. It is time to link laboratory investigation with clinical >approaches, to link physical care with human care. >Although individual Canadian investigators have made major contributions to >discrete aspects of the breast cancer problem, many of these efforts have >proceeded in relative isolation, with the result that discoveries in basic >molecular mechanisms, for example, are not always effectively linked to >clinical application. Although "Program Projects Grants" on breast cancer >can be awarded by either the NCIC or the MRC, the proposals submitted tend >to cluster and link experts from the same or fairly closely related >disciplines, specializing on only one aspect of the breast cancer problem. >In many cases, the two classes of investigators represented by individual >basic scientists and by clinician researchers have not formed effective >linkages. Nevertheless, it is at the interface between such groups, at the >linkages, that exciting research opportunities and the potential for >translational application of basic research findings exist. >There is currently no effective mechanism in Canada to fund integrated >breast cancer research proposals that: > are truly and broadly multidisciplinary; > are multicentered, requiring networking among several sites; > actively link separate components in a directional progression >toward an ultimate goal; and, > develop synergy to achieve that goal, not attainable by any >individual component. >To address this gap in funding mechanisms, the Management Committee of the >CBCRI is proposing a new program entitled "Stream(s) of Excellence in Breast >Cancer Research". The "research stream" metaphor is intended to evoke an >image of directional movement and development, beginning at the site of >discovery and initial wellsprings (the basic researchers), continuing >through incremental growth (by translational researchers) and quality >refinement (by clinicians, psychosocial and quality of life experts), toward >the ultimate goal of effectively delivering benefits to the consumer >(patients and family members). The metaphor is analogous to, but with >broader intent than, what was implied by the phrase from "bench to bedside." >The Streams of Excellence concept also rests on the notion of assembling >"all-star teams". Although the concept originated in the need to translate >basic sciences into clinical treatment, other non-discrete, cutting edge and >broadly envisioned areas of breast cancer research will be considered. >Program Details: >1) Terms and conditions of the grant(s):Large in scale, with no ceiling on >the budget requested, other than the $1.5 million per year total budget >allocation for the competition. Term of the project(s): 4 years, on >approval of annual progress reports, with a possible 1-year extension. > 2) Competition date(s): Ideally, CBCRI would hold two competitions during >its second mandate. At this time, only one competition is foreseen, >however, due to budget restrictions. >The application process will be two-stage. Letters of intent, which may >include a request for preliminary funding of up to $20,000 to build the >network and facilitate developing the full application: March 1, 1999. The >top-rated letters of intent to be invited by April 15, 1999 to submit full >proposals for a special competition, with the deadline of November 1, 1999. >Funding for successful grant(s) will begin July 1, 2000. >3) Number of Streams of Excellence grant(s) to be awarded: At least one, >depending on the quality ratings and budget requests of the applications. >4) Total Budget for the Streams of Excellence grant(s) program: The budget >allocation for the one competition will be $1.5 million for each of the >first four years, plus a possible fifth-year extension, for a total of $7.5 >million in Phase II (1998-2003). A second competition would bring the total >budget to $15 million. (It should be noted that the fourth year and the >potential fifth-year extension of the first competition would take place >after the end of Phase II of CBCRI.) >5) Peer review process and committee structure: >For all letters of intent, one truly multidisciplinary peer review >committee, including at least 8 breast cancer research scientists and 2 lay >participants, aided by ad hoc reviewers if necessary. Recommendations to be >approved by the CBCRI Management Committee. >For each application invited to submit a full proposal, a separate >specially-convened review committee will be struck. This will be a balanced >team of outside experts including international reviewers, each with >specialist knowledge of a component of the proposal. Each review committee >will perform a project site visit, with the co-investigator and team >member(s) from each participating site present at the main site. >Recommendations of all specially-convened review/site visit teams to be >received by the "Streams" review committee which will review them and make >recommendation to CBCRI Management Committee. >Some members of the special review /site review committee will subsequently >form an ad hoc monitoring committee, to review annual progress reports as to >the project's intended milestones and time line, and advise CBCRI's >Management Committee on continuation of funding. >6 a) Structure of proposal: >Submitted on a specially designed standard form, the full proposal will >include a 10-page overview, as well as a 20-page project description from >each principal or co-investigator for his/her individual project component. >Appendices may be used to describe research management operations, >communication strategies, etc., or to clarify partnerships with other >institutional programs or industrial relationships. Details of the >components of the proposal, including special issues to be addressed, will >be found in Appendix A. >6 b) Budget: >Budget requests will include all critical needs, including communications >and networking, specialized equipment, support for key personnel or other >specialized resources, etc., but will not include requests for routine >diagnostic or clinical services that normally should derive from other >sources such as normal health care costs. A detailed communications plan >among team components, and networking, including international partners, >will be presented. Funding of core facilities that would provide new >technologies (e.g. gene chips, scanning capabilities, tissue banks, >transgenics, databases, etc.) can be included as core budget items in the >funding request. Investigators are encouraged to include postdoctoral >fellows and students as integral participants in the research plans. >7) Review criteria: >The proposals would be in any field of breast cancer research and would need >to meet the following special criteria for this program, detailed as >follows: > Both the overall collaborative plan and the individual project >components will represent cutting-edge research of the highest scientific >excellence. > Projects will represent scientific input from at least 3 independent >investigators, "all-stars," who are recognized and acknowledged as top >experts in their fields. > Projects will have integral involvement of at least 3 distinctly >different disciplinary areas, with expressed linkages, each contributing to >progress toward a common goal. > Each individual component of the global research program will be >described in the application and will be assessed both for its own >individual scientific merit and excellence, and for its contribution to the >common goal of the project. > The overall proposal will be assessed for its ability or potential >to achieve more than the sum of its component projects, to use >multidisciplinary synergy to move the team forward in developmental progress >toward the goal. > The Principal Investigator must show adequate scientific and >administrative experience and must demonstrate adequate time commitment for >the overall coordination and administration of the project. A well defined >research management committee structure for the project, with the >participation of a woman living with or at risk of breast cancer, will be >provided. >8) Research Administration: > Funding: Streams of Excellence Program grant(s) will begin funding >on July 1st, 2000. > Reports: The project's management committee will be required to >submit: >- an annual scientific progress report with a summary in lay language; the >progress reports will be peer reviewed, with continued funding dependent on >approval; >- annual financial statements; >- a final scientific report with a summary in lay language; From gordonr at CC.UMANITOBA.CA Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: gordonr at CC.UMANITOBA.CA (Richard Gordon) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:06:32 2006 Subject: MRC approval rate Message-ID: Dear Don, I just finished compiling those figures for Manitoba: MRC eligible 337 MRC funded 73 22% NSERC eligible 417 NSERC funded 211 51% This includes all presently active awards, not just those made this year. Maybe we should stop funding bird brains? Yours, -Dick >Dear Dick, > Yes, 72% unfunded looks bad, but I suspect many of them have some >funding from other sources and are looking to the MRC for more funds, or >are even looking for a second MRC grant. The 28% may not reapply again for >3-5 years, so it may be the SAME 72% which gets, rejected, "competition" >after "competition" (me included). Better figures for evaluative purposes >would be the percentage of total MRC eligible researchers who are actually >unfunded (a) from any source, and (b) from the MRC. > As for Alex's wondering why the 72% appear not to be incommoded >by the MRC's adverse decision, I suspect that many of them (like most >members of the MRC itself) have never given deep thought to the rationale >of the process by which funds are assigned. One commentator would compare >their knowledge in this area to a bird's knowledge of aerodynamics. > >Regards, Donald Forsdyke > >http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev.htm From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:06:37 2006 Subject: Electronic publishing Message-ID: Electronic publication to the biological sciences is an idea whose time has come. But what steps are being taken to ensure that material, once deposited, is not interfered with. Who guards the guards? Who guards Paul Ginsparg who runs a service for the physics community? I would love, for example, to publish an article discovering the structure of DNA which I would date 1952, the year before Watson and Cricks' famous paper. The only way to cover this point would seem to be to have simultaneous deposition in multiple sites (>2), and have a search engine of some kind constantly monitoring the sites to ensure that all copies remain identical. This would be something like GenBank,where depositions of DNA sequences are made simultaneously in the USA, Europe and Japan. There is also the question of how to cite this information. Rather than some abstract number, why not follow the pattern of joural citations. e.g. Harnad, S. Cogprints 1999, 4:10-1610. In this case the "volume" number (4) would be the month and the "page" numbers would be the day and hour-min (preferably corrected to GMT). Thus the citation would contain an implicit time-stamp. Sincerely, Donald Forsdyke. Discussion Leader. Bionet.journals.note http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/mind.htm From harnad at coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: harnad at coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:06:43 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Declan, Here is some feedback. You are doing fine if you wish to be a passive conduit of the opinions that are being voiced willy-nilly. But if you want to exercise some reflective judgment over the spectrum of reactions, you might consider some of the following: > Axel Kahn, editor of M=E9decine et Sciences, the leading French-language > biomedical journal, says the proposal challenges the 'naked emperor' of > scientific publishing -- that "80 to 90 per cent of what is published is = of > little real interest". Publish or perish "rather than intrinsic merit" ha= s > become "the principal justification for much of the output," he says. >=20 > Kahn claims that most journals are infrequently consulted, and that E-Bio= med > would "allow you to have access to the articles you want, without having = to > browse hundreds of journals". A shake-out of the journals system is long > overdue, he says, adding that there is only a real need for the cream of > journals, and in particular the best multidisciplinary journals. Kahn's point about most of the literature being neither read nor cited is correct. It has been made by many others, including, prominently, Stephen Lock. =20 Harnad, S. (1986) Policing the Paper Chase. (Review of S. Lock, A difficult balance: Peer review in biomedical publication.) Nature 322: 24 - 5. But that point has absolutely nothing to do with online archiving or free archiving! An online archive accessible to all would be just as welcome if its contents were 80% chaff or if they were 100% wheat. Either way, the online access would make it more useful and navigable. If you want to consult only the "cream," set your browser to search only what is tagged "cream." (Nor is the Ebiomed Proposal really claiming to solve the problem of the chaff/wheat ratio, which is a problem WITHIN-journals as much as it is between-, and there is no way for ANYONE to tag THAT for a browser. Moreover, human performance being what it is, we must expect a bell curve in every population.) > One major concern is that the proposal could harm the best existing > journals, without accelerating improvements that might gradually occur in > any case as a result of market forces and more diffuse web efforts by > not-for-profit science publishers. Several observers say it might create = an > unhealthy monopoly, erode the diversity of existing journals, and reduce > competition between journals for the best papers. Have you looked at the proposal? How is it to create a monopoly without the collaboration of the journals? By competing with them? But that would just be a big attempt to found new journals -- and it would fail. (And if it had succeeded it would not have been a monopoly, but a successful rival journal(s) bid!) And in any case it has nothing to do with the heart of the proposal, which is to provide the journal literature online for free. > The Varmus proposal notes that the current journal structure has served t= he > biomedical community well for 300 years. "So the first question I ask is,= if > it has served us well for 300 years, why change?" says Martin Frank, > executive director of the American Physiological Society, which publishes= 14 > journals and 36,000 pages of articles each year. Because this structure, which has served us well for 300 years, and will continue to serve us well for 300 more, would serve us all even better if it were available (unchanged) online for free. That is obvious to any reader of the proposal: What is the advantage of repeating non sequiturs? > "It [E-Biomed] is extremely cumbersome and is not going to be easily > implemented," says Frank. "It is so unclear in terms of process that it's > going fall under its own weight." Based on its source, it is evident that this has a large dose of wishful thinking. For if one simply drops from the Proposal the needless parts I criticized in my comments, one is left with something as easily implemented and as sure of success as LANL. > Frank and other non-profit publishers are irritated at what they claim ha= s > been their omission from early discussions of the proposal, even though i= t > intimately affects them. Thirty non-profit publishers wrote to Varmus on = 29 > March, as word of the proposal began to spread, asking him for a meeting = to > discuss the plan.Varmus points out that a series of meetings is being > scheduled with organizations worldwide such as the European Molecular > Biology Laboratory (see box opposite), but that these will take some time= to > arrange and conduct. He also intends to post the proposal on his NIH web > page for comment. Open dialogue is always preferable to subterfuge, although based on the depth of reflection in the feedback that you report here, a wider dialogue is going to generate far more chaff than wheat. > Some observers note that the page charges collected by some publishers > provide them with a cash cow -- and that in the United States the NIH is = one > of the largest that is milked. Under the existing system, page charges ca= n > be passed on to the biomedical agency by investigators that it supports. = The > potential loss of this lucrative system is alarming publishers -- especia= lly > non-profit organizations --which rely heavily on it. This is based on such a convoluted misunderstanding that it takes one's breath away: There are three current senses of "page charges," and this passage completely conflates them: One of these is (1) page charges charged to authors in paper journals today. There are few of these, and they are dying out. The other is (2) the charges for paper reprints of one's journal articles. These exist, but are not a cash cow either. The only real cash cow is the (3) charge for the pages of the journals themselves, paid through Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P). Then there are my own proposals for (4) page charges for quality control, once all papers are available online for free. Now how do these map onto the message of the above paragraph? It is not the Reprint cash cow that is at risk, but the S/L/P cash cow! > Proposals that E-Biomed should coordinate peer review of its contents are > controversial. Noorman argues that centralization of peer review would > threaten the diversity of schools of thought provided for by journals. The peer review component of the E-biomed Proposal was inchoate and incoherent in that draft; but it was also inessential, and the Proposal will look just fine once it's dropped. > This concern is shared by many scientists and learned societies, who feel > that a centralized structure may obscure the well-defined hierarchy of be= st > science provided by journals, and that scientists may be more reluctant t= o > give their time and energy free to a central structure. Correct, but it's not at all clear from the Proposal that that was what was intended. In the next draft that will no doubt be remedied. But the core idea of a free online journal literature as a centralized resource will remain, and that is what it is all about. > Andrew Odlysko, a mathematician at the AT&T telecoms corporation and an > expert on scholarly publishing, argues that it would be simpler to separa= te > the distribution and peer-review functions of the repository, as is done = at > the Los Alamos physics e-print servers, where peer review is provided by > journal 'overlays' to unrefereed papers. Correct, and the first sensible remark adduced in this article so far.=20 (It was also the gist of my own critique of the Proposal, as you well know, and Andrew wrote what he wrote in response to my critique. I am not carping about being left out, by the way; just about the needlessly low wheat to chaff ratio.) > Lynn Dobrunz, a postdoctoral neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in San > Diego, asks: "Would E-biomed be in addition to the current system of > journals, or instead of it?=20 Reasonable question, so far.=20 > If there was a consolidated site that published > online versions of all the articles that are currently published... that > would be fantastic.=20 Indeed, especially if it was not just consolidated online, but free. Online (and consolidated, by a click-through monopoly) is already on the way from journal publishers anyway. > If it's instead of, and especially if it has this > non-peer-reviewed track to it, I think that is a much less good idea." This is now a postdoc's uninformed opinion to the effect that: (1) "I think preprints should not be archived." (Fine, don't archive yours; but 100,000 in LANL, for example, have a different opinion), (2) "I think Online-Only will not be enough. Keep the paper corpus (and keep paying for it)." 5000 hard-pressed libraries may have another opinion; so might the 100,000 physicists who no longer use the paper version). > The Varmus proposal suggests that scientific societies could be one sourc= e > of peer review. But the societies are worried that E-Biomed may undermine > the journal revenues on which many of their other activities, such as > fellowships and meetings, depend. True. But then the thoughtful question is: Are those other activities worth holding the journal literature hostage to? For how much longer? > The head of one society says he is open to change, but would need guarant= ees > that revenues would be preserved. Given such guarantees, societies might > consider joining the initiative, he says. "E-Biomed will only fly if lear= ned > societies and their journals can be brought to the table," predicts Tony > Delamothe, web editor of the British Medical Journal, and a supporter of > E-Biomed's goals. Or, if all Biomedical authors self-archive all their refereed reprints (and their unrefereed preprints, if they wish) in it. > Another broader threat, expressed by many scientists, is that NIH might c= ome > to dominate much of the biomedical literature, leading to homogenization = or > to discrimination against scientists from smaller countries. "Who would > select the governing body?" asks an official at one European scientific > society. "Who would select the editors and decide what is allowed to be > published? Who will determine costs and access rights?" Confusion caused by the current draft. This will no doubt be sorted out soon. Classical, pluralistic peer review will continue as before, and the Archive will simply be the free repository of its products (along with the pre-peer-reviewed drafts). > Many are also uncomfortable with the prospect of public funding for > scientific publishing, an activity currently dominated by for-profit and > non-profit publishers in the private sector. At the same time, however, > there is growing resentment among scientists and librarians at the > spiralling inflation in journal subscriptions. Journal publishing is currently subsidized completely by S/L/P funds from public and private institutional libraries. Networks and Archives (including LANL) are also subsidized by public and private institutions. The latter will simply be taking over the load from the former, saving a great deal of money, and providing the product for everyone for free. > Competition between scientific publishers is less than in other industrie= s > because of distortions in the market, and profit margins as high as 40 pe= r > cent are not uncommon (see Nature 397, 195-200; 1999). And inelastic demand from the libraries that have to keep subsidizing them for lack of an alternative. Ebiomed would provide the alternative. > Graham Cameron, head of services at the European Bioinformatics Institute > (EBI) in Cambridge, England -- an outstation of the European Molecular > Biology Laboratory -- points out that public domain databases such as Pub= Med > and GenBank and the EBI are widely considered to provide high levels of > cost-effective service to the community. True, but until further notice, publishers' journals are not public databases. (Authors' self-archives, in contrast, CAN be.) > Many believe, however, that the wider and cheaper access promised by > E-Biomed may happen anyway as a result of market forces. "Most scientific > society publishers are already doing what Varmus is proposing," says Fran= k. > "We are putting our journals on the web. We are linking our journals thro= ugh > PubMed to our sister journals on the web. We are developing interfaces fo= r > the submission and review of manuscripts on the web." Indeed, and the objective is a click-through monopoly, with the online journal literature continuing to be held hostage to S/L/P till doomsday... > Similarly, consortia of library and other users are increasingly negotiat= ing > electronic licences for journals for entire institutions and even countri= es. > Scientists at such institutions can already access much of the literature > online. That's the "L" in S/L/P, in case you didn't notice, whereas the fundamental underlying issue here is FREE access. > "My initial reaction to E-Biomed is, 'so what?'. Virtually every library = has > almost all major journals," says Heinz Steiner, a neuroscientist at the > University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis. What is the point of propagating this nonsense? He might as well have said "Let them eat cake!" And show me an active, busy researcher -- even at the most prosperous university in the world, Harvard, which subscribes to them all -- who, every time he needs a paper, prefers to walk to the library or send a student to photo copy, and shuffle through piles of photocopied offprints rather than having the entire journal literature on his desk and at his fingertips at all times. > Market forces are also driving a flurry of deals among publishers that ma= y > enable researchers to move rapidly and seamlessly from a citation to full > text across journal boundaries. Via a click-through monopoly involving L and P deals (out of the S/L/P troika), done by those institutions with enough money to make them; everyone else is out of luck, as before. > Frank asserts, for example, that the web site of HighWire Press already > accounts for a large proportion of the biomedical literature. This > not-for-profit outfit was set up in 1995 by Stanford University Libraries > and Academic Information Resources to help universities and societies to > publish on the web at low cost. "So I don't know why we need to create > E-Biomed," says Frank. Ah me! Substitute for the 35,000 daily users of LANL (augmented all their potential biomedical counterparts worldwide) what the access levels would be if regulated by HighWire's "low" S/L/P costs. > Indeed, the head of one scientific society argues that resentment over th= e > huge costs of the current journals system is confusing the many complex > issues involved in scholarly publishing. "If publishers are charging too > much then we should attack this problem directly, but not attack the enti= re > system. E-Biomed is a not very selective nuclear bomb." Ebiomed would attack the system by providing an alternative, free route to exactly the same literature. You can't get more selective than that. > Noorman, while admitting that Elsevier's profit margins "are higher than = the > average," says that the arrival of web publishing is putting pressure on > commercial publishers. "Scholarly publishing will become a proper [not > distorted] market," he predicts. "Elsevier is not in the world to keep th= at > profit margin high. We are in the world to stay in the market. If the web > causes us to have to agree to lower profit margins, then so be it." But don't hold your breath. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 1703 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 1703 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/ From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:06:50 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: With our course you can own your own successful business. A business which earns you substantial income now and one which could be sold in 3-5 years. paying you enough to retire on and travel the world. So, if you've ever dreamed of the financial freedom that owning your own business can provide. Dreamed of an early retirement, this may be the opportunity for you. 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Please call us at 1-888-309-5852 (Toll Free) and speak with Al Schweitzer directly (between the hours of 9:00am - 5:00pm, Mountain Time) Thank you for your time and interest. rem -ko987@excite.com -erest ------------=_43B8CE0C.3FDDB569-- From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:06:59 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:07:00 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Jan 2 02:07:30 2006 Subject: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review) Message-ID: > Arthur Smith wrote: > > sh> I see the problem as that of awakening researchers to the benefits (in > sh> terms of visibility, accessibility, and hence potential impact) of > sh> freeing access to their research online through self-archiving. In > sh> other words, the problem is getting the 20M up there, along with the > sh> 50K. > > Actually I thought you said it was 2 million, not 20 million You're right: 2M. My typo (probably lax because I know it could be an underestimate by as much as an order of magnitude!). > at what point can author self-archiving declare victory? When most or all of the 2M is up there, online and free. > One would think it could several > years ago in high energy physics, with virtually 100% coverage. You seem > to be implying coverage has to be complete in ALL areas of science (or > all areas of scholarly publishing, even?) before we can expect to see > S/L/P cancellations. Maybe the answer is somewhere in between? This is all speculative, but here are some likely factors: (1) Libraries won't cancel journals till their faculty say they don't need them any more (or that they need this less than that). (2) Faculty won't recommend cancellation till all their refereed journal needs are available free online. (3) Libraries won't cancel while only one subfield recommend it. (4) Faculty will be slow to realize it is safe to cancel. (5) Libraries will be slow to realize it is safe to cancel. (6) Libraries and faculty will never cancel journals, even if/when the entire literature (2M) is available online for free. (That's fine with me...) To repeat, the goal of the Self-Archiving Initiative is to make sure that all refereed research (2M) is available online for free. Its goal is NOT to precipitate journal cancellations. Freeing online access to the refereed literature is an end in itself, not a means to an end. (Nevertheless, if I were a publisher of journals in High Energy Physics, I wouldn't want to place TOO much faith in the failure of the arxiv to precipitate cancellations so far: Would you?) > But my suspicion is that author self-archiving is really only addressing > part of the problem. Yes it is providing free access to people, that's > great. But the problem seems to be the fact that it is under author > control, and a medium controlled by the authors is not sufficiently > trustworthy for science and scholarly institutions to abandon their > established communications media - the scholarly journals. That may well be the case, and yet another reason why there have been no cancellations in HEP or elsewhere. All I can repeat is that for the Self-Archiving Initiative, if the HEP effect could be generalized to the entire 2M corpus, our work would be done. The goal was to make it all accessible online to all potential users everywhere for free. That was all. (But that's still a tall order!) (By the way, lack of confidence in "author control" may be one of the reasons self-archiving is growing so slowly. That is why I hope that institutional Eprint archives will inspire more confidence, and hence elicit more content (that institution's own subset of the annual 2M). Both researchers and their institutions share a stake in maximizing the visibility, accessibility, uptake and impact of their research in perpetuo. OAI-interoperability and harvesting services generating global "virtual archives" from the distributed and mirrored institutional archives should go some way toward allaying authors' possible fears about management and preservation, especially with the institutions' digital libraries actively involved.) http://www.eprints.org > So the need > really is for a new medium, NOT controlled by authors, but perhaps > controlled by researchers and their disciplines in some larger sense. A discipline is alas a nebulous entity, with no real coherent interest or clout. A researcher's university, in contrast, has the same interest in research impact as its researchers (that's why "publish or perish" has became the driver, supplemented by impact factors), and has has the clout to do whatever it takes to maximize it. With OAI interoperability, distributed institutional eprint archiving (and overlaid harvesting services) may just turn out to be that requisite medium which succeeds in making it all happen at last. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7.2 http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7.3 > Perhaps it will be the journals themselves in some new guise - or > perhaps it will be something new, based on the author self-archives. Anything is possible as long as the bottom line is that all of the refereed literature is accessible online for free. > Stevan, feel free to continue promoting author self-archiving, and I > wish you well in reaching the 2 million or 20 million figure. But I > think we've reached a point where it's clear this isn't a full solution > at least to the problem of serials costs to libraries, which is, if not > the only goal, one major goal this forum has been trying to address. I believe that if self-archiving succeeds in reaching critical mass, a spinoff will be a solution to the serials crisis; but even if it is not, it will have solved all the problems I, for one, am fighting to solve! I do think that it is simply slowing the optimal and inevitable to focus on institutional serials budgets directly, rather than on freeing the literature those budgets currently pay for, by self-archiving it in institutional eprint archives. > Somewhat along those lines, this forum may be interested in continuing > fallout from the Public Library of Science effort: > > http://www.genomeweb.com/articles/view-article.asp?Article=200172219199 > > -- it sounds like they may actually try starting up their own new > "journals" based around the public library distribution medium. And they > have a very close impending deadline! Could be interesting... I wish them every success -- but I doubt they will succeed, for reasons I have described in comparing the 6 current strategies for freeing the refereed literature: Boycotts ask authors to give up their established journals of choice (along with their imprimatur, authorship, quality, and impact factor) in favor of new, unestablished journals, simply in order to free their refereed papers. Although there's no second-guessing human nature, it is not at all clear to me why rational researchers would prefer making that risky and untested sacrifice, when they can have their cake (their established journals of choice) and eat it too (though self-archiving) with with no risk or sacrifice at all. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/minotaur/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jan 2 02:04:52 2006 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:08:32 2006 Subject: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations Message-ID: On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, [identity deleted] wrote: > >On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Carole Brault wrote: > > > > > > I still have to verify : did the professor keep the "pre-print" of these > > > articles ? I would say NO. > > On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Stevan Harnad wrote > > > >No you don't have to verify it. The author just has to scan in his > >old texts and then self-archive them. But do recommend self-archiving > >present and future preprints, as not all publishers are as progressive > >yet in this regard as Elsevier is. > > Am I missing something? Carole Brault's message seems to be saying that > the professor no longer had print or digital versions of the preprints. In > your reply, are you suggesting that she scans copies of the published > version and self-archives them? You are not missing anything: I will requote below the relevant passages of http://authors.elsevier.com/ about which I wrote that "Between II and III the author has plenty of leeway to scan in and digitize his legacy texts... and then self-archive them on his institutional server. This is neither publishing nor commercial": "As an [Elsevier] author, you retain [the following] rights... without the need to obtain specific permission from Elsevier: [II] "The right to publish a different or extended version of the paper so long as it is sufficiently new to be considered a new work. [III] "The right to re-use parts of the paper in other works, provided that the new work is not to be published commercially." It is of no interest or legal import whatsoever how the author gets all or part of his own paper in digital form -- whether by retrieving it from an old file in his word-processor, or by scanning and OCR'ing it. [Note that not all publishers are as liberal as Elsevier about the self-archiving of legacy texts. That's why I added: "But do recommend self-archiving present and future preprints, as not all publishers are as progressive yet in this regard as Elsevier is." http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1 ] > I read the passage on self-archiving on the Elsevier site (see below) and > my understanding of what they are saying is that it is OK to self-archive > the preprint version but NOT the published version. Wouldn't scanning his > old texts constitute the articles "as published"? > > "Elsevier does not require that authors remove from publicly > accessible servers versions of their paper that differ from > the version as published by Elsevier. Posting of the article as > published on a public server can only be done with Elsevier's > specific written permission." I would say that the Elsevier wording contains some ambiguity, but the ambiguity is entirely in the author's favor. I repeat: Go ahead and self-archive and stop worrying about unscruing the inscrutable! > Also, when Elsevier say they do not require removal of preprints that > DIFFER from the published version. Could this not be interpreted as saying > that the author SHOULD remove the preprint if the journal publishes the > article without changes ? No. This can and should be interpreted as the fact that where there has been no change to a text since it was preprint, there has been no change in the text since it was a preprint (sic): "As an [Elsevier] author, you retain [the following] rights... without the need to obtain specific permission from Elsevier: [I] "The right to retain a preprint version of the article on a public electronic server such as the World Wide Web." Elsewhere it is added: "A preprint of an article doesn't count as prior publication. Authors don't have to remove electronic preprints from publicly accessible servers" [I have to admit that I do feel rather foolish going over this wording with a fine toothcomb as if it were Holy Writ! It would be a good idea if everyone else also realized just how foolish it was too, so we could all move on to doing something more useful, like self-archiving!] I might add in passing as to the following passage: "We ask authors not to update articles on public servers to match the articles we publish" If I had written this rather impressionistic passage, I certainly would not want to stake anything on invoking and applying it in court... > As Eprint Archive Project Officer, I must advise our academics on the > copyright issues relating to self-archiving. I need to be really clear > about exactly what the publishers will and will not allow (without writing > to them if possible - as I agree that this can be counter-productive) With passages like the above, I strongly recommend that you use common sense and resist any temptation to adopt a scriptural hermeneutic stance. Obviously not even the people who wrote these passages gave them that much thought! > Our eprint archive is new so I want to get my facts straight at the outset. Here are the facts: Physicists (and many others) have been sensibly self-archiving their own preprints and postprints for over 12 years now without once having given it a second thought (and with only 4 removals out of a quarter million papers, for copyright reasons). Advise your authors to do likewise. Leave the toothcombing to any journal minded to request that a paper be removed, and cross that bridge when you come to it, on a case by case basis. (Let's take up the topic again when you reach 62,500 papers self-archived!) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3188.html > We will be advising our academics to assign copyright to the publisher but > make it clear that they are retaining the right to self-archive a copy of > the postprint version. However, it is likely that we will get some > requests about self-archiving previously published articles. First, advise your authors not to bother asking the 55% that already support self-archiving: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm If they want to ask the rest, fine; but better still, do as the far more sensible physicists did: self-archive, and decide whether or not to withdraw only if and when someone ever asks! > By the way, the University recently endorsed an "eprint archive policy" > so it will be interesting to see what effect this will have on our ability > to populate the archive. I don't know what an "eprint archive policy" is. If it is a policy of creating an eprint archive and inviting your authors to self-archive, that is definitely not enough. Try this instead: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0022.gif Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif