lib-ir: Fwd: [CNI-(C)] Plagiarism and Libel: Central vs. Distributed Archives

[Corey Harper <charper@darkwing.uoregon.edu>]

FYI -

Interesting post and link to CNI-COPYRIGHT...

The poster goes on to say that these are less likely to be an issue in IRs, 
and that OAI providing for a centralized search distributed storage model 
makes discipline specific repositories less necessary.

-Corey


>To: "CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property"
>  <CNI-COPYRIGHT@cni.org>
>Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 13:10:30 -0500
>X-Original-Message-ID: <redirect-1630285@cni.org>
>From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>Subject: [CNI-(C)]  Plagiarism and Libel: Central vs. Distributed
>  Archives
>
>Yet another piece of evidence has appeared that seems to confirm that
>whereas central archiving was historically the way in which self-archiving
>began, it is not the fastest or best form for it to grow and spread today:
>
>The Nature headline is (as usual for the press) an exaggeration:
>
>     "Legal concerns plague open access physics archive"
>http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=1087&language=1
>
>but the facts seem to be that, across the years, some papers that
>contained plagiarism or libel might have found their way into ArXiv's vast
>(200,000 papers) and unvetted collection.  http://www.arxiv.org
>
>I said "unvetted," but of course almost all those papers are
>also submitted to peer-reviewed journals, which *do* vet them,
>and when there have been any corrections to the unrefereed
>preprint, the authors self-archive the refereed postprint:
>http://opcit.eprints.org/tdb198/opcit/
>
>So the (tiny) problem of plagiarism and libel is with papers that have
>*not* been peer-reviewed.
>
>ArXiv can make an effort to vet its daily submissions for plagiarism or
>libel, but at nearly 4000 per month, this would be quite a task:
>http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions
>
>So the natural conclusions to draw from this seems to be the following:
>
>(1) OAI-interoperability has now made all OAI-compliant archives
>equivalent: They can all be harvested and jointly searched. It no
>longer makes any difference which archive a paper is actually deposited
>in: http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/
>
>(2) Not only are institutions in the best position to vet their own
>research output before approving deposits in their own institutional
>archives (probably on a departmental basis, optimally)
>http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
>but this vetting load is much better shouldered in a distributed way,
>rather than having one centralized vettor for all of the planet's research
>output (in physics, mathematics, or other disciplines).
>
>(3) Having institutional self-archived research output housed in the
>institution's own archives also immunizes the archive from external
>liabilities (such as plagiarizers from other institutions) but it also
>makes it even more clear that -- contrary to what the Nature article
>says it is, and perhaps contrary even to what the Physics ArXiv *thinks*
>it is -- open-access archives are not *publishers*! They are merely a
>means of providing open access to (refereed) publications (as well as
>to their precursor unrefereed preprints).
>
>     "Garfield: 'Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior Publication'"
>     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2239.html
>
>For those who needed a reminder of it, research's "publish or perish"
>mandate is *not* "self-archive or perish"! "Publication" refers to
>certification as having met the known peer-review quality standards of
>a journal, not to having pressed the click button to self-archive an
>unrefereed draft in an open-access archive! That meets the (trivial)
>legal definition of "publishing," to be sure -- even hand-writing it
>on paper once and showing it to someone does! But it certainly doesn't
>mean the definition of what the research community (and promotion/salary
>committees, and research-funding councils) means by "publication,"
>which is to be certified by a qualified, neutral third-party as having
>met its known standards of peer review. At best, the self-archiving
>of an unrefereed draft qualifies as vanity-press *self-publication* --
>but that is precisely what researchers' institutions and their "publish
>or perish" mandates are there in order to *protect* their researchers
>from doing! (Or rather, to ensure that they go on to get their papers
>properly peer-reviewed and certified as having met the peer-review
>standards of the particular journal that accepted the paper.)
>
>By the same token, their own institutions -- not a centralized entity
>like ArXiv -- are in the best position to protect their researchers (and
>themselves) from self-archiving plagiarized or libellous papers.
>
>Having said that, the Physics ArXiv's "legal concerns" are all a tempest
>in a teapot anyway. A central archive is a service provider. The service
>it provides is to operate an archive for authors to self-archive in. If
>an author self-archives a piece of plagiarism or libel therein, the only
>legal responsibility of the archive is to *remove* that item as soon as
>it is drawn to their attention. This is exactly the same rule as the one
>applied to other Internet service providers: If someone posts or emails
>pornography in an AOL discussion list or bulletin board, AOL does not
>become liable as a pornographer if it immediately removes the item
>as soon as it is drawn to its attention and blocks further postings
>from the poster. (The poster, of course, is the one to prosecute for
>the pornography!) It is absurd to imagine that AOL could vet all emails
>and postings in advance, to screen out pornography! It is reasonable,
>though, to insist on better identity control, for authenticating and
>tracing the identity of posters, in case legal action needs to be taken
>against them.
>
>So depositor-authentication and tracing is the only thing ArXiv may need to
>shore up (as well as the capability of removing an item). Fortunately,
>institutional archives can do this much more easily and naturally with
>their own research staff!
>
>See the long thread:
>"Central vs. Distributed Archives"1G
>http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0293.html
>
>Stevan Harnad
>
>NOTE: 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
>     Posted discussion to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org
>
>Dual Open-Access Strategy:
>     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
>
>
>
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