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From: Bernd Paysan <paysan@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>
Subject: Re: Publishing Scholarly Work on the Web -- opinions?
Organization: Bernd Paysan, 81477 Muenchen, Germany
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 00:03:48 +0200
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Message-ID: <323C7D44.1A0B15E2@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>

Alden S Klovdahl wrote:
> 2.  there is no contradiction between the idea of web publishing and
>     peer review.  if a person wants comments on a paper, he or she can
>     put it on their own web page, get speedy publication, and solicit
>     feedback.

Yeah.

> 3.  there is nothing that precludes publishing in both electronic and
>     traditional media.

Yes, there is. Journals and conferences want to be "first". There is no
way to be first, if the paper was published half a year earlier in the
Web (this is the mean time between submit deadline and conference). So
you sign (or declare) that your paper is yet unpublished.

There is another limitation for publication: size. A paper for a
conference should not be longer than 5000 words, e.g.. This is a good
limitation for a conference papers, because you don't want to reed lots
of novels there. Details, however, get lost in these papers. The web is
a way around it. You publish the elaborate work in the web, for the
curious (those who really want to read it), and the condensed form in a
"normal" media.

This is even a way around the restrictions journals and conferences
poses. You can sign that your paper is yet unpublished (because it is a
condensed form of an already published work ;-).

Personally, I doubt that any form of traditional publishing will survive
this revolution. It's the third revolution after the invention of
writing and the invention of movable letters. Do you know any monk
copying books? Peer reviewed web sites remind me on the irregular
letters and the handpainted illustrations Gutenberg uses for his first
printed bible to imitate hand-written books. A web site with high
reputation better should collect good work all over the web. Because
it's all second source, be comprehensive will be more important than be
first. A good and important work can be found at any such site then.

Those who think the web is a new sort of television are completely
wrong. The web is a new sort of a publishing house, one that allows
everyone to publish for very few (or almost no) costs, and a danger for
every other form of publishing (because all they are more expensive and
slower). The two reasons why the web hasn't replaced them now are:
availability and money. Many people don't have access to the web, and
the concepts to earn a living by pubhlishing on the web are incomplete.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"Late answers are wrong answers!"
http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~paysan/

