Re: [EP-underground] Re: The archival status of archived papers

What we could(should?) have is a 404 error page which can tell if the
item was deleted and has a newer version and give a helpful link.

I meant to do that ages ago but it slipped down the list.

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 10:54:32 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Bob Parks wrote:
> 
> > Stevan Harnad writes:
> >
> >sh> It cuts both ways. Yes, authors should not start archiving willy-nilly
> >sh> every raw draft and every afterthought.
> > 
> > The word DRAFT implies correction and updates.  In economics, where
> > working papers and revisions of them are extremely common, one would
> > NOT want a previous DRAFT of a paper available since it might be wrong,
> > and had been corrected, and it would injure both the reader and the
> > author to have the incorrect version present.  Ginsparg and I traded
> > a lot of notes about this when EconWPA was born - Paul kept a revision
> > date, but not the prior drafts and I think that arxiv still works that
> > way.
> > 
> > I think that if you make the previous drafts remain forever, authors
> > will be reluctant to post DRAFTs at all.  OED defines draft as
> >           "A preliminary sketch or rough form of a writing or document, 
> >           from which the final or fair copy is made. "
> > which begs change to the draft.
> 
> OED's definition was written before the Internet. One can certainly
> write on a draft, prominently "This is just a temporary draft, and will
> be revised." One can even add "Please do not quote or cite." But if you
> put that on the Web, not only will some people nevertheless quote,
> cite (and link), but the draft is not necessarily ever removable, in
> principle, even if the original draft and website are removed and the
> URL no longer works. Once it is publicly posted, there will not only
> be fugitive saved versions downloaded earlier by users, but copies
> may well have been mirrored, cached, harvested, and reposted willy-nilly,
> persisting till doomsday. This is simply a fact of PostGutenberg life --
> and a confusing fact, detrimental to scholarly reliability and rigor,
> unless we devise a means of version-identification, tagging and control
> that does not rely on people simply looking the other way if someone
> writes "this is just a draft."
> 
> Just as anything I ever said can be repeated by hearsayers (and taped,
> and re-played), so everything I ever wrote can be. If I made only one
> copy, and showed it to only one person, I am fairly safe (if I can trust
> the person not to repeat any of it to anyone), but it's all down the
> slippery slope from there.
> 
> Will the self-archivers of preprints be discouraged from self-archiving
> after having this very banal fact about human communication and human
> nature pointed out to them? (I rather doubt it.)
> 
> >sh> But they should not feel
> >sh> constrained in doing corrections and updates whenever they are needed
> >sh> too. Authors should know, though, that from the moment they place a draft
> >sh> into a public open-access archive, it may be read, cited, and pointed to
> >sh> -- that specific draft -- in perpetuum. That is part of what it means
> >sh> to have archived something publicly.
> > 
> > On this I would disagree. 
> 
> Disagree in the sense that you don't believe it may be read, cited,
> and pointed to in perpretuum (even if it is withdrawn)? Or in the sense
> that you don't believe it ought to be?
> 
> > But the point is to further open access
> > to research, and putting in a constraint that all prior DRAFTs are
> > available in perpetuity will make for less archiving of working papers.
> 
> I think deletion should be a (discouraged but available) option, but
> with a persistent tag for the deleted (null) text, as a place-holder for
> would-be citers who did read that draft and do want to refer to it (even
> against the author's request, and even backed up only by hearsay). The
> best corrective for this is to self-archive the updated, corrected draft
> too, and have the archive pointers always point to that too, even the
> null (deleted) ones. (But I really do think that if someone's draft is
> so raw that they would rather it could vanish without a trace, then
> perhaps it was too early a draft to post publicly in the first place,
> and should only have been emailed to a few trausted colleagues!)
> 
> > Maybe not for other professions, but certainly in economics, business,
> > and political science (subjects about which I have knowledge).
> 
> I am sure this was the practise and expectation in paper days, when
> drafts were sent only to specific trusted colleagues, but it is a fact
> that public posting on the Web is (like publication) another ball-game
> (a bit more like guassian roulette).
> 
> > The persistent URL should, as with arXiv, point to the most recent
> > draft and penultimate drafts should be in the trash.
> 
> That is an option that should be available, but its use should be
> strongly discouraged. Better to selectively email the potentially
> embarrassing drafts, intended to be forgotten, and self-archive only the
> ones one feels one can live with being seen publicly (and potentially
> remembered and referred to forever). It is, after all, something of an
> antidote to unwelcome citing and quoting to be able to point to the
> extant draft and say: "See, it said 'temporary draft, to be revised, do
> not cite or quote'...."
> 
> (Ceterum censeo: This is all irrelevant to the issue of open access,
> which is mainly about open access to the research literature after peer
> review. How early a draft one wishes to make openly accessible before
> peer review is a matter for the author to decide. But open access should
> in general be thought of as being forever.)
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 

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