www. eprints.org is dedicated to freeing the research literature through open archiving: To help the Open Archiving initiative to gain momentum, self-archiving software has been developed at the University of Southampton. Eprints is a successor to the CogPrints Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive, cogprints.soton.ac.uk, an open archive for research literature, pre- and post- refereeing. The CogPrints software’s generic successor Eprints is designed to be as flexible and adaptable as possible, so that all universities worldwide can adopt and configure it with minimal effort for all their disciplines and needs. Eprints is fully interoperable with all other Open Archives, compliant with the October 1999 Santa Fe Convention. The Eprints software, will be available (for free, of course) from eprints.org in September Technical information about the software is available on the software page. To be alerted about the availability of the software, you can join a mailing list. Background:

Peer Review in the On-line Era Medium-independent invariants and On-line improvements

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org3 What Is Peer Review? Quality-Control: Experts evaluate the work of fellow-experts Guided feedback, not “red/green” light (“publish or get lost”) Part of science’s collective, cumulative, self-correctiveness Rejection rates (normalized) as rigor indicators Journal hierarchies and the wheat/chaff ratio Discipline differences and interdisciplinarity

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org4 The “Invisible Hand” of Peer Review Unrefereed preprints vs. refereed postprints The true “populists”: “Why aren’t preprints enough?” (i.e.,Why can’t it all be just Vanity Press Self- Publication?) Usenet: The Global Graffiti Board for Trivial Pursuit Cautionary example: life/death matters Science and scholarship: Do they matter less?

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org5 Peer Review’s Imperfections Editors: The weakest link: Editorial bias Sampling bias Referee incompetence Referee disagreement (destructive or creative?) Why do referees referee? (1) Golden Rule (2) Interest (including self- interest) (3) Supersition Scarce, overused resource (Refereeing is a give-away service, just as research reports are a give-away product.)

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org6 Improving Peer Review: Untested Empirical Conjectures ( Usually voiced as immediate recommendations) Number of referees/refereeings Author anonymity Referee anonymity (open review) Interactive review Public review Open (peer?) commentary Referee self-selection Referee payment “Levels” of acceptance/certification Multiple certification Individual journals vs. multiple generic “entities” (your conjecture here…) Abandoning peer review (self-publication)

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org7 Online Optimizations (technical and tested) Web-based submission (eprints.org) /web-based sampling/solicitation Web-based refereeing Web-based dispositions Web-based Editing, copy-editing, mark-up, formatting (JHEP) Reference-checking Citation-linking Referee evaluation and monitoring Reducing delays *Reducing costs

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org8 What is the true cost of implementing peer review? 70/30 currently (confirmed by APS) 10% optimally? optional add-ons vs. obligate "added value” access-barriers and hostage-holding

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org9 Scientific Skywriting in the PostGutenberg Galaxy citation, download and navigational analysis: an embryology of knowledge

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org10 “Hits” vs. Downloads Preprints vs. Postprints (for Los Alamos Archive) Hits are mixed and include “browsing”. Full-text downloads: 27% Preprints are updated to include journal postprint references 71% at a particular time

peer review on-linewww.eprints.org11 The finer-structure of “impact” (for Los Alamos Archive) Positive Correlation between downloads and citations (top right) Two phases in timeline: down- loaded preprint and cited postprint (bottom left) Download time-line for high, medium, and low citation impact papers (bottom right)

Relevant URLs opcit.eprints.org cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad arXiv.org cogprints.soton.ac.uk