[UPS] UPS naming contest

[Stevan Harnad]

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, herbert van de sompel wrote:

> I hereby open the UPS naming contest.  Please send max 2
> proposals for names for our initiative to me personally at
> herbert.vandesompel@rug.ac.be ; please use Subject "UPS naming contest"
> ; send your proposals before Friday October 29th noon.  I will compile a
> list and organize the voting process, afterwards.

Dear Herb and UPS:

First, I think it may not be the best idea to do this as a contest and
by votes. I suggest that the merits and demerits of the various
candidate proposals be discussed explicitly via email for an interval
and then a deciding group (perhaps you and Paul) should make a
decision, based on both the nominations and the supporting arguments.

If we instead do this by box scores, we will get a Gallup-pole quality
outcome and Gallup-pole quality effectiveness.

By way of support for my own candidates, I strongly disagree with the
arguments adduced against calling archiving archiving. Archiving is
exactly what it is, and it will not further its progress to call it
something else. "Repository" -- with its suppository and lavatory
associations -- is just a more awkward and arcane, and less
self-explanatory way of saying the same thing.

The same is true about "self-" and "auto-": What distinguishes XXX is
precisely the fact that is for self-archiving by authors. This means two
things: 

    (1) It is indeed an archive, hence reliable, permanent, etc. 

    (2) It is the author who deposits his papers therein, not an
    institution or an organization.

This does not mean that the institution or the organization cannot be
the PROVIDER and MAINTAINER of the archive, but it does mean (and
should decidedly mean) that it is the author who deposits his papers
there.

This "self-" aspect is essential to the initiative in countless ways.

Consider that publishers (of journals and/or books) could just as
easily have met to discuss the interoperability of their respective
proprietary archives (sic), with a view to adopting tagging and
protocol standards (and even Santa-Fe style "rights disclosures") that
would make provide an infrastructure for a global "click-through"
monopoly, making it possible to search and shop seamlessly through
their interconnected fire-walled offerings.

I, for one, have absolutely no interest in getting involved in or
furthering anything along those lines. The digital librarians whose
sole motivation is to get the Bytes up there, networked, might find that
this meets their objectives, but the interoperability of the firewalled
literature is no concern of mine. My commitment is to the
interoperability of the GIVE-AWAY, non-firewalled literature, which
consists primarily of pre-refereed preprints and refereed reprints (i.e.,
the entire refereed journal literature).

So our initiative (if I am not unrepresentative of what it is that makes
it different from a corresponding interpoperability for the digital
trade literature) is indeed most accurately and transparently described
as (1) an ARCHIVING initiative and, in particular, (2) a SELF-archiving
or auto-archiving initiative -- because the only one in a position to
give away this give-away literature is the author himself. ANYWHERE the
author archives it publicly is eo ipso an auto-archive. This is not
only the correct description, but it is also this self-archiving
initiative's functional and legal strength: I am giving away my own
stuff by archiving it publicly.

Enough. I think anything that loses the essence of this unique fact
simply weakens our project (if I am not unrepresentative of what the
project is about).

So my two candidates are, as before,

(a) AUTHOR AUTO-ARCHIVING initiative

or

(b) PUBLIC ARCHIVING initiative.

The word RESEARCH might also appear somewhere in either descriptor.

I prefer (a), because I think it states it the most directly,
clearly, and with the lowest possibility of misunderstanding and
misconstrual. 

(I would also counsel against trendy or cutesy acronyms; XXX is the
model and inspiration for all of this in terms of content and function,
but this is DESPITE, not BECAUSE OF its cosmetic form. Having said that,
if my candidates are rejected, I would rather use "arXive" then most of
the other options proposed in our live namefest.)

A last word about the possibility that my view is nonrepresentative:

(1) We all agree that the literature should be freed from the access
barriers of print-on-paper by being digitized, put on the Net, and made
interoperable.

So far, that is just the "digital library initiative." But it is not
what is (or I had taken to be) unique about our own special initiative.

(2) Most of us further agree that the literature should be freed from
the access barriers of journal-price-firewalls. 

(3) Some of us (and I think it is important to make it clear
that this is a minoritarian view and NOT what leads or guides our
initiative) also think that the literature should be freed from the
access barriers of journal-peer-review.

I am opposed to (3), but that does not mean (3) is wrong. The truth of
(3) is compatible with our initiative, but I would strongly argue that
it must not lead or guide it. 

So I think our self-descriptor, whatever we choose, should reflect what
it unique about our initiative, what particularizes it to something more
specific than simply general library digitization initiatives, but it
must not have (3) wrapped into it as a pre-judged outcome.

Hence all hypotheses and proposals about the direction "vetting" will or
should take should be left out of it.

There. I've said my bit. Now let's hear (openly) from others.

Congratulations on a very successful meeting.

Cheers, Stevan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
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