[UPS] <journal> journal

[herbert van de sompel]

Hi all,

I discussed matters related to this with Stevan during a break at our
Santa Fe meeting.  Actually, I suggested to (ab)use the Subject field as
a carrier for the information on the journal(s) in which the author
would like his eprint to be published. Whether this information would
indeed belong in the Subject field or in a seperate Journal field is
open for discussion.  I think that - in addition to the arguments that
Stevan uses, this idea has the following benefits:

- There is a universal understanding regarding the subject areas of
journals, meaning that there exists an agreed upon global
subject-oriented namespace being the journal namespace (that actually
even has unique identiefiers - ISSNs).  This can hardly be said about
other subject classifications.  
- It is a type of Subject classification that can indeed be added by the
author, who IS a connoisseur of the journals in his domain, but hardly
is a subject classification expert.  This is a type of subject
classification that has a true sense of longeivity whereas many other
schemes (inlcuding free keywords) are very time-dependent.  It is a
subject classification that could be used by whomever and that could
lead to very interesrting features in end-user services.
- It could be used as a gateway mechanism between eprint archives and
publishers: publishers could harvest records that have their journal
names in the Subject/Journal field and decide whether they are or are
not interested in publishing the paper.
- I see this as a very nice way to gently parasite on the existing
communication system.  

greetings

herbert




Stevan Harnad wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Another Santa Fe afterthought -- or rather an amplification of
> something I regret that I said so tentatively and diminutively
> at the end of the minimalist tag-session:
> 
> I think it would be a GREAT mistake not to include <journalname>
> among our absolute minimal tag set (along with author, title, etc.).
> 
> Carl generated the minimal set off the top of his head -- and it's a
> good head, that has thought about these matters a lot.
> 
> But from the point of view of a minimal set of tags -- with a maximum
> of, say, 7 -- I would certainly find much less use for two mandatory date
> tags than a mandatory journalname tag (which, by default, for preprint
> would be NULL).
> 
> After all, the journal literature is our primary constituency, and
> journalname is one of its most informative descriptors.
> 
> I sensed that the motivation for not including it among the minimal set
> was an expectation or desire on the part of soime of us that journals
> might cease to exist -- plus some untested notions about what "vetting"
> systems might replace them, again, on the part of some of us.
> 
> I think it would be a great mistake to leave one of the most robust,
> representative and useful descriptors out of our minimal set, on the
> basis of this sort of speculative hypothesis and desideratum (with
> which many of us may not be in agreement).
> 
> So I vote that journalname be included as a mandatory field in the
> minimal set (including NULL for not-submitted-to-a-journal).
> 
> If even the minimal self-archives have the journal field, then something
> even as simple as Alta Vista could be sent to retrieve the (minimal) archival
> presence of any or every refereed journal: an extremely important and
> appealing feature that could hasten everything we hope for (including
> the demise of the journals, if that is fated to occur, after first having
> drawn their contents up into the skies).
> 
> Chrs, 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/
> SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
> 
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