[UPS] <journal> journal

[Stevan Harnad]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, herbert van de sompel wrote:

> 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 don't understand (perhaps it is because I am not a metadata expert)
why (ab)using the Subject field is preferable to declaring a Journal
field explicitly and unambiguously in our minimal tagging specs.

And "would like his eprint published" is NOT the right descriptor for
this field. I am not talking about wishful thinking, before acceptance.
I am talking about the journal in which an eprint HAS been published.

> - 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.  

That is an argument against a Subject field, not against a Journal
field. I am in favour of a Subject field too, even though it (and
Keywords) are not used very useably/usefully by many authors. One could still
mine something useful out of Subject tags. But the name of the Journal
does NOT belong there. When I look for subject "psychology" I don't
search on the term "Psychonomic Science" (a journal name) and vice
versa.

Sometimes journal names reflect subject matter, sometimes not, but
either way, they do not belong in a common grave with Subject terms.

If I want to retrieve, say, all papers in (the journal called)
Psychonomic Science in (Date) 1998, I want to be able to do that with two
definite fields, the Date (2) field, for which Herb argued successfully
for inclusion (and I opposed, but TOGETHER with a Journal field is
makes terrific sense), plus the Journal field.

And if I want the journal (not subject) called "Biochemistry" for all of
1998, I don't want to retrieve everything in subject Biochemistry dated
1998!

Etc. etc. I don't think it requires meta-data expertise to see that this
field deserves an unambiguous category of its own.

I continue to detect animus against journals motivating this reluctance
to declare a specific, dedicated Journal field. (The "would like to be
published" phrase above is a sign of Herb's preferred outcome, which
will be the day when there are no more journals. That is not yet the
case; it may never be the case; and in terms of the way I, for one,
happen to see it, it SHOULD never be the case. So our tagging scheme
scheme should not be predicated on the assumption, or hope, that it
will, or should, please.)

> - 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.

True, but irrelevant. Why not, then, put the Title or Authorname into
the Subject field too...?

> It is a
> subject classification that could be used by whomever and that could
> lead to very interesrting features in end-user services.

True, and irrelevant.

> - 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.

And how do they distinguish, say, Subject-Biochemistry from
Journalname-Biochemistry? Are there going to be embedded sub-meta-tags
within the Subject field? But why? Doesn't Journal-name, especially for
this sort of "harvesting" (which I see Reader-Users of Author-tagged
Self-Archives as using, by the way, not particularly publishers), call
for an explicit, unambiguous field of its own, in any "minimal" tagging
system?

> - I see this as a very nice way to gently parasite on the existing
> communication system.  

As soon as I understand why, say, Author and Title should not likewise
parasite on Subject, I will understand why Journal should.

Cheers, Stevan