Plagiarism and Libel: Central vs. Distributed Archives

Yet another piece of evidence has appeared that seems to confirm that whereas central archiving was historically the way in which self-archiving began, it is not the fastest or best form for it to grow and spread today:

The Nature headline is (as usual for the press) an exaggeration:

    "Legal concerns plague open access physics archive" http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=1087&language=1

but the facts seem to be that, across the years, some papers that contained plagiarism or libel might have found their way into ArXiv's vast
(200,000 papers) and unvetted collection. http://www.arxiv.org

I said "unvetted," but of course almost all those papers are also submitted to peer-reviewed journals, which *do* vet them, and when there have been any corrections to the unrefereed preprint, the authors self-archive the refereed postprint: http://opcit.eprints.org/tdb198/opcit/

So the (tiny) problem of plagiarism and libel is with papers that have *not* been peer-reviewed.

ArXiv can make an effort to vet its daily submissions for plagiarism or libel, but at nearly 4000 per month, this would be quite a task: http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions

So the natural conclusions to draw from this seems to be the following:

(1) OAI-interoperability has now made all OAI-compliant archives
equivalent: They can all be harvested and jointly searched. It no longer makes any difference which archive a paper is actually deposited in: http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/

(2) Not only are institutions in the best position to vet their own
research output before approving deposits in their own institutional archives (probably on a departmental basis, optimally) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html but this vetting load is much better shouldered in a distributed way, rather than having one centralized vettor for all of the planet's research output (in physics, mathematics, or other disciplines).

(3) Having institutional self-archived research output housed in the
institution's own archives also immunizes the archive from external liabilities (such as plagiarizers from other institutions) but it also makes it even more clear that -- contrary to what the Nature article says it is, and perhaps contrary even to what the Physics ArXiv *thinks* it is -- open-access archives are not *publishers*! They are merely a means of providing open access to (refereed) publications (as well as to their precursor unrefereed preprints).

    "Garfield: 'Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior Publication'"     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2239.html

For those who needed a reminder of it, research's "publish or perish" mandate is *not* "self-archive or perish"! "Publication" refers to certification as having met the known peer-review quality standards of a journal, not to having pressed the click button to self-archive an unrefereed draft in an open-access archive! That meets the (trivial) legal definition of "publishing," to be sure -- even hand-writing it on paper once and showing it to someone does! But it certainly doesn't mean the definition of what the research community (and promotion/salary committees, and research-funding councils) means by "publication," which is to be certified by a qualified, neutral third-party as having met its known standards of peer review. At best, the self-archiving of an unrefereed draft qualifies as vanity-press *self-publication* -- but that is precisely what researchers' institutions and their "publish or perish" mandates are there in order to *protect* their researchers from doing! (Or rather, to ensure that they go on to get their papers properly peer-reviewed and certified as having met the peer-review standards of the particular journal that accepted the paper.)

By the same token, their own institutions -- not a centralized entity like ArXiv -- are in the best position to protect their researchers (and themselves) from self-archiving plagiarized or libellous papers.

Having said that, the Physics ArXiv's "legal concerns" are all a tempest in a teapot anyway. A central archive is a service provider. The service it provides is to operate an archive for authors to self-archive in. If an author self-archives a piece of plagiarism or libel therein, the only legal responsibility of the archive is to *remove* that item as soon as it is drawn to their attention. This is exactly the same rule as the one applied to other Internet service providers: If someone posts or emails pornography in an AOL discussion list or bulletin board, AOL does not become liable as a pornographer if it immediately removes the item as soon as it is drawn to its attention and blocks further postings from the poster. (The poster, of course, is the one to prosecute for the pornography!) It is absurd to imagine that AOL could vet all emails and postings in advance, to screen out pornography! It is reasonable, though, to insist on better identity control, for authenticating and tracing the identity of posters, in case legal action needs to be taken against them.

So depositor-authentication and tracing is the only thing ArXiv may need to shore up (as well as the capability of removing an item). Fortunately, institutional archives can do this much more easily and naturally with their own research staff!

See the long thread:
"Central vs. Distributed Archives"1G
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0293.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: Complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):

    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html     http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html     Posted discussion to: september98-forum[_at_]amsci-forum.amsci.org

Dual Open-Access Strategy:

    BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access

            journal whenever one exists.     BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable

            toll-access journal and also self-archive it.

    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm
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