We carry with us the expectations of print and forget that these
expectations may be limitations.
>It's an interesting question though, because of the potentially transient
>nature of the resource (not even 'potentially' for news). Electronic journals
>are going to have to make sure that a single canonical version of each paper
>exists, and that it always stays in the same place.
One could ask why. I as an author may find a cheaper place to mount my
information and if I want others to find it I'll try and get it registered
at appropraite sites and picked up by the web robots. Having it stay in
one place where the author cannot control it is a limitation of print.
> It should not be altered
>or corrected after publication.
Not being able to update and correct publications if a fault of print not a
virtue that should be emulated. If I as an author publish something on a
server I want to be able to improve it or withdraw it if I no longer feel
that it represents my views. If somebody has archived a previous version
so that they can cite my views at a previous time the maintenance of that
copy become their responsibility but the currenmt version belongs to the
author.
>Although electronic means provide an excellent
>medium for adding later notes and referring to later papers, there should be
>a page that refers to the paper and which also links to later notes. But I
>digress.
I have a paper (which is I don't intend to update) which cites a
bibliography which I do update. This cites a paper by a second author
written well after mine who cites my first paper.
Electronic means provide an excellent medium to link to _current_ material
even though the citing paper may be years old. You can break the time flow
limitation of a static medium like paper.
Tony
__________________________________________________________________________
Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html
Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also
Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632
Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120
Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA tony@info.anu.edu.au