Subject: FW: Chemistry Pre-prints
From: "Vickery, Bryan (ELSLON)" <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 11:43:46 +0100

Wendy, could you post this to chemweb for me? I'm not on that list.

Thanks,

Bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: Vickery, Bryan (ELSLON) 
Sent: 04 August 2000 11:42
To: 'CHEMICAL INFORMATION SOURCES DISCUSSION LIST'
Subject: RE: Chemistry Pre-prints

Dear Henry,

Thank you for your email concerning The Chemistry Preprint Server. The
service is still in development and will be launched in Washington at the
ACS national meeting - such is the interest in the CPS that we have, as you
noted, already had 6 submissions.

In answer to your questions/comments:

a) I will leave it to representatives of the relevant publishers to make
their positions clear. Ultimately however it is the will of the authors to
disseminate their information that is key.

>From a recent article:

"One crucial point that is raised again and again by scientists worrying
about getting into print though is that of how prior disclosure will be seen
by the journals. Will the production of a preprint count against an author
automatically and lead to summary rejection? Nature says not, it will not
consider a preprint as a prior publication unless the author has taken steps
to publicise the preprint through media contact, which is, as they say, a
different matter entirely. Presumably, Nature's US counterpart Science will
adopt a similar position if it has not already and many of the other
journals are likely to follow. Many journals have a slightly less rigid
policy already in place so that prior dissemination, so long as it was not
in an actual journal, is not an exclusionary condition, anyway. The ACS is
yet to make its stance clear on this issue. Will they or won't they? If they
do, then authors will likely feel happier about using the ChemWeb.com server
immediately without the fear of rejection from the likes of JACS.

The preprint idea will, given time, take off. It will become the prime step
toward publication and recognition, with actual publication (print or web)
eventually taking something of a backseat role. Although I suspect the two
forms will likely meld within a few years of the 'beta testing' stage being
complete as all publishers seize the opportunity to provide added value at
this critical earlier stage in the process of disseminating science.", David
Bradley, The Alchemist,
[http://www.chemweb.com/alchem/2000/catalyst/ct_000707_preprint.html]

The Chemistry Preprint Server Advisory Board will be announced soon.

b) The article submitted in Macromolecular Chemistry on "Oxidation Modeling
in Organic Materials" has indeed been rejected by Polymer Degradation and
Stability. The author here clearly believes his work to be valid and wishes
to share it with the wider community.

This is an equally acceptable use of the CPS. Each article becomes its own
discussion group. If we, representing the Macromolecular Chemistry
community, feel the reviewers are right (their comments have been included
also) then we can say so in the discussion.

c) The CPS can accommodate 'supplementary files' of any type alongside a
submitted article. It is hoped that authors will submit molfiles, raw data,
spectra etc. The first 6 authors have chosen not to do so. This should not
be seen as a failing of the CPS. "Technically unadventurous" as they may
appear, the value is that they can be updated at any time, supplementary
files can be added, a full discussion below the article is possible - and
the paper can be made available immediately.

d) Clearly e-journals are of major importance to ChemWeb.com - as a
distributor, however we are not a publisher.

I will be more than happy to answer any further questions you may have on
The Chemistry Preprint Server.

Warmest regards,

Bryan

Bryan A. Vickery
Community Development Manager
ChemWeb, Inc.
84 Theobald's Road
Holborn
London, WC1X 8RR
United Kingdom

Direct:	+ 44 (0) 20 7611 4424 
Main:	+ 44 (0) 20 7611 4300 
Fax:	+ 44 (0) 20 7611 4301
E-mail:	[email-masked]
___________________________________________________
ChemWeb.com:		http://chemweb.com/
The Alchemist:		http://chemweb.com/alchemist

-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Leitl [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: 03 August 2000 23:16
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Chemistry Pre-prints

From: "Rzepa, Henry" <[email-masked]>
Sender: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Chemistry Pre-prints
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 13:24:43 +0100

I note with interest that the latest attempt to introduce a chemistry
pre-print service

( http://www.chemweb.com/preprint?url=/CPS, this chemweb by the way
having no association with this list of the same name)

now has a collection of  6 pre-prints.

A great deal has been written about the nature of preprints in many
fora, and there would be no point in starting a major thread on this topic
at this forum.  But one or two comments might attract discussion!

a) Have the major learned society and commercial publishers yet
indicated whether they will accept articles that have been preprinted?
The RSC and ACS policies are currently unclear, to say the least.

The policy of Elsevier, indirectly via Chemweb.com, which it owns
and which offers this preprint service,
might be a particularly interesting one to find out!

b) One of the preprints above reverses the issue in point a), ie its
an article that has been rejected by two referees of a conventional
journal, and is offered at this preprint service for us to make our
own minds up!  I suppose then its a postprint, or perhaps an altprint!
An interesting issue, if preprint services start to offer a major component
of previously rejected articles.

c)  I note that the the preprints above are technically quite unadventurous,
ie they offer no "added value" other than electronic paper delivery
and search.  I would have thought that preprints especially should
be augmented with additional  "live" data for people to ascertain
whether the conclusions drawn from it are correct. So, should
preprints offer more than a  "paper equivalent"? What do
people think?

d) Our chemistry library here recently debated whether to
abandon paper entirely, and go over to  e-journals. In an indication
of how rapidly things are changing, last year we debated whether to
augment our entirely paper based collection from a major learned society
publisher with  a few e-versions at extra cost. This year, we were accepting
that we would have access to the entire collection electronically, and now
found ourselves debating how many printed versions we should order at
extra cost!   Such complete dependence on e-journals is remarkable,
but whether in the long term its healthy is another matter. What of
countries where the infrastructures are not up to delivering e-journals?
--

Henry Rzepa. +44 (0)20 7594 5774 (Office) +44 (0)20 7594 5804 (Fax)
Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, London, SW7  2AY, UK.
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/

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