Hmmm, the 'journal are aggregators' model sounds really interesting. It essentially captures the concept that the value of journals is 'legitimizing' papers.
> People should be able to follow a citation from one paper to another, without having to pay to do that.
I really like that, but what about citing books? It seems like sources that are paid for should still be used. We shouldn't hamstring science / scientists. Similarly, we shouldn't just pass of ideas from payed sources as our own ideas.
Instead I would propose the slightly weaker rule:
'Where available, cite the free version'
This obviously needs to be complemented with strong reasons for people to create free versions.
I see another issue though. Sometimes, there are significant differences between the ArxiV version and the journal version. I've seen stuff where the journal had better figures, etc. In that case, a reader would be better of reading the journal article than the ArxiV version.
> People should be able to follow a citation from one paper to another, without having to pay to do that.
I really like that, but what about citing books? It seems like sources that are paid for should still be used. We shouldn't hamstring science / scientists. Similarly, we shouldn't just pass of ideas from payed sources as our own ideas. Instead I would propose the slightly weaker rule:
'Where available, cite the free version'
This obviously needs to be complemented with strong reasons for people to create free versions.
I see another issue though. Sometimes, there are significant differences between the ArxiV version and the journal version. I've seen stuff where the journal had better figures, etc. In that case, a reader would be better of reading the journal article than the ArxiV version.