Defining embargo periods by discipline?

[David Wojick]

Dear Loet, it is not a matter of being sloppy just the necessity of simplicity. Rule making, or writing sentences that govern the behavior of millions of people, has certain requirements which are very different from research. I have a diagnostic system of 126 kinds of confusion that was developed specifically for federal regulations: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/02/05/a-taxonomy-of-confusions/. Most of these confusions flow from complexity.

Once upon a time I wound up writing the regulations for cost-benefit analysis of federal water projects because the economists who were supposed to write them could not produce a method that was simple enough to be actionable.  Their text actually argued with itself which rules cannot do. But if you can propose a simple formula to compute the marginal value of journal articles and link this to embargo periods I will be happy to look at it.

My best wishes,

David

On Mar 2, 2013, at 7:03 AM, Loet Leydesdorff <loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET> wrote:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> Dear David,
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> > Regulatory mechanisms need to be simple, which often makes them crude.
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> Does this provide us with an argument to proceed sloppily? You first used arguments like time-pressure, not-being an economist, and now crudeness.
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> It seems to me that our (perhaps academic) objective is to correct for error, not to contribute to it.
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> Best,
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> Loet
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> PS. “Marginal return” comes from the idea that one creeps to equilibrium on a market. Each additional apple offered will lower the price (given demand) until one meets the “real” price. The last apple is then the marginal one. (I am also not an economist.) Best, Loet
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