ONE SIZE FITS ALL
Why will publishers agree to this scheme?
Peer-review is the most important service they provide ... for nothing?
(1) Publishers today are paid for (managing) peer review -- paid in full,
many times over -- by institutional subscriptions.
(2) The majority of journals today already agree to immediate, unembargoed
Green OA self-archiving of the author's peer-reviewed final draft.
(3) For the minority of journals that embargo OA, there is the immediate-deposit
(ID/OA) mandate - mandatory deposit in the author's institutional repository
immediately upon acceptance whether or not access to the deposit is immediately
set as OA -- plus the repository's eprint-request Button to tide over user access
needs with one click from the requestor and one click from the author ("Almost-OA")
for those deposits to which access has been set as Closed Access, to comply
with a publisher OA embargo.
Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of Gold OA
Publishing are premature.
Funds are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals)
are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA;
the asking price for Gold OA is still high ("Fools-Gold"); and there is concern
that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates and lower quality standards.
What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate
immediate-deposit (of authors' final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon
acceptance for publication). (U of C should add such an immediate-deposit clause -- with no opt-out -- to its new Green OA mandate.)
This will provide immediate Green OA for all unembargoed
deposits + immediate Almost-OA for all embargoed deposits.
Then, if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions
unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions)
that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (print edition, online edition,
access-provision, archiving), downsize to just managing the service of
peer review, and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model.
Meanwhile, the subscription cancellations will have released the funds
to pay these residual service costs (for affordable, sustainable post-Green
Fair-Gold OA).
The natural way to charge for the service of peer review then will be on a
"no-fault basis," with the author's institution or funder paying for each round of refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing,
or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against inflated
acceptance rates and decline in peer-review quality standards.
Stevan Harnad
On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 5:23 PM, LIBLICENSE <liblicense@gmail.com> wrote:
From: "Friend, Fred" <f.friend@ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 08:24:50 +0000
Experience suggests that the value added to a peer-reviewed manuscript
by a copy-editor varies considerably. If the peer-reviewers have done
their job, any false facts or illogicality in the research arguments
should have been picked up. Precision of language and grammar are
important but an author may have as good a grasp of language and
grammar as a copy-editor. I am not suggesting that copy-editors do not
play any role in the quality of the published article, but quality
lies to a greater extent in the quality of the research reported in
the article than it does in copy-editing. The question we have to face
is whether the variable value added by a publisher through
copy-editing or any other service is worth the substantial sum a
publisher charges for such services. How much is using the services of
a publisher worth?
Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
________________________________________
From: Mark Goodwin <MGoodwin@The-APS.org>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 11:16:21 -0400
Ah, so *not* the "final" version, but the penultimate version (post
peer review, at acceptance, pre-copyedit).
That is, the rough manuscript version that has not yet passed a
rigorous copyedit for facts, logical structure, and precision of
language, not to mention grammar, etc., irrespective of whatever
typesetting or formatting may be applied for public consumption.
(apologies for the intentional smug tone...)
Ever and always, a Copy Editor at heart... -Mark
M. L. Goodwin, ELS (mgoodwin@The-APS.org)
Editorial Manager, Publications
The American Physiological Society
Bethesda, MD 20814
http://www.The-APS.org
Integrating the Life Sciences from Molecule to Organism
-----Original Message-----
From: Iris Brest <ibrest@stanford.edu>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 13:11:31 -0700
Sandy -- They will be the version of accepted articles post peer review.
9. What version of their article should Faculty submit to the repository?
The policy requires that the author submit the "final version", which
safely means the manuscript copy post-peer review but before a
publisher typesets and finalizes it.
Iris Brest/Stanford University
-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 22:59:52 -0500
All research publications
covered by the policy will continue to be subjected to rigorous peer
review; they will still appear in the most prestigious journals across
all fields; and they will continue to meet UC's standards of high
quality.
Just wondering if the "standards of high quality" include high quality
in copyediting? Will UC be paying to have the accepted articles
copyedited before they are posted in eScholarship? If not, how can
this promise of "high quality" be made? Does UC think copyediting not
important? Do all UC faculty write pristine prose that is free of
errors?
Sandy Thatcher