Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

 > My issue with open access publishing is that it is really at the
 > start of a journey of what publishing should be.

OK.  In the same way, my question is where do you think it should go?

 > I think my only comment is that it would nice if "open" is reserved
 > for not just the flow of ideas in one direction, but somehow in
 > both directions.  But still academic in nature and not quite like
 > blog postings with comments below it.

I don't see how you make it two-way but not a blog.  For example:

http://www.ipscell.com/2014/02/invitation-to-crowdsource-stap-stem-cell-follow-up-data-here/

Do you have a suggestion off-hand how to improve this?

 > >  > Hmmmm, at least in my field, I haven't heard of one yet.  How do these
 > >  > open access journals stay financially afloat?
 > >
 > > Same way as many open source projects do: they have no finances, and
 > > depend on contributed resources for the web site (usually a
 > > university, eg, Berkeley Electronic Press has over 100 titles by now,
 > > I think) and editorial functions (which are currently mostly
 > > contributed for most journals).
 > 
 > I see.  Well, most of the open access publishers in my area charge an
 > upfront fee to authors.  So, perhaps this varies from area to area
 > (not a surprise, of course!) and things are more open if I look beyond
 > what I do...

Indeed.  Business OA publishers do charge a buttload of money (unit is
hundreds of dollars, value varies), but they all look like scams (ie,
they publish every field I've heard of and some I hadn't heard of
before, which is impossible to do with any level of quality especially
on the tight turnarounds they promise).  Maybe doctors would pay in
the thousands of dollars (although on second thought they're expected
to publish in the thousands of articles, so maybe only hundreds per).
So I suspect there's just a "pay to play" culture in some fields.

The economists are not so concerned with slick quality, and are pretty
unified about who the top current journals are, as well as who you
want on your editorial boards in each field.

 > Well, there is obviously a trade-off that is not quite black or white
 > when it comes to making money.  If you start refusing second tier
 > papers, then you increase your revenue but people won't look
 > favourably at your journal.  Impact factor goes down and then it's
 > difficult to climb back up again.

I don't really see an issue, if you're mostly interested in making
money.  Readers don't look favorably at your journal, but non-readers
(specifically, promotion committees and deans) count it the same as
all the others, except the ones where you need to be lucky or Nobel-
class to get a paper in.

 > There's a lot of competition among journals and the trick is to make
 > sure that authors submit to your journal first and not after the 4th
 > rejection from other journals.

If your goal is a high-quality journal that at least doesn't lose
money, yes.

 > I don't know much about the high cost distribution part.  I guess /
 > hope that journals would charge a bit more for print versions of
 > journals.  Both IEEE and ACM do that, as far as I remember.  Does the
 > difference offset printing cost and postage?  I don't know; wouldn't
 > be surprised either way.

Probably depends on the number of adverts they accept.

 > >  > Though it's perhaps not worth a mention, but even disagreements
 > >  > between authors can cause papers to be retracted.
 > >
 > > Sure.  I think those are different issues from quality of
 > > journal, though.
 > 
 > Yes, true.  I was just replying to your comment, "It's fraudulent
 > articles that get retracted."  There are a small percentage of
 > articles that get retracted for non-fraudulent reasons.

Ah, you were right the first time then, better not mentioned.  That
just leads to "violent agreement".  :^)

 > An open access publisher might have papers available to download.  If
 > you keep a copy on your HDD and don't look back at the journal's web
 > site, you also wouldn't know of the paper's status.

Well, one of the improvement you propose (for high quality OA journals)
would be like the IETF's HTML versions of RFCs.  Example:

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2046

Note the links in the header: different versions, diffs, errata,
updated-by, and obsoletes.

Modern PDF supports links, so the journal's version could provide
these.  The "errata" and "discussion" links (for academic journals, I
think your "two-way" suggestion implies a discussion link) would be
present in *all* versions distributed by the journal.  "Smart" reader
software would do a HEAD request on them in the background and change
the link's anchor text to "No errata" (or maybe this would be better
with an RSS feed).

 > I don't completely quite agree with you here.  I'll admit that quality
 > control is primarily handled by editorial boards.  No arguments there.
 > But probably not the fact that publishers have no effect.
 > 
 > Some people still judge papers by which journals they were published
 > in without looking at the composition of the editorial board at the
 > time the journal was accepted.  So, their names still mean something
 > to some people.  The web hasn't (IMHO) made publishers obsolete.

But journal != publisher.  Springer and Elsevier (are they still
different? snicker) publish hundreds of journals each.  People look at
the journal name, not the publisher name.

 > But well-known publishers are still behind some good quality work that
 > is selected by a good editorial board.  Could it be that this is
 > merely a correlation between the two that is purely by chance?  Maybe.

It's not by chance.  Publishers in print media have substantial
technical advantages over the average joe in production and
distribution.  They are a nexus where authors can be connected into an
editorial board.  Author/editors value the book opportunities that may
come from knowing top people at the publisher.  Etc.  But these
advantages are rapidly becoming historical.

Distribution: the web makes it possible for anybody to distribute
(says the guy who hosted the most-accessed web in Japan on a DOS box
Jan 18-20, 1995).

Design: not by anybody, but graphic and page design is now nearly a
commodity (sorry, Darren! high-skilled, creative, but hey, economics
doesn't need Picasso!)

Editorial: not the publisher's forte *in academic journals* (although
still so in *books* and quite possibly in general-interest magazines,
I think).

 > But I don't think we're at a stage where we can dismiss the publisher
 > quite yet.

Let's see!  Too bad it won't be on a big screen at Hooters!