Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:53 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>  > I'm more worried that the "open" in open access journals is not
>  > quite the same as open source software.
> I don't understand what this means.  Of course it's not; even if
> copyright were abolished, academic professional ethics forbids
> "reusing" somebody else's work as though it were your own.  So what do
> you mean?  Just "who pays?" is different?  But is it?


Well, the "open" in open source causes much rejoice.  I think my point
is that if we're familiar with the first term, the "level of rejoice"
isn't the same for open access journals.  The "open" in open access
journals has other issues hidden behind it, where copyright is one of
them.

Yes, perhaps it *is* related to copyright in a way.  With open source,
it means that others can look at, critique, and improve the software.
Open access journals really means just open read-only access.  Even
traditional journal papers can be criticized and "improved" by sending
correspondences to the editor or through citing it.  I've seen papers
where authors cite someone else's work and comment that they were just
unable to reproduce the results.



>  > Open access journals have solved that problem by charging at fee up
>  > front.
> But not all of them do.


Hmmmm, at least in my field, I haven't heard of one yet.  How do these
open access journals stay financially afloat?


>  > Well, one "good" thing that publishers still do is quality control.
>
> Publishers can't.  Editors do that, including making decisions about
> retractions and the like, as well as recruiting competent referees.
> But I suggest below that editorial boards can easily defect to
> electronic journals.


Yes, that is true.  I think what I meant was that publishers have a
reputation to maintain.  For example, the "BMC Biology" I mentioned
before is one journal of a publisher called "BMC", who has many
journals.  There is a wide range of quality of journals within this
"family" but they are generally ok.  At the very least, if you're
invited to be an editor, you're probably going to know who you're
saying "yes" to.

So, I was referring to the "brand name" of the publisher.


>  > And if something ends up being wrong, they'll hopefully act quickly
>  > to retract the work.
>
> But that's not the way it works.  Merely "wrong" articles are never
> retracted, nor should they be.  They should be debunked and never
> cited after the debunking (except in textbooks explaining how not do
> research!)
>
> It's fraudulent articles that get retracted.  For example, the "STAP
> cells" paper -- if the research had merely failed reproduction in


Indeed, fraudulent is the proper term.  I don't know the controversy
being the STAP cells paper.  I'm hearing very little about it here,
though I know such a controversy is brewing -- perhaps just one BBC
article was talking about it so far.

Though it's perhaps not worth a mention, but even disagreements
between authors can cause papers to be retracted.  Disagreements in
authorship or ownership of data can also cause a publisher to retract
a piece of work.


>  > With the web, that's difficult to do.
> Actually, print is much harder to retract effectively.  I suppose they
> could hire the "diary slasher".


I guess I wasn't talking about print articles but more like articles
with a publisher behind them and those without a publisher.  Since
what I was commenting was (I think) that the web can't replace the
presence of publishers.

The web has made print articles readily available.  And this actually
facilitates some kind of accountability through retractions (see,
[1]).  I guess a publisher who cares about their reputation may care
more than someone who puts up a piece of work on the web without a
publisher.  You can be an author who has written something and then
self-publish it on the web.  You can even allow others to comment
below it but there is no third party who will take care of that work
and be accountable.

Perhaps such an organization doesn't have to be a publisher.  It could
be some generic third-party entity.  But my point is that the web
doesn't necessarily make publishers obsolete.  My comment was in
response to Simon's comment:


>>> Or, just possibly, it's a racket run by publishers trying to shore up an old
>>> business model made obsolete by the web.


> Conferences, no, you can't replace them for the foreseeable future
> (ie, as long as we can predict the orbit of the Earth around the Sun).
> There are some things you can do at conferences that you can't do
> between a keyboard and a chair.  But the academic publishing industry
> could easily be replaced by a (properly organized) subset of the web,
> and probably will be in the not too distant future in many fields by
> well-respected editorial staffs defecting from their (unpaid)
> positions with print journals in favor of providing more efficient
> dissemination.


Yes, perhaps when I said "some generic third-party entity", it could
mean some properly organized subset of the web.  But, for now,
publishers and the editorial boards that they help form (but who they
don't necessarily pay) do serve a purpose and the web as it currently
is doesn't replace it.

Ray


[1]  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17332213?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus
 -- No, I never read this; just picked a random retraction notice.