Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

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

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 8:46 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>  > 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.
>
> That's what you said, but I don't understand what they are.  In
> particular I argue that copyright is not one of them.


Before we get too far off topic, I should mention that my first
message in this thread had this phrase, "While I'm in support of open
access, ...".  I'm not at all against open access.  I should get that
out (again) before I get jumped by multiple people here!  :-)

Let's start by removing copyright from the discussion.  That's fine.

My issue with open access publishing is that it is really at the start
of a journey of what publishing should be.  We can argue that open
source software is also a journey.  My comment above about the "level
of rejoice" not being the same comes from my personal belief that open
source software is much further along in its journey than open access
publishing.

Suppose we go back I don't know how many years where software were tar
balled and placed on a web site of download.  We could have called
that "open source".  That's surely open.  But, luckily, we didn't stop
there and other possibilities such as the ability (both license and
technological) to modify, collaborate, and re-distribute became part
of its definition.

In my mind, open access publishing isn't there yet.  Some publishers
congratulate themselves for adopting such a model as if that's it...
Honestly, I don't know where the path for open access publishing ends
or even where it passes the threshold where I'd be less critical.  But
right now, I'd be a bit more content if it were called semi-open
access publishing [more below...].


> Sure, but my point is that on the one hand, journal publication
> carries a copyright but *not* a patent -- you have "open source"
> levels of access to the *ideas* as long as you rewrite them in your
> own words.[1]  On the other, copyright is hardly a restriction, since the
> main "open source" right of redistribution is restricted by academic
> ethics regardless of copyright.


Yes, no strong disagreements here.

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.


>  > 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...


>  > Yes, that is true.  I think what I meant was that publishers have a
>  > reputation to maintain.
>
> Sure, but the cost of maintaining reputation is refusing exactly those
> papers that would be your revenue source, plus high cost distribution
> (especially high-quality printing).  This is killing them, except for
> maybe those top journals that even graduate students are (well, used
> to be) willing to fork out for.  And even those are seeing prices go
> up as libraries stop ordering them in favor of electronic aggregators
> like ScienceDirect.


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.

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.

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.


>  > 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.
>
> 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.


>  > The web has made print articles readily available.  And this actually
>  > facilitates some kind of accountability through retractions (see,
>  > [1]).
>
> My point about retracting print is that if you're reading in print,
> you are highly unlikely to see a retraction in a timely fashion.  You
> don't have the search facility etc at your fingertips.


Yes, you are right....  By the way, we are gradually moving away from
what we were discussing.  I never really had an opinion about print
versus non-print journals.

My (main) comment was really about the term "open access journals"
compared to "open access software".  And I did talk about publishers'
reputations and retractions and how the web alone probably isn't
enough.  Publishers or at least some entity (could be an editorial
board) is needed or else authors can release papers without bound.

Traditional journals nowadays publish in print and on the web.  While
true -- you don't know when you are holding the magazine if it has
been retracted.  You would know if you visit the journal's web site.
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.


>  > You can be an author who has written something and then
>  > self-publish it on the web.
> You can do that in print too.  Are you aware of the racket that
> printers have in Japan, because at many universities Ph.D. candidates
> are required to publish books?  So the Ph.D. with boring work pays to
> have their thesis bound and registered with an ISBN.


I've seen something similar in Australia and the Netherlands.
Correction, there isn't an ISBN in Australia but it has to be bound
and it can be a lot of money.  Of course, I cannot speak for all
universities in these two countries, but I don't think the above
racket is specific to just Japan.


>  > 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.
>
> Yet somehow the blogosphere has taken off.  Sites like GrokLaw even
> have substantial academic credibility among academics (though not the
> status of a "publication", and I don't expect that to come any time
> soon).


Yes, I agree.


>  > 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.
>
> But this is precisely the point.  Copyright was a device to protect
> printers/publishers far more so than authors.  Here, quality control
> is provided by editorial boards, not publishers.


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.

Maybe the web + <something> could make publishers obsolete.  True.
But that certain <something> is needed, I think.


> But that's precisely Simon's point.  The editorial boards stay with
> the publishers only through inertia, and in many fields they are
> defecting to efficient, timely electronic media en masse.  You simply
> can't justify associating "publisher" with "editorial and production
> quality" any more -- it's always been quite possible to have high
> editorial quality without a publisher (consider the process of
> producing Ph.D.s), and now production quality requires support of a
> publisher in a rapidly vanishing subset of academic fields.


Yes, it is possible to have good content without a publisher.  You
won't find me disagreeing with you here.

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

Further down the road?  Yes, it's possible...

Ray