Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

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

Raymond Wan writes:

 > Well, I set myself up for that one, didn't I??  Honestly, I don't
 > know [where open access publishing should go].  I just don't like
 > seeing open access publishers patting themselves on the back about
 > how great they are as if that's the last stage in "academic
 > publishing evolution"...

Sure.  Nobody on this list does, we don't even think open source is
"there" yet -- consider the interest in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.

 > If there are 3 groups:  authors, publishers, and readers.
 > 
 > 1)  The old model is bad since readers have to pay to read papers.

In print media, I disagree.  Given the amount of time one actually has
to read papers and the resource cost restriction on the number of
journals that can reasonably published in a given field, even graduate
students can afford to subscribe to a few major association-sponsored
journals (at least in the U.S. and Japan -- they don't in Japan
because the academic culture here does anything but encourage it, but
they could).  And there is a (fairly) high cost of producing and
distributing print copies to justify subscription charges and "library
pricing".

 > Sometimes to read papers that their tax payer dollars (or yen) paid
 > for.  (Gets tricky when it comes to US research and a Japanese reader,
 > I guess.)

No, that's not an issue at all.  The tax dollars pay for the *first
copy*, and the issue about that is when the paper is about research
that gets patented, which really sucks for fundamental research
dollars (it's another matter when it's industrial policy rather than
funding fundamental research on the cheap, which is what the
U.S. government does).

 > 2)  The current open access publishing model is good, but I'm bothered
 > by publishers now accepting anything to raise their revenue.  The only
 > thing stopping them is their concern about the journal's impact
 > factor.

I don't see a problem here.  The current situation is disequilibrium.
Eventually the circle-jerk citation bubble will subside as good
researchers realize that they're paying for publications nobody they
care about will read, and they drift back to global leaders.  Tenure
and promotion committees at good research institutions already realize
that they have an evaluation problem.  Here in Japan the response has
been to assume that researchers who get lots of money are good, but
they're learning that that doesn't produce very good research.  If
Japan (and China) wish to assume the leadership positions in R&D that
IMHO they deserve, they're going to have to do a better job at
evaluating research.  I believe that Western academic principles are
the best way to do that, but that doesn't really matter -- I could
easily be wrong about the best way, but I don't think I'm wrong about
"Change We Need!  Yes We Can!" ;-)

 > 3)  Let's eliminate the publisher since we clearly have the IT tools
 > to do most of what they do.  While they don't have a big say on the
 > quality, their name does mean something to some people.

Yes, and the problem is that "some people" include a lot of deans and
research provosts.

 > I think I would decide to say yes/no to submit or review for a
 > journal based partly on the publisher as the "first hurdle".

Are you still defining IEEE as a publisher?  I don't think that's
helpful, because I *would* indeed give points to an IEEE journal or an
ACM journal just because it's IEEE or ACM.  But Springer, Elsevier,
Dover, or Penguin?  Uh-uh, I see no difference among the four, except
price.

 > A "blog"-like format can be adopted, just like with the STAP
 > controversy.  I'd be a bit concerned if someone would take those
 > ideas and develop their own work without contributing to the
 > original one.  I've seen in one case where one group disagreed with
 > the other and instead of sending e-mails to ask for
 > clarification...they published a paper.

I don't see anything wrong with that.  That's how good graduate
students generally get their papers published before finishing their
degrees, and sometimes it's useful to present a coherent rebuttal as
well as the resulting synthesis.  Remember, the first group probably
did *not* publish their lab notebooks on an public-access web page!

My first major publication occurred when I read a paper in a course my
second year.  My professor said, "Plausible -- why don't you get an
appointment with Prof D?"  Which I did, and he said "You're right, and
BTW there's a WP circulating with a less transparent argument, so you
might want to write it up in a hurry."  Since what I had in mind was
really just a note, and the approaches really were different in an
important way, I don't think this was particularly unethical of either
of us.  53 hours and 5 typescript pages later, my submission was in
the mail.

The journal editor (same journal as the original paper) gave us the
choice of combining papers into a "paper", or two separate "notes"
(max 4 journal pages including figures and references).  This was good
fortune for me!  BTW, the paper ended up being primarily based on
their presentation.

 > Returning to my very first point.  I am in support of open access
 > publishing.

Nobody doubts that, as far as I can see.

 > I just want to point out that, unless they are backed by the
 > government or universities, there is a potential problem.  They can
 > keep accepting papers with only impact factors holding them back...
 > They are more than IT tools...they also bring authors and editorial
 > board members together.

I still don't see why this is a problem.  Nobody is twisting the arms
of the editors to publish crap, and you can post water on the Internet
but that doesn't mean the browser-using horses will drink.  The crap
journals just amount to crap blogs.

 > One example that comes to mind is PLOS One.  Perhaps I'm just bitter
 > that I haven't got something into this journal yet :-) but, it's
 > policy is:
 > 
 > http://www.plosone.org/static/reviewerGuidelines#about
 > 
 > "Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to
 > determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance'
 > required by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine
 > whether a paper is technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the
 > published scientific record. Once the work is published in PLOS ONE,
 > the broader community is then able to discuss and evaluate the
 > significance of the article"
 > 
 > Indeed, if someone has put some time into a piece of work, it should
 > see the light of day.  But, if technical soundness is the main
 > criteria, then the above statement paves the way for including a lot
 > of articles; each of which authors have to pay an up-front publication
 > charge...

So what?  If the authors think it is worthwhile to pay, who are you to
judge?  For example, I would give a master's student a degree based on
work that gets into PLOS One, but a doctoral student would have to do
better than that on at least one paper.  (It might well be that the
PLOS One article attracted a lot of favorable attention as a "real
contribution", of course.)

 > I think the jury's still out on this one.

It depends on how well it's indexed.  ISTM that this is a better idea
than Knoefler's STAP blog for "finished" research.  If well-indexed,
then people can do "meta-research" aka "review" papers based on this.

What I would like to see here is a deal between PLOS One and the
"conventional" journals based on "original contribution" that
publishing the details of an experiment or computation in PLOS One
doesn't prevent you from publishing the "integrative" version of the
same research in one of those conventional journals.

 > Some decent work does into this journal, but you could redo a study
 > with only a little novelty but technically sound, and it should get
 > in.  I *guess*, "We confirmed the results in someone else's paper 5
 > years ago." might count...

Why do you have a problem with that?  I would imagine that if the
paper "matters", the referees themselves, and a few avid browsers,
will start citing it.  If it doesn't matter, nobody will.

 > Yes, that would be good to see.  Now, the missing piece is for
 > academia to recognize such contributions for hiring, promotions, etc.
 > That kind of inertia is hard to go against.

Sure, but I don't see a solution to that.  It's true that the second-
and third-tier researchers in academia have an incentive to promote
the journals they publish in as "top journals", but the only answer to
that is good deans and provosts, ditto "senior research fellows" or
whatever in think tanks.  No?

 > In some areas in CS, they have annual "competitions" to see which
 > method is best.

URL?  (I have no idea what you're referring to here, I'd like to see!)

 > Yes, I agree.  Big publishers also have a substantial amount of money
 > stored up from years of being in the business to advance -- they have
 > a head start.

Oh, sure, they may end up getting the "best of open access" journals
for several reasons, including that one.  But maybe not, look what
happened to bookstores.  They have a lot of inertia in print media,
which are not going to be obsolete for decades, if ever, and may not
be agile enough to save their lunch from everest.com[1].


Footnotes: 
[1]  Name chosen by analogy to "Amazon" (signifying the huge flow of
books), here signifying the rarefied atmosphere of research pubs. :-)