RE: Does BMC's business model conflict with Editorial Independence?

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

The authoritative stamp of editorial approval and the reluctance 
to publish low-quality articles only exists for prestigious 
journals.  All academic fields contain second and third-tier 
journals, most of which are starving for manuscripts.  Just look 
for journals that regularly combine issues, merge titles, fill 
issues with conference abstracts, feschrifts, or in the case of 
one British publisher, previously-published articles.  Ask the 
editorial board members of these journals what their role is and 
they will tell you it is to solicit manuscripts.  These journals 
don't have impact factors, and probably don't care too much. 
They exist as vehicles to publish articles that are rejected by 
prestigious journals.

None of the above description has anything to do with Open 
Access, and as Peter Banks and others have illustrated, many of 
the OA journals are starving for manuscripts as well.

The argument that there is a strong disincentive for accepting 
articles of low quality does not exist for most journals, whether 
they are Open Access or not.  However, the danger of implementing 
a method of rewarding editors for simply the number of paying 
authors they attract (plus a system that punishes editors for 
accepting manuscripts from authors that cannot afford to pay), is 
to invite a system of 'vanity publishing' in the truest sense of 
the term.  This again has nothing to do with Open Access.  My 
principle concern remains that the BMC business model fails to 
meet the standards of the ethical organizations to which it 
belongs, including:

The Committee on Publishing Ethics 
http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors 
http://www.icmje.org/

World Association of Medical Editors http://www.wame.org/

--Phil Davis
___________________________

Matt Cockerill wrote: "The concerns that you express ignore the 
core function of journals, which is to convey an authoritative 
stamp of editorial approval on research."

Neither BioMed Central's editors, nor BioMed Central, nor Public
Library of Science, nor any other open access journal publisher,
would advance their own interests by accepting articles regardless of
quality, since journals which cannot convey a meaningful stamp of
editorial approval will not attract submissions.

To take just one example, the BioMed Central journal which 
publishes the *most* articles, 'BMC Bioinformatics', also has the 
highest impact factor of any BioMed Central journal. More 
generally, the number of publications in each of our journals is 
strongly positively correlated with impact factor.  So the idea 
that somehow quality and quantity tug in opposite directions is 
misguided. Having a reputation for quality attracts more papers.

Matt

 > The editorial remuneration practices of BMC do not give me
 > assurances that BMC editors are fair and honest arbitrators of their
 > editorial responsibilities.
 >
 > --Phil Davis