Ethics and publishing

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Can we all agree that ethics is an important component of 
scholarly publishing - whether open access or not?

There are business practices and editorial policies that might 
tend to favor ethical practices.  Most of these factors will be 
exactly the same for all publishers, whether open access or not.

Relying heavily on advertising revenue from a commercial interest 
which could have a vested interest in the published outcome of 
research studies, for example, leaves a journal open to editorial 
interference.  Avoiding such reliance is a good idea - whether a 
journal is open access, or not.

So many journals are hybrids nowadays anyways - partially open 
access, OA choices, free back issues, etc. - that it may not make 
much sense anymore to distinguish OA and non-OA publishing.

chrs,

Heather G. Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com