Re: Maximising research access vs. minimizing copy-editing errors

[Janellyn P Kleiner <jkleiner@lsu.edu>]

It is not my intent to be argumentative. I just want some answers 
and examples because, in my experience, it most DEFINITELY is NOT 
a fact that the paper accepted differs in content from the paper 
published, other than print format, UNLESS the editor is 
accepting inferior papers. The only difference that I've 
experienced in my published papers was a change in a title ONCE 
which, frankly, I thought was presumptuous on the journal 
editor's part and not as accurate regarding the paper's content.

I have decades of experience in 
journalism/masscomm/writing/publishing even PR as well as a 
library/information science degree.  I started out in junior 
high, continued through high school & college, then as a 
newspaper reporter, and have edited/published for my university 
and for the American Library Assn. Demands from my husband & 
children got me into librarianship because I was never home while 
in the business world (but I was so stunned by the way libraries 
did business that I resigned 3 times my first year from the 
academic library where I was Head of Circulation). I've adjusted 
and am now Associate Dean at an ARL library but my commercial 
background still rears its head at times. The diffences in the 
business world & academia are drastic & even today, there are 
times that I'm still appalled at the 'goings-on' in the scholarly 
world.

The articles coming across my desk in this career that needed 
substantive changes or 'appeared' to include inaccuracies were 
rejected with the exceptions of some conference proceedings that 
couldn't be rejected and they did need LOTs of editing help. I've 
also been invited to apply for the editor positions of College & 
Research Libraries and RQ/RUSA Quarterly and refused due to time 
constraints. I'm providing this history because I want you to 
know that my interests & curiousity are real and I'm not sniping 
at anyone. I'd just like some answers that may blow holes in my 
current opinion that scholarly publishing is the most profitable 
venture going in the world of publishing.

Some of my scientist friends have told me they need help from 
editors but the help needed is simplistic -- grammar, spelling, 
sentence structure, minor changes that any literate colleague 
could provide. It wasn't that they didn't have the skills, they 
didn't want to spend their time basically editing their own 
articles because it took them away from their labs. You see I've 
been intrigued (or horrified) by scholarly publishing from the 
time I learned they paid page charges in many of the sciences to 
get published -- four decades ago -- and it was not inexpensive.

Since I formerly wrote for a living, I went into shock about 
paying to be published (pure vanity press methods to me) to be 
followed by further shock when I learned that I was NOT getting 
paid by College & Research Libraries for the article my library 
director had asked me to do. Any other time, I'd have known the 
payment status in advance but I was simply doing him a favor and 
expecting to earn a few bucks on ths side. Little did I know. 
To this day, I still think authors of papers should be paid. Yes, 
it's part of tenure & promotion and I've made it to the Professor 
rank myself, but I do not think it's good practice for 
academicians. Unfortunately, most have not been that interested 
after gaining promotion & tenure until recent journal prices 
skyrocketed and began to threaten their research library 
collections.

I do know the difference between copy editing and proof reading, 
the latter often done by the author when he/she is provided the 
proof. In many scientific journals, copy editors do NOT have a 
scientific background equivalent to the researcher. How can they 
'pick up serious errors' other than house style, grammar, etc. 
Journal editors, when confronted, gloss over explaining their 
'value-added' arguments claiming they are not really the point. 
They ARE the point in view of the horrendous prices some 
publishers charge universities for journals that could not exist 
without papers submitted by the universities' researchers. And, 
who supports the researchers?  The very institutions charged 
outragious subscription fees for papers jointly supported by 
their institutions and funding agencies so it is VERY important 
to have journals' editing tasks and value-added activities 
enumerated and justified.

I truly do not mean to be argumentative but it would be a welcome 
change to get some straight answers. Please provide some 
justification for these claims, or at least examples of the kind 
of substantive changes made by journal editors. To me, the only 
added value I have seen, & it's a superb addition, is the linking 
of references to the full-text articles. That truly is a service 
but it's a mechanical one. I have a couple of colleagues, both 
scientists, who serve as editors and are well-paid for having 
their names listed as editors, but they can't justify the 
'value-added' arguments made by the publishers of their work. I'm 
very curious about this.  Could some of the editors on this 
listserv provide those answers please?  They may help those of us 
advocating open access to better understand why so many editors 
of scholarly publishing oppose it -- other than financial gain.

Jane Kleiner
Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Services
The LSU Libraries
Louisiana State University
E-Mail: jkleiner@lsu.edu

________________________

"Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>@lists.yale.edu on
07/07/2006 07:26:17 PM

Subject: Re: Maximising research access vs. minimizing 
copy-editing errors

I rest my case. I am just making the point that the paper 
accepted by the editor of a journal is not the same as the paper 
published in the journal and that the difference is not just a 
matter of formatting. This is fact. We can all of us put this 
into a wider context but I would have thought that we had heard 
Professor Harnad's views very often. All his remarks are very 
splendid but this does not alter the incorrectness of the 
assertion I quoted.

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 12:27 AM
Subject: Maximising research access vs. minimizing copy-editing errors

> On Wed, 5 Jul 2006, Anthony Watkinson wrote:
>
>> I suppose Professor Harnad thinks that if he constantly
>> promulgates the idea (see below) that the only difference
>> between the accepted paper and the final published version is a
>> matter of formatting he will get those not involved in
>> publishing to accept this as a "fact". In fact there is
>> something called "copyediting". There are some publishers who
>> do very little copy-editing or even none at all. However many
>> publishers, especially those who have important journals, do a
>> lot of copy-editing which is not just a matter of house style
>> but can pick up serious errors. The difference between the
>> versions can be significant and this difference is (I
>> understand) being recognised by the current NISO groups working
>> on version. Journal editors of course know this very well too.
>
> The trouble is that Anthony Watkinson and I are addressing two
> completely different problems, hence two completely different
> user populations.
>
> Mr. Watkinson is thinking of the user who has a subscription to
> the journal, with its copy-edited, proofed PDF, and is weighing
> the use of this against the use of the author's final, accepted
> draft -- revised and accepted, but not copy-edited. He is quite
> right that the copy-edited version is to be preferred: I too
> would prefer it, if I had access to it.
>
> But the problem I -- and the OA movement -- are addressing is not
> that one at all. We are concerned with the population of would-be
> users who cannot, today, access the journal version, because it
> is not in one of the journals they or their institutions can
> afford to subscribe to. And the choice *they* are facing is
> access to the author's final, refereed, accepted (but not
> copy-edited) draft, versus no access at all. I very much doubt
> that all those would-be users would be very appreciative of Mr.
> Watkinson's concern to protect them from access to the author's
> final draft on the grounds of potential errors that might arise
> from the lack of copy-editing.
>
> I think Mr. Watkinson may have both the immediate needs of
> researchers and the immediate motivation for Open Access rather
> out of focus and proportion if he imagines that his very
> legitimate scholarly concern to minimize all errors that a
> copy-editor might catch carries any weight at all in the context
> of the overarching research concern that would-be users should
> not continue to be denied access to the final, refereed drafts of
> research findings.
>
> And if Mr. Watkinson is curious about the size and scope of this
> would-be user population, and of the research access problem that
> the OA movement is addressing (compared to the copy-editing
> error-risk problem that he is addressing), a good estimate is
> provided by the 25%-250% higher citation impact of research for
> which the author supplements access to the journal version by
> self-archiving his final draft in his institutional repository.
> That's quite a dramatic difference, but I expect it will prove to
> be even bigger, once we have not only citation data, but also
> usage (download) data comparing self-archived and
> non-self-archived articles (in the same journal and year).
>
> If anyone has any comparative data on the research impact of
> undetected copy-editing errors, I would be very happy to see
> it...
>
> Stevan Harnad