On Tue, 10 Jul 2007, Atanu Garai wrote:
See Swan, Alma (2007) What a difference a publisher makes.
OptimalScholarship. Saturday, July 7 2007.
http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-difference-publisher-makes.html
Stevan, Thanks for pointing out to this resource. In my
opinion, in today's world it is erroneous to draw a straight
line between publishers to access.
The straight Gold line is being drawn between publishers and
access, and the straight Green line is being drawn between
between authors and access (to their published articles)
through self-archiving in their institutional repositories,
mandated by their institutions and funders.
And the Green line is straighter, faster, surer, and within
immediate reach.
You are aware that open access journals are also published by
publishers like universities, societies, NFPs and even
commercial publishers and the opposite is also true.
I am aware, and it is irrelevant. OA is between the research
community and itself. Types of publishers (e.g., commercial vs.
non) are utterly irrelevant.
The bottom line is that a publishing activity except blogging
and mailing list posting does not emanate on its own, unless
it is "motivated" by some external forces. These forces may be
the employer, supervisor, commercial or non-profit publishing
agencies, nagging editors, to name a few.
We do not have to reinvent peer-reviewed research publishing
system from first principles. It is already there. OA is about
providing free only access to it, at long last. (The Internet
has been there for 25 years...)
The point I am trying to make is that this is where publishers
are standing.
Where is "this," and what do publishers have to do with it? OA
is about authors, their institutions and their funders,
providing supplementary online access to their research output
for those would-be users who cannot afford paid access to the
publisher's version (paper or online). That's all.
It is altogether different matter whether the publishing
output is open or closed or funded or commercially available.
I can't follow: What is different, from what? The publishing
system is not at issue. Online access to published articles is.
But the bottom line is that for publishing at least in a
journal, you shall have an editorial board, peer reviewers who
will trigger the whole process. And it is the norm that not
the authors but the publishers have so far commissioned these
people in making journal publishing worthwhile and scholarly.
To repeat: there is no need either to recapitulate, formalise
or reinvent the peer-reviewed journal publishing system. It is
there. What is not there is free online access (OA), and that
is what researchers need to provide, and what their
institutions and funders need to mandate that they provide.
Open access (particularly gold/IR version) benefits from
publishers' commissioning of editorial board and peer review
panel by simply taking benefit of existing copyright law
(which is fair enough from legal point of view), but blames
the publishers for not having enough input to the publishing
process. Is it right?
I can't follow you. Gold OA is traditional publishing, but not
charging the user for access. Green OA is traditional
publishing, but with supplementary author self-archiving.
Researchers provide (and benefit from) peer review. Journals
manage the process, and in exchange they get to sell the
subscription version (if they are conventional journals) or to
charge for the peer review, if they are Gold OA publishers.
Peer review per se, and copyright, have nothing to do with OA.
I do not think this is right unless and until we have an
alternative system of having the whole publishing support
system without the publishers is ready.
You want to reform or replace the publishing and/or the
copyright system. OA just needs to provide OA to research
output. Green OA, through self-archiving and self-archiving
mandates, is within immediate reach. Let us grasp it, and then
worry about publishing and/or copyright reform, if we wish...
To add to this, we would be more practical if we avoid
generalizations of the publishers across the board, and in
this case the publishers in question are not the open access
publishers, but the commercial publishers.
The spectrum is not OA vs. commercial publishers. There are
commercial and non-commercial OA publishers and commercial and
non-commercial non-OA publishers. The issue is OA to
peer-reviewed research output, now...
Stevan Harnad