Re: Book refereeing and journal refereeing

["James J. O'Donnell" <jod@georgetown.edu>]

Sandy's posting and mine and the experience of numerous others 
confirm that books are seriously peer reviewed.  Whether to 
include them in OA "mandates" is Stevan Harnad's question, and 
since I regard such mandates with skepticism, that question 
doesn't concern me.  I am struck by the assertion that "all 
authors would want OA for their articles" if certain conditions 
are met.  That's an interesting hypothesis, but I would simply 
underscore that the number of authors who currently *do* want OA 
for their articles is low enough that Harnad and others recommend 
they be coerced to achieve the goal.  That fundamental 
disjuncture is important to understand and is advanced by 
empirical work, not by thought experiments.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown

On Jan 24, 2008 6:02 PM, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I think it is incontestably a fact (rather than an opinion) that
> in research assessment, peer-reviewed publications are treated as
> a separate category in most if not all disciplines.
>
> This does not mean that they are "better" than books; it is not a
> slur on books, or on more book-based disciplines.