Re: First Monday article on OA

[Mark Funk <mefunk@mail.med.cornell.edu>]

I agree with David Groenwegen about the many potential problems with
post-publication review for OA, which Joe Esposito espouses in his article
at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_8/esposito/ :

"In a world of electronic networks, however, peer review can and should
take place after publication. Such review can take place virtually in real
time, so our patient remains safe; and the marginal cost of such
publication (which essentially amounts to uploading the text to a Web
server) approaches zero. Post-publication peer review does not require
expensive and slow-moving infrastructure. It therefore assists authors in
their goal of getting published quickly and potentially provides wider
feedback from the broad community of scholars. Quackery that gets
published will be recognized as such and dismissed rapidly."

Why would post-publication peer review be any less expensive or
slow-moving? Does moving the review process to after publication somehow
make it cheaper and faster?

Sure, you can have a *type* of post-publication peer review that is fast
and cheap. Look at Amazon.com's customers reviews. It's fast, it's cheap,
and it's woefully inadequate for science, particularly clinical medicine.

"Real time" review to protect the patient? Current reviewers will often
spend weeks going over the procedures and statistical methods of clinical
research articles. (PLoS tries to have reviews done in 7 days, but
realizes that sometimes more time is needed.) This is not "real time."
Shortcuts to the review process for English literature may be OK, but I
prefer my doctor to be practicing medicine that has been properly vetted,
not waiting for review.

I can't imagine any reputable Open Access journal actually putting
articles on the web prior to review. It would only take a couple of
articles exposed as quackery or fraud before that journal's reputation
would be shot.

--
Mark Funk
Head, Collection Development
Weill Cornell Medical Library
1300 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-746-6073
mefunk@mail.med.cornell.edu