Re: Open Access means sloppy publications?

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

On 1-May-05, at 5:55 PM, Sally Morris ((ALPSP)) wrote:

> The findings so far of our study comparing DOAJ with other journals does
> suggest that many more of them describe as 'peer review' a process that
> is totally or partially in-house;  I would have thought that correct
> 'classical' peer review was normally conducted by external 'peers', with
> the Editor-in-Chief having a final decision in case of differences of
> opinion.  See http://www.alpsp.org/openacc.htm#pres
>
> Sally
Hi Sally,

Thanks so much for sharing information about your study while it is still
in the works.  If you're comparing open access journals with traditional
journals, no doubt you are matching on other factors in order to achieve
the best possible comparison.

Information about the quality of open access journals per se is very
useful of course, however the matched comparison would be needed in order
to assess the impact of open access per se, as opposed to other factors
which are very likely correlated.

One example:  while there are traditional publishers who are experimenting
with or moving over to open access, it seems to make sense that there are
people who have no experience with traditional publishers who are now
starting up journals, and these are more likely to be open access.  If
you're comparing quality of OA vs. non-OA, then of course you need to
compare OA (experienced traditional publishers)  and non-OA (less or
inexperienced publishers).

Another factor to account for is the country of origin and traditional
practices there.  This is true of elements like peer review, but also the
number of articles published, and many other factors.  For example, it
makes more sense to compare a journal published in India as open access
with another Indian journal that is not open access, rather than comparing
the Indian journal with one that is published in the U.K.

a personal view by,

Heather G. Morrison