RE: Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

["Nat Gustafson-Sundell" <n-gustafson-sundell@northwestern.edu>]

I don't know that the learning curve is quite so steep for the 
grad students -- at least in my experience.  I think the length 
and steepness of a learning curve is directly related to whether 
a person is being paid to learn and inversely related to the 
amount of other things the learner needs to do.  When we were 
walked through the application, it took less than an hour and 
it's not like there was anything mysterious or difficult 
involved. It was about as difficult as the expense reimbursement 
system I installed at one of my jobs, and even the sales folks 
picked that up in one hour of training.

But the complaint is misplaced in any case since the software is 
generally run by the 'permanent staff.' The model I've seen for 
OA is that an unpaid editor runs the peer review process (runs 
the software distributing articles to peer reviewers, scheduling, 
reminding, receiving responses, responding to author), with 
compartmentalized tasks assigned to students (if they work on 
peer review related issues at all -- when they would be better 
deployed at customizing websites for journals, maybe cleaning 
HTML if necessary, and things of that sort), so the learning is 
done while work is being done. Support for the software comes 
from library support staff or university support staff, if the 
editor isn't savvy enough to handle most or all issues.  The 
support itself is a tiny expense because these things actually do 
run themselves for the most part.

This bit about "hidden costs" seems like insinuation for effect, 
when I've yet to see such insinuation bear out.

-Nat

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 5:02 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

With all due respect to John Willinsky and the OJS software, 
which is good and getting better all the time, there are still 
significant costs involved in using the software; it is not so 
sophisticated as to do all the work involved in managing peer 
review, and there is also a significant learning curve (hence 
cost) involved in training people to use it (or any of the 
commercial counterparts like Editorial Manager, used at our 
Press), which is exacerbated when those running a journal come 
and go frequently, as happens when graduate student labor is 
used. I suspect those "hidden" costs are seldom tallied up when 
estimates of OA publishing are made.

Sandy Thatcher


>Indeed peer-reviewers do their work for free, at least in the
>case of journals, and there exists excellent free software to
>manage the peer review process (for example John Willinsky's
>OJS). But publishers continue to treat this as if it were
>sooooooooooooooooooooo expensive and soooooooooooooooooooo
>difficult.
>
>The main point of all this is that significantly digitization
>lowers a number of expenses and, as a result, many tasks
>previously out of reach for small groups are now quite easy to
>organize. There are costs involved in publishing, to be sure, but
>many are never monetized, and they are not as high as some
>estimates claim. Look at what SciELO is doing and with how much
>money, and then ponder... As a result, the perimeters within
>which publishers used to work are gradually shrinking, raising a
>number of professional anxieties that interfere with the clarity
>of the objectives - namely developing the best communication
>system possible for researchers.
>
>Jean-Claude Guedon