Re: For Sandy Thatcher: A Sample of Copy-Editing

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

I think you missed my point, Stevan. I wasn't making any claims about
copyediting standards. But to the extent that Green OA involves NO
copyediting at all, how can universities claim with a straight face
that poorly written articles enhance their reputations by being
freely accessible online? Are universities not judged by standards of
writing as well as standards of research quality? Or is it just
generally assumed that professors can't write well anyway and are not
expected to do so?


At 6:03 PM -0400 8/25/10, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 6:01 PM, Sandy Thatcher
>
><sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>
>>  Granting Stevan's hypothesis for the moment, let me ask this
>>  further question: how does posting a paper as poorly written as
>>  this enhance a university's reputation, which has been touted
>>  as one of the advantages to accrue from Green OA?
>
>Green OA -- which is simply making all peer-reviewed journal
>articles freely accessible online -- has absolutely nothing to do
>with declining or rising standards in copy-editing (or peer
>review, or scientific/scholarly research, or anything else).
>
>All Green OA does is make refereed research -- such as it is --
>accessible to all users, not just those whose institutions can
>afford to the journal in which they were published.
>
>Copy-editing standards were declining steadily throughout the
>quarter-century I was editing Behavior and Brain Sciences. The
>decline had nothing to do with OA (which only began happening
>toward the end of my tenure, and in succeeding years, and still
>hasn't even reached 20% today!).
>
>(One must not blame every outcome one may not like on causes one
>may not like...)
>
>Stevan Harnad
>
>