RE: Versions

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Dear Anthony,
 
There are journals from some commercial publishers with very little
editing. Mentioning a few examples would be unfair, but it is merely
necessary to look at some of the journals near the bottom of ISI's
rankings for most subjects.  To me, the most obvious sign of low quality
is poor reproduction of illustrations. The next step is to look for
indecipherable sentences.  This would seem an obvious way to save costs
for titles that yield little revenue.

My view has always been that journals that accept almost all the papers,
and do not do editing seriously, could be advantageously replaced by a
suitable repository with adequate arrangements for a permanent copy, and
accessibility for indexing. This would promote access and save library
costs, and give the publishers an incentive to invest in better projects.

(Like Anthony, I mention that this is not relevant directly to Open
Access; it is not the same as the extremely important endeavor to make
well-published articles available without charge in some useful version by
self-archiving as a supplement to the commercial version).

Dr. David Goodman
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Anthony Watkinson
Sent:	Sat 6/19/2004 9:09 AM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject:	Re: Versions

Jan has picked up on an ambiguity in what I wrote. In the case of BMC,
because they do not copy edit, there is no difference in the content. At
least I thought that was the case but there is now the tantalising
suggestion of some intervention - "where necessary corrected final
version".

How different is this final version and is that the authentic version and,
if the author has (as urged) deposited the postprint should he or she then
replace it?

I was however not asking Jan about BMC practices but how he viewed the
version problem that impacts on what other publishers do where the
deposited version in an institutional repository (if it is the postprint)
will be different from the final published version.

The great majority of other publishers, including PLOS, do copy editing,
not because for some reason they want to add to their costs, but because
that is what their editors and authors appear to want. They say they do.
The editors I work with would probably resign (and even take their
editorial boards with them) if we dropped this service. I have to say
"probably" because have not proposed this but editors and editorial boards
at editorial board meetings seem to equate good copyediting as equivalent
to added value.BMC experience is clearly different otherwise they would
not get editors and authors.

It may seem that I am trying to score points off OA protagonists but I do
think there is a question here which is not actually an OA/anti OA
question. If anyone is interested in problems of authenticity see
www.bic.org.uk/securing%20authenticity.pdf

Anthony