Re: Does More Mean More?

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

Perhaps the need for publishers to be in the filtering process at 
all, goes back to the days of print journals which had a fixed 
number of pages that they could afford to print. There was then 
an absolute need to select, and an obvious justification for 
author fees for excess pages. There was also a great temptation 
to accept too many articles, and many had a waiting list, 
sometimes of more than a year.

Especially after the web developed, such waiting lists very often 
led to the extensive circulation of what we now call "Accepted 
preprints," to the extent that the actual publication is a merely 
a matter of record, every one interested having already read the 
preprint. Having read the preprint, most of us are most unlikely 
to also read the article.

Now essentially all science journals are published in both print 
and electronic, and this page limitation no longer applies to the 
electronic version, though there is still a limitattion in 
processing costs. Many publishers are in fact publishing 
immediately the final electronic version, such as Elsevier just 
announced. Everyone (with a subscription) can now read the final 
version right away, and the print will appear eventually.

If the electronic version were the only version, and if gold OA 
were adopted for paying "on behalf of the author" then a 
publisher could afford to publish everything that met the quality 
standard of the journal. The quality standard of the journal 
could be determined in a number of ways.

When I was still a molecular biologist, the most prestigious 
journal for a article after Nature was PNAS, and printed anything 
sent by a Member of Academy, (there was also a page charge.) One 
did not want to ask one's friendly Member except for the very 
best work, and that was the QC.

Members themselves could publish what of their own work they 
pleased, and were given an allowance for page charges.  Their 
having been chosen Members was the QC.  (This is why the 
eccentric work of some senior scientists was published in PNAS.) 
The practices have been progressively tightened very much since 
then, but page charges remain.

There is little aggregation of content in PNAS, and none at all 
in Nature or Science, or, within medicine, in JAMA. This too is a 
possible publisher's function, but not a necessary one. Reading 
every article that cites one's own, is a widely used filter and 
removes the need for an aggregator. The widespread use of both 
toll and non-toll A&I services is not journal dependent, and such 
services in their printed form have had a useful role for 
centuries.

We should all welcome the current acceptance of change in the 
publication system--from Peter and from other publishers.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
and formerly
Princeton University Library

dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Banks <pbanks@diabetes.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2006 7:50 pm
Subject: Re: Does More Mean More?
To: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk, liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> Though I agree that filtering need not be the exclusive 
> province of journals, filtering is more than peer review, and 
> the filtering that journals do is not yet antique.
>
> In addition to peer review and the assurance of quality, 
> filtering also involves the aggregation of content relevant to 
> a particular community, the selection and presentation of the 
> canonical version of manuscripts, and the conferring of 
> professional recognition on author-researchers.
>
> Though some OA journals (PLOS Biology, say) perform these 
> functions quite well, OA models as a whole do not. That's not 
> to say they can't in the future; it may simply be that 
> currently the emphasis is on the broad distribution of 
> information rather than on the careful filtering of 
> information.
>
> That said, there is no doubt that the relevance and role of 
> journals in the filtering process will change and evolve. 
> (Publishers like me had better change and evolve--or else go 
> into an easier field, like hazardous waste disposal, say. )
>
> Peter Banks
> Publisher
> American Diabetes Association
> Email: pbanks@diabetes.org