Re: Publishers and the doctrine of Good Works

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

I have considered your argument for days now, and I really don't 
know what publisher argument this is reacting to or what high 
horse any publisher is supposed to have ridden in on.

No publisher, not even the staunchest defender of traditional 
business models, is trying to restrain the growth of other 
journals or of scientific communication. The DC Principles 
explicitly welcome new models of publishing and new journals. The 
more publishing models being tested in the laboratory of the real 
world, the better. Whatever our perspective on OA, we all want 
more access to information--which I hope is the goal, rather than 
a lowering of quality, as you of phrased it. (Heaven help us if 
we are collectively engaged in a crusade for the further spread 
of mediocrity.)

What publishers object to is the idea that one can produce, say, 
the New England Journal of Medicine, using some of the less 
formal models of OA. Those models may be absolutely fine for many 
fields. And there may be entirely new models--maybe scientific 
communities based on MySpace or Blogger or text messaging. I 
don't pretend to know, any more than I understand my teenagers' 
media choices.

The argument is NOT that the New England Journal's model for 
ensuring quality must be followed everywhere, even if it means 
restricting access to information. The argument is that the 
NEJM's systems and procedures have great value for medicine, and 
one should not so condescendingly dismiss their value. If 
anything, given the savage press NEJM has received recently in 
the Wall Street Journal, it may need even more rigorous and 
costly quality assurance procedures; the popular press seems to 
feel that the journal editors are responsible for reviewing not 
only the data that was submitted, but also the data that was NOT 
submitted. I suppose telepathic systems for detecting an author's 
integrity will be required.

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
Fairfax, VA 22030
pbanks@bankspub.com


On 7/14/06 4:35 PM, "Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

> We have had a number of interesting posts on this list over the 
> last couple weeks concerning just what it is that a publisher 
> does that adds value to scholarly communications.  In my view, 
> the comments supportive of publishers were by and large 
> accurate and fairly framed.  One theme, however, caught my 
> attention, namely, that publishers exercise a gateway function 
> and thus ensure that the quality of published work is high. 
> While this is true, the comment must be placed in context.
> 
> Let us imagine, then, a scheme by which publishers act in a 
> coordinated manner to improve the quality of academic journals. 
> They do this by instituting across-the-board price increases of 
> 20%.  (The Department of Justice does not look into this 
> because it is absorbed in the investigation of scholarships 
> granted on the basis of need instead of merit.)  Libraries, 
> whose budgets are flat, therefore must cancel subscriptions. 
> Approximately 20% of the journals must go.  Since librarians 
> wish to collect the finest work, it is journals of lower 
> quality that get cut. Therefore, in one stroke the publishers 
> have improved the quality of the subscribed journals by 20%.
> 
> I trust no one would find this to be a satisfactory outcome, 
> except perhaps for those lucky publishers who somehow escape 
> the cuts.  Yet it is an example of a gatekeeper function at 
> work.
> 
> The fact is that we don't want to improve the average quality 
> of journals; we want to lower it.  This is because "lower" does 
> not mean "poor."  A graduate of the 60th ranked college or 
> university may regret not having attended #1 or #3, but is 
> likely to feel pleased to have done better than #100 or not to 
> have attended college at all.  The problem with the publishers' 
> gatekeeper perspective is that it is entirely self-serving. 
> Raising quality is not the issue; expanding quantity is, 
> providing that expansion is within a certain range of quality, 
> a range that is substantially lower than the current 
> subscription base.
> 
> Paradoxically, the Public Library of Science is one of the few 
> organizations that operates on this principle, though 
> inadvertently.  PLoS publishes the highest-quality material, 
> all of which would have found a home in other publications. If 
> PLoS did not have an Open Access model, librarians would have 
> had to pay for that high-quality material.  As it is, however, 
> the PLoS OA strategy makes room in the budget for material of 
> lower quality--but lower is not poor.  It is intriguing to 
> speculate whether the Moore Foundation would have funded PLoS 
> under the banner, We Strive to Lower the Quality of Scientific 
> Publishing!
> 
> My 20%-increase scenario has this unfortunate characteristic: 
> it is precisely what is going on in the real world, though 
> stretched over a few years.  There are many defenses of the 
> publishing industry, but publishers should get off their high 
> horse about being the guardians of quality.  It is possible for 
> a college to be Too Selective.
> 
> Joe Esposito