Re: Errors in author's versions

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I do appreciate David's wish to provide counter-examples but it 
would be very difficult for me (and I suspect others) to post 
such examples if I sought them out. I have checked out with the 
people at a publishing house who deal with such matters and they 
have confirmed that copy editors' questions to authors involve 
references (wrong or missing), tables (misleading or missing), 
units (confused) and also ambiguities or even contradictions. 
This is not just a matter of house style or formatting.  I intend 
to go through some copy editors' questions next week if I have 
time to see again for myself but how do I demonstrate this on 
this list or even privately to David? I could get the permission 
of the author or find out if he or she has posted the previous 
version (the accepted version) which we could then check against 
the definitive version.It would be a nice piece of research but I 
personally do not have time for it. I think it is reasonable that 
those in denial should accept the word of those who actually work 
in an area. Publishers spend a lot of time trying to find out 
about what users want from all these library advisory boards and 
they tend to take this advice very seriously indeed.

Let me give a simple example of the sort of mistakes that are 
picked up. Like others (I have noticed) I often type "now" 
instead of "not". When I write for publication I do not always 
pick up this sort of error. By the time I have got what I am 
writing into some sort of shape I am only too glad to get rid of 
this. As a referee I do usually pick up these sort of mistakes 
because, as a publisher, I tend to notice but I have seen that 
many others do not. They read what they want to read. I cannot 
now give the references but I am aware that psychologists have 
written on this topic.

As I understand it David's point is how often does the science in 
the definitive version differ from the science in the authors' 
accepted versions. If the difference is rarely important or even 
never important or the difference is often the other way 
(publishers making mistakes) is there any point in copy-editing? 
It is an unneccessary expense? My picture is that he is building 
a model from the ground up and picking out what is important in 
the system as it is now and what is not. Is this a travesty? I 
hope not.

The huge majority of scholars think so whether they are banded 
together in learned societies or as groups in an editorial team. 
I know that it is a difficult point to get across but I want to 
reiterate that publishers are serving scholars. They are in an 
actual situation. They talk to scholars all the time. Apart from 
attending and speaking at perhaps ten editorial board meetings 
this year, I will have been a participant at not less than that 
number (probably fifteen) specialist conferences in the course of 
the year. And this is my part-time job. I do not think many of 
the people who write from an OA standpoint in these lists have 
that exposure to the scholarly community

If for example I told any editors I work with that there was no 
need for copy-editing and we would just pass on what they 
accepted through to the production process, reducing the 
subscription rate to take into account the reduced expense, they 
would either resign en masse or get me fired (sacked).

They are not serving Dr. Goodman and Professor Harnad or the UK 
or the US governments. Professor Harnad and Dr. Goodman may 
persuade the UK or the US governments to take actions that will 
force publishers to change their procedures never mind what the 
authors and editors actually want

Publishers are (mostly) working to improve their act and that 
includes publishers like PLOS as well. Those publishers who do 
not copy-editor properly or even at all (and there are some) are 
an embarrassment - at any rate to me. The remark about references 
is indeed based on past research (which came as rather a shock to 
some of us) but actually now publishers have to get the reference 
right because of CrossRef - or it is not recognised. Or so I 
understand.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>; <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 1:30 AM
Subject: RE: Errors in author's versions

> Dear Cliff,
> 
> Yes, it is sometimes necessary to rewrite an author's 
> manuscript, and, yes, authors make amusing typographical 
> mistakes. Librarians for their part tend to be amused by 
> publisher claims of perfection, for we have been dealing with 
> the wrong citations in copy-edited, proof-read published papers 
> since the beginning of our profession. But I agree, the authors 
> left to themselves would do even worse.
> 
> But we are talking about differences in scientific content 
> between posted and published versions. Among the few 
> substantial differences I have seen between versions, is where 
> a publisher dropped a line of a table. Should we therefore 
> insist the the author manuscript always be permanently 
> available, so the reader can check whether the publisher made 
> any mistakes?
> 
> Cliff, if you know any instance where there have been 
> significant scientific errors in the posted version, but not 
> the published, please cite the examples, because not one has 
> been shown, neither by you, by Anthony, by Lisa, or by Peter. 
> Peter even emphasized that he did not know of any.
> 
> Find one, any of you. It will be good to have something 
> concrete to discus. I posted in the first place to see if I was 
> mistaken, for I had not expected to find them so similar. They 
> were proposed to collect counter-examples. I expected some and 
> am disappointed in one sense that they have not yet been found, 
> for I had planned to analyze them.
> 
> To say that versions could differ profoundly, when no cases 
> have been found, is misleading, because any type of any single 
> version could have an error. To claim that authors' versions 
> are inadequate in content, you need to show that they do have 
> an increased occurrence of errors beyond those occurring in all 
> published material. It could be proven that a type of material 
> does contain errors by finding one, and one could then proceed 
> to determine the frequency. What I have proposed are 
> propositions that can be falsified.  For example, if my 
> propsition had been that published peer-reviewed articles never 
> contain fraud, it could easily have been falsified.
> 
> =======================
> 
> All of this said, I agree on the true practical point:
> 
> There should be no need for authors' versions, at least after the
> date of publication. The version available to all should be the
> version as published--and then, if necessary, publicly corrected.
> 
> However, some on this list will now disagree, for, as I see it,
> the need for authors versions is a make-shift. It is only
> necessary because of publisher unwillingness to allow the best
> version to be posted. It may be a more reliable make-shift than
> any of us thought, but it will always be an unnecessary
> complication.  May proper OAJournals soon replace it.
> 
> Dr. David Goodman
> Associate Professor
> Palmer School of Library and Information Science
> Long Island University
> 
> dgoodman@liu.edu
> dgoodman@princeton.edu