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Re: Errors in author's versions

Our association did a study back in 2002 (Authors & Electronic Publishing, http://www.alpsp.org/publications/pub5.htm) which indicated that when answering in their role as authors, scholars valued the editing functions of journals very much indeed. Ironically, when asked to answer as readers, they rated these less highly. That's one element of the difficulty: good editing is invisible!

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Email: sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 1:53 AM
Subject: Re: Errors in author's versions

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