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Re: Maximising research access vs. minimizing copy-editing errors

Stevan, Thanks for pointing out to this resource. In my opinion, in today's world it is erroneous to draw a straight line between publishers to access. You are aware that open access journals are also published by publishers like universities, societies, NFPs and even commercial publishers and the opposite is also true.

The bottom line is that a publishing activity except blogging and mailing list posting does not emanate on its own, unless it is "motivated" by some external forces. These forces may be the employer, supervisor, commercial or non-profit publishing agencies, nagging editors, to name a few.

The point I am trying to make is that this is where publishers are standing. It is altogether different matter whether the publishing output is open or closed or funded or commercially available. But the bottom line is that for publishing at least in a journal, you shall have an editorial board, peer reviewers who will trigger the whole process. And it is the norm that not the authors but the publishers have so far commissioned these people in making journal publishing worthwhile and scholarly.

Open access (particularly gold/IR version) benefits from publishers' commissioning of editorial board and peer review panel by simply taking benefit of existing copyright law (which is fair enough from legal point of view), but blames the publishers for not having enough input to the publishing process. Is it right?

I do not think this is right unless and until we have an alternative system of having the whole publishing support system without the publishers is ready. To add to this, we would be more practical if we avoid generalizations of the publishers across the board, and in this case the publishers in question are not the open access publishers, but the commercial publishers.

Atanu


From: "Stevan Harnad"

See Swan, Alma (2007) What a difference a publisher makes.
OptimalScholarship. Saturday, July 7 2007.

http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-difference-publisher-makes.html