RE: Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

[<jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

This assumes that the task definition of a professor is narrow. 
However, this is not true. Look, some professors even become 
university presidents...

Jean-Claude Guedon

Le lundi 01 mars 2010 Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> At 6:50 PM -0500 2/26/10, Nat Gustafson-Sundell wrote:
>
>>an unpaid editor runs the peer review process (runs the 
>>software distributing articles to peer reviewers, scheduling, 
>>reminding, receiving responses, responding to author)
>
> Just such use of a faculty member's time involves an 
> "opportunity cost" for the university that hired the professor 
> primarily to do research and teach. The more time spent doing 
> these clerical types of work means less time spent on doing 
> what the professor was hired to do. That was Colin Day's 
> principal point about economic efficiency.
>
> Sandy Thatcher

>>I don't know that the learning curve is quite so steep for the 
>>grad students -- at least in my experience.  I think the length 
>>and steepness of a learning curve is directly related to 
>>whether a person is being paid to learn and inversely related 
>>to the amount of other things the learner needs to do.  When we 
>>were walked through the application, it took less than an hour 
>>and it's not like there was anything mysterious or difficult 
>>involved. It was about as difficult as the expense 
>>reimbursement system I installed at one of my jobs, and even 
>>the sales folks picked that up in one hour of training.
>>
>>But the complaint is misplaced in any case since the software 
>>is generally run by the 'permanent staff.' The model I've seen 
>>for OA is that an unpaid editor runs the peer review process 
>>(runs the software distributing articles to peer reviewers, 
>>scheduling, reminding, receiving responses, responding to 
>>author), with compartmentalized tasks assigned to students (if 
>>they work on peer review related issues at all -- when they 
>>would be better deployed at customizing websites for journals, 
>>maybe cleaning HTML if necessary, and things of that sort), so 
>>the learning is done while work is being done. Support for the 
>>software comes from library support staff or university support 
>>staff, if the editor isn't savvy enough to handle most or all 
>>issues.  The support itself is a tiny expense because these 
>>things actually do run themselves for the most part.
>>
>>This bit about "hidden costs" seems like insinuation for 
>>effect, when I've yet to see such insinuation bear out.
>>
>>-Nat