Re: Open Access and Peer Review

[Ken Masters <kmasters@ithealthed.com>]

Hi Bill

No, I'm referring to a series of emails that document a meeting 
(or meetings?) between Eric Dezenhall (a PR expert) and employees 
from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society in July 
2006.  From the emails, the publishers had felt themselves "under 
siege" from OA. (PLoS appears to have been Enemy Number 1, but it 
was OA in general).

Dezenhall had argued that these publishers were far too defensive 
in their approach to OA, and he had proposed various more 
aggressive strategies. These included spreading the view that 
"Public access equals government censorship" and that traditional 
publishers should equate their publishing with peer-review, and 
then paint a picture of what the academic world would look like 
without peer-review.  So, this would have laid the groundwork 
for, and reinforced the idea of, equating OA with lack of 
peer-review.

The feeling was that it simply didn't matter if the public 
statements were discredited (i.e. shown to be lies), because 
"Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate." This 
statement lends itself to unfortunate interpretations.

The emails suggest that most of the views were very warmly 
received (although I'm not sure that Dezenhal's other suggestions 
- that the publishers should team up with other industries, like 
oil, who were running foul of government regulations - were taken 
up).

As I say, I don't know overall just how many really do believe 
that rubbish, but I have come across it, and I've seen oblique 
reference and innuendo along those lines even in scholarly blogs.

Regards

Ken

------

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education


On 4 October 2011 15:07, Bill Cohen <bcohen7719@aol.com> wrote:

> Ken:
>
> Are you referring to the series of articles by Jeffrey Beall?  I
> believe they focused on just a few OA publishers.
>
> Bill
>
>
> On 10/3/11 4:51 PM, Ken Masters wrote:
> >  Hi Sabrina
> >
> >  To answer your first question: whatever you find, don't expect it
> >  to be uniform.  Just as there is no set uniform standard of
> >  peer-review for Non-OA publishers and journals, so there is no
> >  set uniform standard of peer-review for OA publishers and
> >  journals.
> >
> >  There was an attempt some years back to consciously link OA with
> >  non-peer-review in a move to discredit OA.  I'm not entirely sure
> >  how seriously it was taken, and how widely it was used, but it
> >  did have some success: from my personal discussions with
> >  academics, that image does persist, but there is nothing inherent
> >  in the OA model that either encourages or discourages
> >  peer-review: it's up to the publisher and journal.
> >
> >
> >  Regards
> >
> >  Ken
> >  ------
> >
> >  Dr. Ken Masters
> >  Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
> >  Medical Education Unit
> >  College of Medicine&  Health Sciences
> >  Sultan Qaboos University
> >  Sultanate of Oman
> >  E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education
>
>