[GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber

[Hans Pfeiffenberger]

Am 13.12.12 14:09, schrieb Richard Poynder:
> "Another way would be for DOAJ to start excluding journals but that could
> become very complicated and resource demanding."
>
> This is no doubt true, but isn't it time that some organisation took
> responsibility for doing this difficult work?

at first sight, one is certainly tempted to say: Yes!

But which organization? There have been (understandable) advances of 
funders trying to nail down which journals' APCs are worth funding.
However, to me it is a horrible thought of commissions being 
instituted to decide which journal is a worthy addition to the 
publishing landscape -  considering, as it was proposed, aims&scope, 
composition of editorial board, method(s) of peer review (open, post 
publication, ...), ..., business model.

Clearly, such commissions would be formed of eminent, well established 
etc. researchers. Who would most probably be more sceptical of  
innovation than, say, a publisher. Instead of an abstract argument in 
support of this conjecture I wish to express thanks to Arne Richter of 
Copernicus Publications for believing in the future of a journal for 
data publication in Earth System Science and now Martin Rasmussen for 
continued support! I would never had gotten as much support as fast 
with zero overhead of bureaucracy from any funder (or other organization)!

The main policy arguments against *organizations* is that they would 
conglomerate or even monopolize influence as compared to a (pre-big 
deal, pre-Internet) situation where the success of a journal was 
determined by independent subscription decisions of thousands of 
departments and library commissions at universities etc.

We simply have to find a better solution than an(!) "organization". In 
this context, I am also frightened by PMR's advocacy of "regulation". 
Peter, do you really think that expanded (and ever-expanding) 
regulation is to the advantage of *research*? Even if we agree on 
predators being around - OA as well as non-OA publishers! - we should 
not endanger the freedom and innovative power of science just for the 
sake of battling those.

Hans