[GOAL] Peer review, OA and the cost of it all

[Jan Velterop]

One could reasonably conclude that nowadays, peer review is the only remaining significant raison d’être of formal scientific publishing in journals (as opposed to publishing on an OA platform such as ArXiv, where articles are not routinely peer reviewed). Science collectively values peer review to the tune of at least $2000 per article, on average, plus the unquantified time and effort of those who actually do the peer review. 

Of course, there is a massive legacy, in terms of history and volume. But I have a question: is it still worth it? In the light of the majority of those articles not even being OA? In the light of an average of about $7 per article for OA publication in an ArXiv-type system with an endorsement rather than a peer review system? Are the benefits of peer review proportional to the costs? Can these benefits be spelled out and given a value tag? Is peer review so much more valuable to science than OA? 

Food for thought?

More: http://bit.ly/w7uBMG

Jan Velterop

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