[GOAL] Re: University of California Faculty Senate Passes Open Access Policy

Sun Aug 11 16:42:59 BST 2013

ONE SIZE FITS ALL

On 2013-08-11, Ari Belenkiy, SFU <ari.belenkiy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why will publishers agree to this scheme?
> 
> Peer-review is the most important service they provide ... for nothing?

(1) Publishers today are paid for (managing) peer review -- paid in full, 
many times over -- by institutional subscriptions.

(2) The majority of journals today already agree to immediate, unembargoed 
Green OA self-archiving of the author's peer-reviewed final draft.

(3) For the minority of journals that embargo OA, there is the immediate-deposit 
(ID/OA) mandate - mandatory deposit in the author's institutional repository  
immediately upon acceptance whether or not access to the deposit is immediately 
set as OA -- plus the repository's eprint-request Button to tide over user access 
needs with one click from the requestor and one click from the author ("Almost-OA") 
for those deposits to which access has been set as Closed Access, to comply 
with a publisher OA embargo.

Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of Gold OA 
Publishing are premature. 

Funds are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals) 
are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA; 
the asking price for Gold OA is still high ("Fools-Gold"); and there is concern 
that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates and lower quality standards.

What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate 
immediate-deposit (of authors' final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon 
acceptance for publication). (U of C should add such an immediate-deposit
clause -- with no opt-out -- to its new Green OA mandate.)

This will provide immediate Green OA for all unembargoed 
deposits + immediate Almost-OA for all embargoed deposits.

Then, if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions 
unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions) 
that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (print edition, online edition, 
access-provision, archiving), downsize to just managing the service of 
peer review, and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model. 

Meanwhile, the subscription cancellations will have released the funds 
to pay these residual service costs (for affordable, sustainable post-Green 
Fair-Gold OA). 

The natural way to charge for the service of peer review then will be on a 
"no-fault basis," with the author's institution or funder paying for each 
round of refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing, 
or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against inflated 
acceptance rates and decline in peer-review quality standards.

Stevan Harnad

> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 5:23 PM, LIBLICENSE <liblicense at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: "Friend, Fred" <f.friend at ucl.ac.uk>
>> Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 08:24:50 +0000
>> 
>> Experience suggests that the value added to a peer-reviewed manuscript
>> by a copy-editor varies considerably. If the peer-reviewers have done
>> their job, any false facts or illogicality in the research arguments
>> should have been picked up. Precision of language and grammar are
>> important but an author may have as good a grasp of language and
>> grammar as a copy-editor. I am not suggesting that copy-editors do not
>> play any role in the quality of the published article, but quality
>> lies to a greater extent in the quality of the research reported in
>> the article than it does in copy-editing. The question we have to face
>> is whether the variable value added by a publisher through
>> copy-editing or any other service is worth the substantial sum a
>> publisher charges for such services. How much is using the services of
>> a publisher worth?
>> 
>> Fred Friend
>> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> 
>> From: Mark Goodwin <MGoodwin at The-APS.org>
>> Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 11:16:21 -0400
>> 
>> Ah, so *not* the "final" version, but the penultimate version (post
>> peer review, at acceptance, pre-copyedit).
>> 
>> That is, the rough manuscript version that has not yet passed a
>> rigorous copyedit for facts, logical structure, and precision of
>> language, not to mention grammar, etc., irrespective of whatever
>> typesetting or formatting may be applied for public consumption.
>> 
>> (apologies for the intentional smug tone...)
>> 
>> Ever and always, a Copy Editor at heart... -Mark
>> 
>> M. L. Goodwin, ELS (mgoodwin at The-APS.org)
>> Editorial Manager, Publications
>> The American Physiological Society
>> Bethesda, MD  20814
>> http://www.The-APS.org
>> 
>> Integrating the Life Sciences from Molecule to Organism
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> 
>> From: Iris Brest <ibrest at stanford.edu>
>> Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 13:11:31 -0700
>> 
>> Sandy -- They will be the version of accepted articles post peer review.
>> 
>> 9. What version of their article should Faculty submit to the repository?
>> 
>> The policy requires that the author submit the "final version", which
>> safely means the manuscript copy post-peer review but before a
>> publisher typesets and finalizes it.
>> 
>> Iris Brest/Stanford University
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> 
>> From: Sandy Thatcher <sgt3 at psu.edu>
>> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 22:59:52 -0500
>> 
>>> All research publications
>>> covered by the policy will continue to be subjected to rigorous peer
>>> review; they will still appear in the most prestigious journals across
>>> all fields; and they will continue to meet UC's standards of high
>>> quality.
>> 
>> Just wondering if the "standards of high quality" include high quality
>> in copyediting? Will UC be paying to have the accepted articles
>> copyedited before they are posted in eScholarship? If not, how can
>> this promise of "high quality" be made? Does UC think copyediting not
>> important? Do all UC faculty write pristine prose that is free of
>> errors?
>> 
>> Sandy Thatcher

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