[GOAL] Re: The Science "Sting" and Pre-Green Fee-Based Fool's Gold vs. Post-Green No-Fault Fair-Gold

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

I fully agree with Stevan Harnad here.

For my own reaction to the sting, see my interview in the French daily
Libération from Paris (in French, alas marred by many typos and one
incomprehensible sentence) :
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2013/10/open-access-du-r%C3%
AAve-au-cauchemar-bis.html 

Jean-Claude Guédon


Le vendredi 04 octobre 2013 à 08:14 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
> Comment on: Bohannon, John (2013) Who's Afraid of Peer Review? Science
> 342 (6154) 60-65
> 
> 
> To show that the bogus-standards effect is specific to Open Access
> (OA) journals would of course require submitting also to subscription
> journals (perhaps equated for age and impact factor) to see what
> happens.
> 
> 
> But it is likely that the outcome would still be a higher proportion
> of acceptances by the OA journals. The reason in simple: Fee-based OA
> publishing (fee-based "Gold OA") is premature, as are plans by
> universities and research funders to pay its costs:
> 
> 
> Funds are short and 80% of journals (including virtually all the top,
> "must-have" journals) are still subscription-based, thereby tying up
> the potential funds to pay for fee-based Gold OA. The asking price for
> Gold OA is still arbitrary and high. And there is very, very
> legitimate concern that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates
> and lower quality standards (as the Science sting shows). 
> 
> 
> What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate OA
> self-archiving (of authors' final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately
> upon acceptance for publication)  in their institutional OA
> repositories, free for all online ("Green OA"). 
> 
> 
> That will provide immediate OA. And 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), offload
> access-provision and archiving onto the global network of Green OA ,
> downsize to just providing the service of peer review alone, and
> convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model. Meanwhile, the
> subscription cancellations will have released the funds to pay these
> residual service costs. 
> 
> 
> 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 quality
> standards.
> 
> 
> That post-Green, no-fault Gold will be Fair Gold. Today's pre-Green
> (fee-based) Gold is Fool's Gold.
> 
> 
> None of this applies to no-fee Gold.
> 
> 
> Obviously, as Peter Suber and others have correctly pointed out, none
> of this applies to the many Gold OA journals that are not fee-based
> (i.e., do not charge the author for publication, but continue to rely
> instead of subscriptions, subsidies, or voluntarism). Hence it is not
> fair to tar all Gold OA with that brush. Nor is it fair to assume --
> without testing it -- that non-OA journals would have come out
> unscathed, if they had been included in the sting. 
> 
> 
> But the basic outcome is probably still solid: Fee-based Gold OA has
> provided an irresistible opportunity to create junk journals and dupe
> authors into feeding their publish-or-perish needs via pay-to-publish
> under the guise of fulfilling the growing clamour for OA: 
> 
> 
> Publishing in a reputable, established journal and self-archiving the
> refereed draft would have accomplished the very same purpose, while
> continuing to meet the peer-review quality standards for which the
> journal has a track record -- and without paying an extra penny.
> 
> 
> But the most important message is that OA is not identical with Gold
> OA (fee-based or not), and hence conclusions about peer-review
> standards of fee-based Gold OA journals and not conclusions about the
> peer-review standards of OA -- which, with Green OA, are identical to
> those of non-OA.
> 
> 
> For some peer-review stings of non-OA journals, see below:
> 
> 
> Peters, D. P., & Ceci, S. J. (1982). Peer-review practices of
> psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted
> again. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5(2), 187-195.
> 
> 
> Harnad, S. R. (Ed.). (1982). Peer commentary on peer review: A case
> study in scientific quality control (Vol. 5, No. 2). Cambridge
> University Press 
> 
> 
> Harnad, S. (1998/2000/2004) The invisible hand of peer review. Nature
> [online] (5 Nov. 1998), Exploit Interactive 5 (2000): and in Shatz, B.
> (2004) (ed.) Peer Review: A Critical Inquiry. Rowland & Littlefield.
> Pp. 235-242. 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 

Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal

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