[GOAL] Re: Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review?

[Michael Schwartz]

Jean-Claude Guédon's comment on Jeffrey Beall's Blog is "totally mean spirited....small." 

The many ongoing changes, consolidations, and innovations associated with open access require vigorous, open, and respectful debate. Presently in today's OA, we see the good...the bad...and the ugly. There is no "slam dunk" here. And, sadly, there is precious little debate. I wonder why...

Critics such as Jeffrey Beall should be welcomed, not shamed. Gratuitous insulting comments about their character are inappropriate, to say the least. And the more powerful and influential the bully the more inappropriate.

As long as powerful partisan's hammer away from their bully pulpit - without reproach, a really vigorous and open debate - which MUST occur for all sorts of reasons - cannot and will not happen. How sad....

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz, MD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine
Founding Editor, Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 14, 2015, at 8:12 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:
> 
> In his blog, Jeffrey Beall writes:
> 
> "I am not too surprised to find a journal that advertises fake impact factors and does a four-day peer review included in DOAJ:.."
> 
> This is totally mean spirited. This is small.
> 
> DOAJ relies on all of us, and in fact regularly asks for people to review the quality of journals. If Mr. Beall devoted a small fraction of his admirable energy to helping DOAJ weed out bad journals, rather than bask in total negativism, we would all be better off.
> 
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> 
> --
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal
> 
> 
>> Le mardi 12 mai 2015 à 21:17 +0000, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit :
>> In the interest of presenting different viewpoints on this topic, I too would like to share the blog post I published today. My blog post is about a gold open-access journal that claims it has no article processing charges but, when you read the fine print, you will discover that it demands a "maintenance fee" from authors whose work is accepted for publication. 
>> 
>> The blog post is here: http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/05/12/low-quality-no-author-fee-oa-journal-has-hidden-charges/
>> 
>> Also, the journal promises to carry out peer review in 3-4 days. It's included in DOAJ, which incorrectly reports that the journal does not charge any author fees. 
>> 
>> The journal also boldly displays fake impact factors from six different companies. 
>> 
>> I believe that this journal will also be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists.
>> 
>> 
>> Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor
>> Auraria Library
>> University of Colorado Denver
>> 1100 Lawrence St.
>> Denver, Colo.  80204 USA
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 2:39 PM
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> Subject: [GOAL] Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review?
>> 
>> In the early days as many on this list will no doubt remember, open access advocates spent a lot of time defending OA from the ludicrous argument that peer review somehow was dependent on subscription-based publishing. Have we over-reacted, and are we now placing far too much emphasis on the technicalities of peer review? 
>> 
>> This post draws on an example of a journal that is now fully open access and peer reviewed, which emerged from a conference a few decades ago after a 5-year stint as a newsletter, and asks whether we have gone too far in separating the peer-reviewed article from the broader scholarly communication / community of which the article logically forms just one part:
>> http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/12/from-conference-to-newsletter-to-journal-a-challenge-to-the-emphasis-on-peer-review/
>> 
>> I've added two sections to the Research Questions page in the Open Access Directory:
>> http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Research_questions
>> 
>> Open access in the context of scholarly communication and community flows from the challenge to narrow emphasis on peer review described above. There are questions here that might interest historians, anthropologists, or other social scientists.
>> 
>> The open versus private section may engage scholars from a variety of humanities and social sciences; there are interesting theoretical and empirical questions in relation to all of the open movements. 
>> 
>> best,
>> 
>> --
>> Dr. Heather Morrison
>> Assistant Professor
>> École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
>> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
>> 
>> 
>> 
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