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

Fri May 15 16:26:48 BST 2015

"Defamatory" means attacking the reputation of something or someone. Mr.
Beall's phrasing intimated that a bad choice made by DOAJ in one case
was symptomatic of the whole enterprise: I was not surprised... etc.). I
believe that Francis Bacon would have objected to such a cavalier use of
induction to attack a worthy project. That is why I used the term
"defamatory", and I believe, even though English is not my first
language, that it is an appropriate use of the adjective.

DOAJ, in the past, has not been either clueless or reluctant to act in
the case of questionable journals. DOAJ has simply lacked the resources
to do its job better. We, the members of the community of people
concerned about the quality of OA journals might consider giving a hand
to that organization, rather than criticize it out of hand. I return to
the example of Wikipedia that I used yesterday in a different message:
do not attack the device; correct the content!

Jeffrey Beall's list has been and remains very useful. I even tried to
help him a tiny little bit, once, to identify the nature of a
questionable journal. What I do not like about Jeffrey Beall's  attitude
is how he uses the rogue, predatory or questionable journals as a way to
tarnish the entire OA goal. For him, as it appears to me, the presence
of rogue journals is enough to characterize open access as noxious.
Actually, this kind of obsession is beside his (important) point, and it
probably weakens his effectiveness by setting the problem of
questionable journals in a questionable framework.

The issue of rogue, predatory and/or questionable journals is tied to
APC's. By organizing a business model on the basis of upstream financing
by the authors or proxies, one removes the risks associated with
publishing, and then looking for subscribers. Unwittingly, the APC
business model opened the door to these questionable practises. This is
an excellent example of an unintended consequence.

This said, the OA movement is both green and gold, and APC-Gold is only
a fraction of the whole Gold set. OA is much broader than just APC-Gold.

Ideally, on the Gold side of things, OA journals should be gratis for
authors and free (e.g. CC-by) on the readers' side. This raises the
issue of how to pay for such a set-up. The solution relies on thinking
out of the commercial box as a transactional model. Research itself
costs billions and billions of dollars and is totally unsustainable in
commercial terms. That is why governments support it, and have done so
just about forever, even before the so-called "Scientific Revolution".
In the US, NIH alone spends around 16-8 billion dollars per year, while
the cost of all scientific journals for the whole world is around 10-12
billion dollars. My personal thesis about this is simple:

1. The publishing phase of scientific research is an integral part of
scientific research, not a separate phase;

2. The cost of scientific publishing should be wrapped into the cost of
supporting research;

3. The cost of publishing scientific research is no more than about 2%
of the cost of research (and this 2% includes the profits made by the
large publishing multinationals we all know);

4. The issue now becomes how to allocate this 2% while ensuring
editorial autonomy and freedom. The answer lies in consortia of
university presses and libraries, set up on an international basis to
provide robustness to the whole system and put it out of reach of any
single government, should it turn rogue in this regard. The Scielo
model, despite some issues affecting part of its operations, provides an
interesting starting point to think about the way to organize this
allocation of resources. The modalities of this allocation could include
a degree of competition between consortia, but this competition would be
part of the Great Conversation of science: at last, the system of
communication that researchers (and others) need would be under the
control of research institutions.

The devil, of course, is in the proverbial details, but having a clear
vision and a clear road map may be helpful. This is my take on this
level of our collective thinking.
-- 

Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal

Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 21:12 +0000, Dana Roth a écrit :
> I fail to see how identifying a presumed defect (i.e., DOAJ's listing
> of a questionable journal) is defamatory.
> 
> Since DOAJ, in the past, was essentially clueless (or reluctant to
> act) about questionable journals, isn't Jeffery Beal is doing the
> community a very important service by alerting us to what might be an
> unresolved problem?
> 
> Dana L. Roth
> 
> Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32
> 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125
> 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540
> dzrlib at library.caltech.edu
> http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] on behalf of
> Jean-Claude Guédon [jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 9:14 AM
> To: goal at eprints.org
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on
> peer review?
> 
> 
> 
> Surprisingly, Dr. Schwartz has not yet noticed that a rather open and
> vigorous debate about OA has been going on for the better part of two
> decades, including debates among OA supporters. Mr. Beall is
> absolutely welcomed in this debate, so long as he debates (as opposed
> to taking potshots, for example).
> 
> Furthermore, what I was doing was not intervening in  an OA debate; it
> was simply reacting to Mr. Beall's defamatory comment about DOAJ  (I
> am not too surprised... etc.).
> 
> DOAJ is an open, transparent, organization that tries to put some good
> information about OA journals. It has limited resources and it relies
> on a number of volunteers; in short, it does its best in a very honest
> fashion. It is not perfect, but few things are perfect in this vale of
> tears...
> 
> Those who see mistakes in the DOAJ list should do as those who see
> mistakes in Wikipedia: rather than criticize the device, help correct
> the content.
> 
> As for the alleged bullying dimension of my statement, I could not
> even begin to comment. I do not have the psychiatric credentials of
> Dr. Schwartz, and would not know how to handle categories that seem to
> change significantly every decade or so. Let me be clear, however, on
> one crucial point: bullying (as I understand this term - i.e. a strong
> individual imposing his/her will on another individual ) was not among
> my intentions. I was simply rising to the defence of an organization
> that was inappropriately attacked. It may just be that one's "vigour"
> is felt by the other as "bullying", but then what about a
> "vigorous ... debate"?
> 
> In conclusion, thank you for the "powerful partisan" characterization:
> this is an evaluation I would never have dared make about myself. :-)
> 
> -- 
> 
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 09:14 -0500, Michael Schwartz a écrit : 
> 
> > 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
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > GOAL mailing list
> > > GOAL at eprints.org
> > > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
> 
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
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