[GOAL] Re: Unnecessary Services

[David Prosser]

I am an observer in the peer review debate (and we need to remember that it is a separate debate to the OA debate), but I was struck by an article in the Times Higher last week by Richard Smith, previously editor of the British Medical Journal:

https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/content/the-peer-review-drugs-dont-work

Basically, he claims that there is no evidence for peer review being a positive force in scholarly communications.  He maintains that it is expensive, delays communication, is ineffectual at spotting errors or fraud, prejudiced (especially against authors from low- and medium-income countries) and anti-innovation.

He makes a powerful case.

David


On 30 May 2015, at 05:27, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com<mailto:amsciforum at gmail.com>> wrote:

Mike Eisen<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/14da0a74f200e99b> writes:
“I believe we should get rid of publishers… the services they provide are either easy to replicate (formatting articles to look pretty) or they currently do extremely poorly (peer review)… these services are unnecessary… [we should] move to a system where you post things when you want to post them, and that people comment/rate/annotate articles as they read them post publication.”
1. PLOS<http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1580> (like other publishers) seems to be charging a hefty price for “services that are unnecessary.” ;>)

2. I agree completely that we should get rid of publishers' unnecessary services<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2> and their costs. But how to do that, while they are still controlled by publishers and bundled into subscriptions in exchange for access?

My answer<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1154-The-Inevitable-Success-of-Transitional-Green-Open-Access.html> is the one Mike calls “parasitic<http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1710>”: Institutions and funders worldwide mandate Green OA (with the “copy-request” Button to circumvent publisher OA embargoes). The cancellations that that will make possible will force publishers to drop the unnecessary services and their costs and downsize to Fair-Gold for peer review alone..

3. But I disagree with Mike about peer-review<http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html>: it will remain the sole essential service. And the (oft-voiced) notion that peer-review can be replaced by crowd-sourcing, after “publication” is pure speculation, supported by no evidence that it can ensure quality at least as well as classical peer review, nor that is it scalable and sustainable
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