<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra">On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Jan Velterop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com" target="_blank">velterop@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_extra">
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>Instead of taking responsibility for the technical aspects of publishing, the academic community should take responsibility for the whole process of peer review – an academic competency, after all – including its organisation, and leave the technical aspects of publishing to specialist outfits with the requisite expertise and wherewithal. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>The scientific community already does the peer reviewing. It just needs competent editors to choose the referees and adjudicate the reviews and revisions.</div><div style><br></div>
<div style>That's what an OA-era peer-reviewed journal does. And that's all: It's a peer-review service-provider (with a title and track-record to certify the outcome).</div><div style><br></div><div style>The "technical aspects| of making peer-reviewed papers accessible to all in the OA-era do not require publishers (nor their -- newfound -- online "expertise": every graduate student in computer or information science already has all the expertise required).</div>
<div style><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>
Publishers being in charge of the peer review process is an anachronism and a relic from the days in which publishers needed to be selective in what they chose to publish (i.e. print and distribute) due to the inherent scarcity of resources for printing and distribution. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>The management of peer review by publishers may be an anachronism, but someone has to do it, and whoever does it is the journal, and the publisher, in the OA-era.</div><div style>
<br></div><div style>(And publishers certainly didn't invent peer review, which simply means quality evaluation and control by qualified specialists.)</div><div style><br></div><div style>Nor is peer review just about controlling the quantity of the limited number of articles that can be published. It is about quality control, and making sure that the article is tagged by the peer-review service-provider's track-record for quality control (the journal title).</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>There is (and always has been) a hierarchy of quality standards among journals. Everything gets published. The only question is: how far down in the hierarchy?</div><div style><br></div><div style>
OA does not change this. It just eliminates all the other obsolete products and services, and their costs, that were co-bundled with it (generating the print edition, the online edition, access-provision, archiving).</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>Nowadays, peer review is a mess...What is needed is to spruce it up, get rid of anonymity and to place responsibility for the peer review process entirely back into the academic community. Possibly in the form of open and signed 'peer-endorsements' before being presented to a publisher. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>Peer review is quality control by qualified experts. Not to put too shrill a complexion on it: You'd better quality-control your medication <i>before</i> you put it on the market, rather than waiting for crowd-sourcing to signal whether it's fine or fatal, after the fact.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Post-publication peer commentary is a valuable supplement for peer review, but no substitute for it.</div><div style><br></div><div style>(Jan is quick to recommend untested alternatives, such as non-anonymity and "endorsements" without waiting to see whether they can deliver quality of at least the level peer review delivers today: <a href="http://j.mp/PRtesting">j.mp/PRtesting</a>)</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>Authors' technical sloppiness is legendary... Even the professional publishers need to up their game. The technical quality of what is being published is often appalling. </div>
</div></blockquote><div> </div><div style>Fine. Let the market decide. <i>Let publishers stop trying to embargo Green OA, with all its "technical sloppiness," so that all institutions and funders can mandate immediate-OA</i> (instead of just immediate-deposit, as now).</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Then, if Jan is right, post-Green subscriptions will remain sustainable and publishers can focus on "upping their game" while the research community at last has its Green OA.</div>
<div style><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>
if anything should be outsourced and paid for it is the process of technical preparation for open access, with all its technical integrity, unique identity (version of record), portability, interoperability, machine-readability, preservation-robustness, findability, semantically linked to data and other resources, and the like.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>Let there be 100% Green OA, unembargoed and unobstructed by publishers, and Jan's hypothesis that publishers have value to add apart from managing peer review can be tested empirically, by the market.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>(But what is more likely is that if journal publishers offloaded peer-review management on other service-providers, they will have relinquished their involvement in peer-reviewed journal publication altogether, and those other "service-providers" will simply become the journals. That's all there is to a post-OA peer-reviewed journal: The peer-review service, and the title that certifies it with its track-record for quality-standards.)</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>I know Stevan thinks that 'ocular access', just human readability, is enough... (though I doubt it). </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>Fine. That hypothesis will be tested by the market too, if publishers drop their attempts to embargo or obstruct Gratis Green OA... </div><div style><br></div><div style>Stevan Harnad</div>
</div></div></div>