Dear Bob (and Ted): Thanks for the copy of Ted's "Lysisastran Scheme" <http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/> to refuse to referee for overpriced journals.
I completely sympathize with Ted's motivation, of course, but I think it will not work (and it is hence not a good idea to promote it) for the very same reason that enjoining researchers to submit only to the lower-priced journals will not work (and is an unreasonable thing to expect and ask). Researchers want their work refereed by the established highest quality (and impact) journals, and to be certified as having met those standards. That is what promotes their careers as well as what guides the research community in deciding what research is worth reading, citing, building upon. To submit to a lesser journal just because its price is better is to compromise both one's career and the potential impact of one's research. By precisely the same token, refereeing for a journal on the basis of its price rather than its quality standards simply compromises the quality filter that journals provide (and will not appeal to referees who steal their refereeing time from the rest of their overtaxed schedules, on the basis of journal and article quality and interest, not on the basis of journal price). Besides, it is an insufficient objective merely to lower journal Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View [S/L/P] prices, for that still leaves most of the research world needlessly deprived of access to much of the literature (no institution can afford it all) and FOR NO REASON WHATEVER. The literature needs to be freed of ALL S/L/P access-barriers, not just the highest ones. Hence I'm afraid I must still favour the "Subversive Proposal" (open self-archiving) http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ that I have been promoting, over Ted's "Lysisastran Scheme." Indeed, such not-fully-thought-through boycott schemes are no more helpful, in getting the research community to see the real situation clearly, than (1) the schemes to do away with peer review (as if that were the offender), or the failure to distinguish (2) the non-giveaway (books, magazines) from the giveaway (refereed research) literature, or (3) the piracy of someone else's non-giveaway goods (books, magazines, software, patents) from "self-piracy" of one's own give-away goods (research reports), or (4) theft of authorship (plagiarism) from theft of text (no problem for a give-away author!). The air is fully of local views; a coherent global one is needed: The only enemy is the Gutenberg trade model itself, not higher journal prices, or publishers, or peer reviewers. For the Giveaway research literature this was never the right model; in papyrocentric days, real costs allowed no way to break out of its Faustian grip; the online era of open self-archiving does. So don't boycott your preferred journals; continue to submit papers to them and to referee for them. But self-archive both your preprints and reprints in the Open Archives. This will do better than lower price barriers: it will eliminate them entirely. Yes, 19th April would be an excellent time for you to come and visit in Southampton. Let me know when dates are firm! Best wishes, Stevan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
