On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:50 AM, Jan Velterop <velte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> nowadays, peer review is the only remaining significant raison dâêtre of > formal scientific publishing in journals... This much is certainly true: In the online era,of all the products and services bundled into the price of a subscription to a peer-reviewed journal, the only remaining essential one is peer review itself. There is no longer a need for the (1) print edition and its expenses, nor the online edition and its expenses, nor of (2) distribution, access-provision by the publisher, nor of (3) warehousing and archiving by the publisher. The first (1) is obsolete, and the second and third (2), (3) can be offloaded onto the worldwide network of institutional repositories and their harvesters, minimizing and distributing the minimal per-arcticle expense. (This was the subject of years of discussion from 1999 - 2006 on AmSci under the thread "The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)" http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html#msg304 ) > Science collectively values peer review to the tune of at least $2000 per > article, > on average This a highly tendentious way of putting it. Here is a much more value-neutral way of stating the objective facts: Science collectively is paying for peer review to the tune of at least $2000 per article, on average, today -- because the cost of the print edition, the online edition, distribution, access-provision warehousing and archiving are still bundled into the price of a subscription (or license). The price per article of managing peer review itself is considerably lower than that thanks to: > the unquantified time and effort of those who actually do the peer review. Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of Open Access Publishing ("Gold OA") are premature. Funds are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals) are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA; the asking price for Gold OA is still high; and there is concern that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates and lower quality standards. What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate OA self-archiving (of authors' final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon acceptance for publication) ("Green OA"). That will provide immediate OA; and if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions) that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (print edition, online edition, access-provision, archiving), downsize to just providing the service of peer review, and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model; meanwhile, the subscription cancellations will have released the funds to pay these residual service costs. The natural way to charge for the service of peer review then will be on a "no-fault basis," with the author's institution or funder paying for each round of refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing, or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against inflated acceptance rates and decline in quality standards. Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/ See AmSci thread beginning 1999: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html#msg304 _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
