[GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.
Jan- I just don't think the ArXiv model would work for archaeology. Part of the reason may be the heterogeneous nature of the field, which runs from hard science to interpretive humanities, and part may be the overall lower level of agreed-upon disciplinary standards (related to, but not isomorphic with, the first point). If archaeology were to jettison peer review, I would stop publishing in those journals and declare myself a historian or a sociologist. Mike Michael E. Smith, Professor School of Human Evolution Social Change Arizona State University www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9 -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:32 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc. Mike, I totally accept that your discipline suffers from practitioners of psychoceramics, a field of study involving cracked pots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_S._Carberry - tomorrow, as every Friday the 13th, it's Josiah Stinkney Carberry day). It's probably true of many disciplines, and it's certainly a well-known phenomenon in physics, where highly fantastic theories about the universe and everything abound. Yet ArXiv seems to be able to keep those crackpots out with a fairly simple - and cheap - endorsement system: http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement. Would this really be impossible in archaeology? It may well not be completely fail-safe, but then, what in life is? To all intents and purposes, we know that ArXiv works. Jan Velterop On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:46, Michael Smith wrote: I would not presume to talk about the value of peer review for all of science, but for some fields it is absolutely essential. I am a archaeologist, and we desperately need peer review to weed out papers by two groups of authors (many of whom can write scholarly-sounding and scholarly-looking papers). First we lunatics who would like to think they are part of the scholarly discipline. They are into Maya prophesies for 2012, boatloads of Egyptians who (supposedly) showed the Incas how to mummify the dead, phony pyramids in the Balkans, and the like. Some of these people write books and articles that appear to be scholarly, but are not. The second group is more insidious. These are scholars with valid degrees who have a very non-scientific epistemology, producing stories of the past with little plausibility. Taking a more humanities-oriented approach, they are willing to propose interpretations that the more scientifically-minded of us consider baseless speculation. High-energy physics presumably has fewer lunatics and hangers-on than archaeology, and they are probably easier to spot. We desperately need peer review to keep some sort of sanity in our field. Mike Michael E. Smith, Professor School of Human Evolution Social Change Arizona State University www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.
Mike, I understand. The main point I was trying to make is that if and when we want or need a system of pre-publication peer review, we should be aware of the cost per article that that system entails. I compared a system built on pre-publication peer review (upwards of $2000 per article) with one based on peer endorsement (less than $10 per article). Whether or not that difference justifies a rethink of the traditional scientific publishing system is up to the scientific community. Jan On 13 Jan 2012, at 14:53, Michael Smith wrote: Jan- I just don't think the ArXiv model would work for archaeology. Part of the reason may be the heterogeneous nature of the field, which runs from hard science to interpretive humanities, and part may be the overall lower level of agreed-upon disciplinary standards (related to, but not isomorphic with, the first point). If archaeology were to jettison peer review, I would stop publishing in those journals and declare myself a historian or a sociologist. Mike Michael E. Smith, Professor School of Human Evolution Social Change Arizona State University www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9 -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:32 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc. Mike, I totally accept that your discipline suffers from practitioners of psychoceramics, a field of study involving cracked pots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_S._Carberry - tomorrow, as every Friday the 13th, it's Josiah Stinkney Carberry day). It's probably true of many disciplines, and it's certainly a well-known phenomenon in physics, where highly fantastic theories about the universe and everything abound. Yet ArXiv seems to be able to keep those crackpots out with a fairly simple - and cheap - endorsement system: http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement. Would this really be impossible in archaeology? It may well not be completely fail-safe, but then, what in life is? To all intents and purposes, we know that ArXiv works. Jan Velterop On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:46, Michael Smith wrote: I would not presume to talk about the value of peer review for all of science, but for some fields it is absolutely essential. I am a archaeologist, and we desperately need peer review to weed out papers by two groups of authors (many of whom can write scholarly-sounding and scholarly-looking papers). First we lunatics who would like to think they are part of the scholarly discipline. They are into Maya prophesies for 2012, boatloads of Egyptians who (supposedly) showed the Incas how to mummify the dead, phony pyramids in the Balkans, and the like. Some of these people write books and articles that appear to be scholarly, but are not. The second group is more insidious. These are scholars with valid degrees who have a very non-scientific epistemology, producing stories of the past with little plausibility. Taking a more humanities-oriented approach, they are willing to propose interpretations that the more scientifically-minded of us consider baseless speculation. High-energy physics presumably has fewer lunatics and hangers-on than archaeology, and they are probably easier to spot. We desperately need peer review to keep some sort of sanity in our field. Mike Michael E. Smith, Professor School of Human Evolution Social Change Arizona State University www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.
Begin forwarded message [posted with permission]: On 2012-01-10, at 3:13 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote: But the NIH-type mandate doesn't get you very far, does it? Just Green OA after 12 months. That's right, it doesn't get you very far, and it's a bad model for others to imitate (though it's still better than no mandate at all!). It allows a 12 month OA embargo; it allows publishers (who have vested interests against overzealous compliance) to fulfill the requirement, rather than the fundee who is bound by it, and it requires institution-external deposit in PMC, perversely, instead of institutional deposit and automated harvest/import/export to PMC. I'd rather see publishers voluntarily provide Green OA immediately on publication, as many now do, as you know, I don't know what you mean, Sandy. Green OA is author OA self-archiving, and Gold OA is publisher OA archiving. A publisher is Green if it?endorses?immediate Green OA self-archiving by its authors, but it does not?do?the deposit for them! But we know now that publisher endorsement of Green OA is not enough: Authors won't actually do it unless it's mandated. (Over 60% of journals are already Green, but less than 20% of their articles are being self-archived.) rather than have any government agency that has contributed nothing to peer review mandate it. I completely disagree, Sandy! Apart from the fact that it is the?published research?that is at issue, not just the peer review, and the funders have certainly contributed a good bit to that, even with the peer review, it is researchers -- institutional employees and grant fundees -- that are providing the service gratis. So the government has every prerogative to mandate that the published research it has funded is made OA. And that's without mentioning the fundamental fact that everyone seems to keep ignoring, which is that as long as subscriptions remain sustainable for recovering publishing costs, the publisher's managing of the peer review is paid for in full (many, many times over) by the institutional subscriptions. (And if and when subscriptions are no longer sustainable, then we can talk about who will pay for the peer review, and how. And the answer is dead obvious: the author's institution, on the gold OA model, and out of a small fraction of its annual windfall savings from the collapse of the subscription model in favor of the Gold OA model.) If mandates are needed, I'd prefer to see them at the university level, like Harvard's, but without a waiver option. Mandates?are?needed (otherwise authors will not deposit), and they are needed from both the author's funder and the author's institution. But the locus of deposit, for both, should be the author's institution. That makes the two complementary mandates cooperative instead of competitive, and maximizes the author's motivation to comply (once) as well as the institution's ability to monitor compliance, Institutional deposit -- and by the author (not the publisher!). My claim is not that other researchers do not need the peer-reviewed article literature, but that all those non-scientists who are taxpayers can have their needs satisfied by research reports, not by articles involving higher-level math and abstract theory that the vast majority of citizens will not even comprehend. I'm directing my argument to that part of the anti-Research Works Act crowd. I agree completely that most refereed research articles are of no interest to the general public. The primary rationale for OA is to ensure that published research is accessible (online) to all of its intended users, not just those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which it happened to be published. That is what maximizes the return for the public on its investment in research. Cheers, Stevan
[GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.
Begin forwarded message [posted with permission]: On 2012-01-10, at 3:13 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote: But the NIH-type mandate doesn't get you very far, does it? Just Green OA after 12 months. That's right, it doesn't get you very far, and it's a bad model for others to imitate (though it's still better than no mandate at all!). It allows a 12 month OA embargo; it allows publishers (who have vested interests against overzealous compliance) to fulfill the requirement, rather than the fundee who is bound by it, and it requires institution-external deposit in PMC, perversely, instead of institutional deposit and automated harvest/import/export to PMC. I'd rather see publishers voluntarily provide Green OA immediately on publication, as many now do, as you know, I don't know what you mean, Sandy. Green OA is author OA self-archiving, and Gold OA is publisher OA archiving. A publisher is Green if it endorses immediate Green OA self-archiving by its authors, but it does not do the deposit for them! But we know now that publisher endorsement of Green OA is not enough: Authors won't actually do it unless it's mandated. (Over 60% of journals are already Green, but less than 20% of their articles are being self-archived.) rather than have any government agency that has contributed nothing to peer review mandate it. I completely disagree, Sandy! Apart from the fact that it is the published research that is at issue, not just the peer review, and the funders have certainly contributed a good bit to that, even with the peer review, it is researchers -- institutional employees and grant fundees -- that are providing the service gratis. So the government has every prerogative to mandate that the published research it has funded is made OA. And that's without mentioning the fundamental fact that everyone seems to keep ignoring, which is that as long as subscriptions remain sustainable for recovering publishing costs, the publisher's managing of the peer review is paid for in full (many, many times over) by the institutional subscriptions. (And if and when subscriptions are no longer sustainable, then we can talk about who will pay for the peer review, and how. And the answer is dead obvious: the author's institution, on the gold OA model, and out of a small fraction of its annual windfall savings from the collapse of the subscription model in favor of the Gold OA model.) If mandates are needed, I'd prefer to see them at the university level, like Harvard's, but without a waiver option. Mandates are needed (otherwise authors will not deposit), and they are needed from both the author's funder and the author's institution. But the locus of deposit, for both, should be the author's institution. That makes the two complementary mandates cooperative instead of competitive, and maximizes the author's motivation to comply (once) as well as the institution's ability to monitor compliance, Institutional deposit -- and by the author (not the publisher!). My claim is not that other researchers do not need the peer-reviewed article literature, but that all those non-scientists who are taxpayers can have their needs satisfied by research reports, not by articles involving higher-level math and abstract theory that the vast majority of citizens will not even comprehend. I'm directing my argument to that part of the anti-Research Works Act crowd. I agree completely that most refereed research articles are of no interest to the general public. The primary rationale for OA is to ensure that published research is accessible (online) to all of its intended users, not just those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which it happened to be published. That is what maximizes the return for the public on its investment in research. Cheers, Stevan ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
