[Open-access] Fwd: [GOAL] Re: Don't Conflate OA with Peer-Review Reform

Jan Velterop velterop at gmail.com
Wed Dec 11 11:54:43 UTC 2013


Perhaps the discussion on a wider set of reform issues of scholarly publishing than just 'green' OA is better discussed on this list than the GOAL one. May I start off (if it hasn't already been done) with a discussion on publisher-mediated pre-publication peer review? I'll do that in the form of reproducing a blog post I wrote a little while ago, entitled "Essence of academic publishing" (original here: http://theparachute.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/essence-of-academic-publishing.html).

——————
Let me start with a bit of context, all of which will be known, understood and widely discussed. The blame of unaffordability of the ever-increasing amount of scholarly literature, be it because of high subscription prices or article processing fees for ‘gold’ open access, is often laid at the door of the publishers.

Of course, publishers, subscription-based ones as well as open access outfits, have a business which depends to a very large degree on being the organisers of PPR and few of them would like to see the imperative disappear. The ‘need’ – real or perceived – for publisher-mediated PPR in the academic ecosystem is the main raison d’être of most publishers. And it is responsible for most of their costs (personnel costs), even though it is actually carried out by academics and not publishers. The technical costs of publishing are but a fraction of that, at least the cost of electronic publishing (print and its distribution are quite expensive, but to be seen as an optional service and not as part of the essence of academic publishing).

Despite it being the imperative in Academia, publisher-mediated PPR has flaws, to say the least. Among causes for deep concern are its anonymity and general lack of transparency, highly variable quality, and the unrealistic expectations of what peer review can possibly deliver in the first place. The increasing amount of journal articles being submitted is making the process of finding appropriate reviewers not easier, either.

Originally, PPR was a perfectly rational approach to ensuring that scarce resources were not spent on the expensive business of printing and distributing paper copies of articles that were indeed not deemed to be worth that expense. Unfortunately, the rather subjective judgment needed for that approach led to unwelcome side effects, such as negative results not being published. In the era of electronic communication, with its very low marginal costs of dissemination, prepublication filtering seems anachronistic. Of course, initial technical costs of publishing each article remain, but the amounts involved are but a fraction of the costs per article of the traditional print-based system, and an even smaller fraction of the average revenues per article many publishers make.

Now, with the publishers’ argument of avoiding excessive costs of publishing largely gone, PPR is often presented as some sort of quality filter, protecting readers against unintentionally spending their valuable time and effort on unworthy literature. Researchers must be a naïve lot, given the protection they seem to need. The upshot of PPR seems to be that anything that is peer reviewed before publication, and does get through the gates, is to be regarded as proper, worthwhile, and relevant material. But is it? Can it be taken as read that everything in peer-reviewed publications is beyond doubt? Should a researcher be reassured by the fact that it has passed a number of filters that purport to keep scientific ‘rubbish’ out?

Of course they should. These filtering mechanisms are there for a reason. They diminish the need for critical thinking. Researchers should just believe what they read in ‘approved’ literature. They shouldn’t just question everything.

Or are these the wrong answers?

Isn’t it time that academics who are relying on PPR ‘quality’ filters – and let us hope it’s a minority of them – should stop believing at face value what is being presented in the ‘properly peer-reviewed and approved’ literature, and go back to the critical stance that is the hallmark of a true scientist: “why should I believe these results or these assertions?” The fact that an article is peer-reviewed in no way absolves researchers of applying professional skepticism to whatever they are reading. Further review, post-publication, remains necessary. It’s part of the fundamentals of the scientific method.

So, what about this: a system in which authors discuss, in-depth and critically, their manuscripts with a few people who they can identify and accept as their peers. And then ask those people to put their name to the manuscript as ‘endorsers’. As long as some reasonable safeguards are in place that endorsers are genuine, serious and without undeclared conflicts of interest (e.g. they shouldn’t be recent colleagues at the same institution as the author, or be involved in the same collaborative project, or have been a co-author in, say, the last five years), the value of this kind of peer-review – author-mediated PPR, if you wish – is unlikely to be any less than publisher-mediated PPR. In fact, it’s likely to offer more value, if only due to transparency and to the expected reduction in the cost of publishing. It doesn’t mean, of course, that the peer-endorsers should agree with all of the content of the articles they endorse. They merely endorse itspublication. Steve Pettifer of the University of Manchester once presented a perfect example of this. He showed a quote from Alan Singleton about a peer reviewer’s report[1]:

"This is a remarkable result – in fact, I don’t believe it. However, I have examined the paper and can find no fault in the author’s methods and results. Thus I believe it should be published so that others may assess it and the conclusions and/or repeat the experiment to see whether the same results are achieved."

An author-mediated PPR-ed manuscript could subsequently be properly published, i.e. put in a few robust, preservation-proof formats, properly encoded with Unicode characters, uniquely identified and identifiable, time-stamped, citable in any reference format, suitable for human- and machine-reading, data extraction, reuse, deposit in open repositories, printing, and everything else that one might expect of a professionally produced publication, including a facility for post-publication commenting and review. That will cost, of course, but it will be a fraction of the current costs of publication, be they paid for via subscriptions, article processing charges, or subsidies. Good for the affordability of open access publishing for minimally funded authors, e.g. in the social sciences and humanities, and for the publication of null results that, though very useful, hardly get a chance in the current system.

Comments welcome.

Jan Velterop

[1] Singleton, A. The Pain Of Rejection, Learned Publishing, 24:162–163
doi:10.1087/20110301


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: [***SPAM***] Don't Conflate OA with Peer-Review Reform
> Date: 11 December 2013 09:02:01 GMT
> To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
> Reply-To: "Global Open Access List \(Successor of AmSci\)" <goal at eprints.org>
> 
> In the Open Knowledge Foundation we have a mailing list for exactly that purpose and everyone will be very welcome there:
> 
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
> 
> We take the view that "open access" as defined in  BBB - declarations is the appropriate use of the term:
> 
> BOAI 2002: "By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself" 
> 
> This definition is clear and consistent with many other Open definitions such as OSI (software) and the Open Knowledge Definition (http://opendefinition.org/ ) 
> 
> “A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.” 
> 
> Many of us feel that the lax use of "Open" in scholarly publishing causes great confusion, substandard products, widely differing practices and even deception and it greatly impoverishes society.
> 
> Please join us - you will be welcome to express a wide range of views without being preached at to change them.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 9:30 PM, BAUIN Serge <Serge.BAUIN at cnrs-dir.fr> wrote:
> Jeroen,
> 
> Which list? Already existing or starting a new one, let us know, I’m quite interested, and probably not the only one.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Serge
> 
>  
> 
> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] De la part de Bosman, J.M.
> Envoyé : mardi 10 décembre 2013 21:50
> À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Objet : [GOAL] Re: [***SPAM***] Don't Conflate OA with Peer-Review Reform
> 
>  
> 
> Stevan,
> 
>  
> 
> I think it is perfectly possible to discuss and promote experiments with more effective and useful review whilst keeping full force in switching to 100% OA. They are not prerequisites for one another. We cannot stop thinking and hypothesizing about innovation in scholarly communication, but maybe we should take that discussion to another list.
> 
>  
> 
> Best,
> 
> Jeroen
> 
> 
> 
> Op 10 dec. 2013 om 18:46 heeft "Stevan Harnad" <amsciforum at gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Armbruster, Chris <Chris.Armbruster at eui.eu> wrote:
> 
>  
> 
> Same inkling as Jan & Laurent.  The way fwd for OAP would be some form of accreditation by repository & publisher. One would need to show what review & quality assurance mechanism is used, e.g. Pre- Post- Open peer review and demonstrate annually to the accreditation agency that this is what you are doing. The rest can be left to authors, readers and reviewers...
> 
>  
> 
> Ah me! Are we going to go yet another round of this irrelevant loop? http://j.mp/OAnotPReform 
> 
>  
> 
> The purpose of OA (it's not "OAP", it's OA) is to make peer-reviewed research freely accessible online to all of its potential users, webwide, not just to subscribers -- by freeing peer-reviewed research from access tolls, not by freeing it from peer review (nor by first reforming and "reassigning" peer review). 
> 
>  
> 
> Haven't we already waited long enough?
> 
>  
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
> 
> 
> -------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------
> Von: Laurent Romary 
> Datum:10.12.2013 17:31 (GMT+01:00) 
> An: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
> Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Pre-publication peer review (was: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List)
> 
> Each further day of thinking makes me feel closer and closer to this view. As an author, I just like when colleagues are happy with one of my texts online. As a reviewer I am fed up with unreadable junk.
> 
> Let us burn together, Jan.
> 
> Laurent
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Le 10 déc. 2013 à 15:36, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sally,
> 
>  
> 
> May I join you in the ranks of those who risk being pilloried or branded heretics? I think the solution is clear. We should get rid of pre-publication peer review (PPPR) and publish results in open repositories. PPPR is the one thing that keeps the whole publishing system standing, and expensive – in monetary terms, but also in terms of effort expended. It may have some benefits, but we pay very dearly for those. Where are the non-peer-reviewed articles that have caused damage? They may have to public understanding, of course (there's a lot of rubbish on the internet), but to scientific understanding? On the other hand, I can point to peer-reviewed articles that clearly have done damage, particularly to public understanding. Take the Wakefield MMR paper. Had it just been published without peer-review, the damage would likely have been no greater than that of any other drivel on the internet. Its peer-reviewed status, however, gave it far more credibility than it deserved. There are more examples.
> 
>  
> 
> My assertion: pre-publication peer review is dangerous since it is too easily used as an excuse to absolve scientists – and science journalists – from applying sufficient professional skepticism and critical appraisal.
> 
>  
> 
> Doing away with PPPR will do little damage – if any at all – to science, but removes most barriers to open access and saves the scientific community a hell of a lot of money.
> 
>  
> 
> The 'heavy lifting is that of cultural change' (crediting William Gunn for that phrase), so I won't hold my breath.
> 
>  
> 
> Jan Velterop
> 
>  
> 
> On 10 Dec 2013, at 13:36, Sally Morris <sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> At the risk (nay, certainty) of being pilloried by OA conformists, let me say that – whatever ithe failings of his article – I thank Jeffrey Beall for raising some fundamental questions which are rarely, if ever, addressed.
> 
>  
> 
> I would put them under two general headings:
> 
>  
> 
> 1)         What is the objective of OA?
> 
>  
> 
> I originally understood the objective to be to make scholarly research articles, in some form, accessible to all those who needed to read them.   Subsequent refinements such as 'immediately', 'published version' and 'free to reuse' may have acquired quasi-religious status, but are surely secondary to this main objective.
> 
>  
> 
> However, two other, financial, objectives (linked to each other, but not to the above) have gained increasing prominence.  The first is the alleged cost saving (or at least cost shifting).  The second - more malicious, and originally (but no longer) denied by OA's main proponents - is the undermining of publishers' businesses.  If this were to work, we may be sure the effects would not be choosy about 'nice' or 'nasty' publishers.
> 
>  
> 
> 2)         Why hasn't OA been widely adopted by now?
> 
>  
> 
> If – as we have been repetitively assured over many years – OA is self-evidently the right thing for scholars to do, why have so few of them done so voluntarily?  As Jeffrey Beall points out, it seems very curious that scholars have to be forced, by mandates, to adopt a model which is supposedly preferable to the existing one.
> 
>  
> 
> Could it be that the monotonous rantings of the few and the tiresome debates about the fine detail are actually confusing scholars, and may even be putting them off?  Just asking ;-)
> 
>  
> 
> I don't disagree that the subscription model is not going to be able to address the problems we face in making the growing volume of research available to those who need it;  but I'm not convinced that OA (whether Green, Gold or any combination) will either.  I think the solution, if there is one, still eludes us.
> 
>  
> 
> Merry Christmas!
> 
>  
> 
> Sally
> 
>  
> 
> Sally Morris
> 
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> 
> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
> 
> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser
> Sent: 09 December 2013 22:10
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility ofBeall's List
> 
> 'Lackeys'? This is going beyond parody.
> 
>  
> 
> David
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> On 9 Dec 2013, at 21:45, Beall, Jeffrey wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wouter,
> 
> Hello, yes, I wrote the article, I stand by it, and I take responsibility for it.
> 
> I would ask Prof. Harnad to clarify one thing in his email below, namely this statement, "OA is all an anti-capitlist plot."
> 
> This statement's appearance in quotation marks makes it look like I wrote it in the article. The fact is that this statement does not appear in the article, and I have never written such a statement.
> 
> Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts.
> 
> Jeffrey Beall
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Gerritsma, Wouter
> Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 2:14 PM
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
> 
> Dear all.
> 
> Has this article really been written by Jeffrey Beall?
> 
> He has been victim of a smear campaign before!
> 
> I don’t see he has claimed this article on his blog http://scholarlyoa.com/ or his tweet stream @Jeffrey_Beall (which actually functions as his RSS feed).
> 
> I really like to hear from the man himself on his own turf.
> 
> Wouter
> 
>      
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: maandag 9 december 2013 16:04
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
> 
> Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism & Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
> 
> This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! "OA is all an anti-capitlist plot." (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine "predatory" junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!) 
> 
> Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set the stage:
> 
> JB: "ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals.  The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science."
> 
> JB: "[F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates... demand that for-profit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat and eliminate them...
> 
> JB: "OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for mandates, focusing only on the supposed economic benefits of open access and ignoring the value additions provided by professional publishers. The arguments imply that publishers are not really needed; all researchers need to do is upload their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that this act results in a product that is somehow similar to the products that professional publishers produce….  
> 
> JB:  "The open-access movement isn't really about open access. Instead, it is about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that uses young researchers and researchers from developing countries as pawns to artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access models to work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats...
> 
> JB: "The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false messiah, but its promoters refuse to admit this. The emergence of numerous predatory publishers – a product of the open-access movement – has poisoned scholarly communication, fostering research misconduct and the publishing of pseudo-science, but OA advocates refuse to recognize the growing problem. By instituting a policy of exchanging funds between researchers and publishers, the movement has fostered corruption on a grand scale. Instead of arguing for openaccess, we must determine and settle on the best model for the distribution of scholarly research, and it's clear that neither green nor gold open-access is that model...
> 
> And then, my own personal favourites:
> 
> JB: "Open access advocates think they know better than everyone else and want to impose their policies on others. Thus, the open access movement has the serious side-effect of taking away other's freedom from them. We observe this tendency in institutional mandates.  Harnad (2013) goes so far as to propose [an]…Orwellian system of mandates… documented [in a] table of mandate strength, with the most restrictive pegged at level 12, with the designation "immediate deposit + performance evaluation (no waiver option)". This Orwellian system of mandates is documented in Table 1...  
> 
> JB: "A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed to fail. A social movement that uses mandates is abusive and tantamount to academic slavery. Researchers need more freedom in their decisions not less. How can we expect and demand academic freedom from our universities when we impose oppressive mandates upon ourselves?..."
> 
> Stay tuned!…
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
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> Laurent Romary
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> 
> laurent.romary at inria.fr
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> Reader in Molecular Informatics
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