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

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Many thanks Jan.

For those who don't know, Jan is a signatory of BOAI and played a major
part within the publishing industry in promoting OA




On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 11:54 AM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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> > GOAL at eprints.org
> > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
> >
> >
> >
> > Laurent Romary
> >
> > INRIA & HUB-IDSL
> >
> > laurent.romary at inria.fr
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peter Murray-Rust
> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> > University of Cambridge
> > CB2 1EW, UK
> > +44-1223-763069
> > _______________________________________________
> > GOAL mailing list
> > GOAL at eprints.org
> > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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