Re: Scientific publishing is not just about administering peer-review

From: Fytton Rowland <J.F.Rowland_at_LBORO.AC.UK>
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 04:18:42 +0100

Again, Albert has a point. These publicity activities have a price-tag.
Perhaps the rather high author charge that PLoS is levying covers these
costs.

Incidentally, the brain-machine interface paper got coverage in the daily
newspaper in Wellington, New Zealand - which did mention that it was in the
first issue of the new PLoS Biology online journal.

Fytton.

Quoting Albert Henderson <chessNIC_at_compuserve.com>:

> What is the cost of your unusual publicity campaign?
> How do you pay for it?
>
> Albert Henderson
> Pres., Chess Combination Inc.
> Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
> <70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
>
> -------------Forwarded Message-----------------
>
> From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum,
> INTERNET:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> To: [unknown], INTERNET:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>
> Date: 10/16/2003 3:43 PM
>
> Re: Re: Scientific publishing is not just about administering
> peer-review
>
>
> I'm not sure what you might mean by "In contrast, the various free open
> access schemes leave readers entirely on their own. No service, no
> cost."
>
> What services to readers do you think, for example, PLoS Biology or the
> BMC journals are lacking that we should be providing? We organize our
> material in a pretty traditional manner (tables of contents, editorials
> and other front matter, etc.); we are listed in PubMed and indexed by
> all the major indexers, which then readily provide a link to the full
> text (thereby going one step further than most journals); we send out
> electronic TOC announcements whenever an issue or an article of special
> interest comes out; we provide very thorough and compliant metadata for
> searching and harvesting. I'd say the success of our launch, in which we
> were swamped by more than 500,000 hits within our first few hours, and
> that people looking for one particular article announced as part of that
> launch, the one on brain-machine interface, the PDF of which has been
> downloaded more than 60,000 times in three days, indicate that once
> people know the article exists, they have no problem finding it -- and
> using it -- and that open-access journals have no difficulty at all in
> getting the word out about their contents.
>
> Best regards,
> Rebecca Kennison
> Public Library of Science
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Albert Henderson [mailto:chessNIC_at_COMPUSERVE.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 4:19 AM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: Scientific publishing is not just about administering
> peer-review
>
> on Thu, 16 Oct 2003 Fytton Rowland <J.F.Rowland_at_LBORO.AC.UK> wrote:
>
> > I haven't reposted Etienne's post ans Stevan's answers, but I'd just
> like
> > to say that I think we are getting to the heart of the matter now. If
> we
> > mostly agree that peer review (including within that term the
> activities of
> > the academic editor, the editorial board, and the referees of a
> journal)
> > must remain, and that the administration of peer review has a cost,
> the
> > remaining activity of professional, paid editors is copy-editing. Is
> copy-
> > editing necessary?
> >
> > I think it is useful to have focussed in on this as a key issue within
> the
> > question of "the cost of the essentials".
>
> Copy editing is an important function for some
> journals and not for others.
>
> The essential element missing from the discussion
> is that of delivery. Journals deliver content
> to subscribers/readers on a regular basis. They
> may also put research into context with editorials,
> letters, comments, notices of meetings, abstracts,
> reviews, and so on. There is a cost of maintaining
> subscriber lists.
>
> In contrast, the various free open access schemes
> leave readers entirely on their own. No service,
> no cost.
>
> The major cost of the journal system, documented by
> Donald King et al., is not the cost of producing
> journals. It is the cost of finding and reading
> information. The major information challenge of
> science for over a century has been the abundance
> of public reports of discovery. It has been the job
> of the journals to organize, present, and deliver
> according to special interests of readers.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Albert Henderson
> Pres., Chess Combination Inc.
> POB 2423 Bridgeport CT 06608-0423
> Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
> <70244.1532_at_compuserve.com>
>
>
>
> .
> .
> .
>
>
Received on Fri Oct 17 2003 - 04:18:42 BST