Stevan, Thanks for pointing out to this resource. In my opinion,
in today's world it is erroneous to draw a straight line between
publishers to access. You are aware that open access journals are
also published by publishers like universities, societies, NFPs
and even commercial publishers and the opposite is also true.
The bottom line is that a publishing activity except blogging and
mailing list posting does not emanate on its own, unless it is
"motivated" by some external forces. These forces may be the
employer, supervisor, commercial or non-profit publishing
agencies, nagging editors, to name a few.
The point I am trying to make is that this is where publishers
are standing. It is altogether different matter whether the
publishing output is open or closed or funded or commercially
available. But the bottom line is that for publishing at least in
a journal, you shall have an editorial board, peer reviewers who
will trigger the whole process. And it is the norm that not the
authors but the publishers have so far commissioned these people
in making journal publishing worthwhile and scholarly.
Open access (particularly gold/IR version) benefits from
publishers' commissioning of editorial board and peer review
panel by simply taking benefit of existing copyright law (which
is fair enough from legal point of view), but blames the
publishers for not having enough input to the publishing process.
Is it right?
I do not think this is right unless and until we have an
alternative system of having the whole publishing support system
without the publishers is ready. To add to this, we would be more
practical if we avoid generalizations of the publishers across
the board, and in this case the publishers in question are not
the open access publishers, but the commercial publishers.
Atanu
From: "Stevan Harnad"
> See Swan, Alma (2007) What a difference a publisher makes.
> OptimalScholarship. Saturday, July 7 2007.
>
> http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-difference-publisher-makes.html
Received on Wed Jul 11 2007 - 07:15:17 BST