From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:32:25 -0700
"Late to the party" is a good metaphor. Let's examine it in this context.
Everyone knows that it is great to buy low and sell high. But large
organizations more typically buy high and sell higher. Elsevier has no
reason to be an experimenter, no reason to play with start-up
activity. Being late to the party is a virtue if you are a top
organization in a particular market, as Elsevier is in journals
publishing.
Big organizations become big and stay that way because they know what
they are doing. This also means that they are not good at handling
what they never anticipated, but most of the time they have on their
radar screen all the threats to their business. This does not mean
that they never make mistakes. Supporting RWW was a mistake, for
example, but it doesn't look like that mistake was more than a social
gaffe. Most of the time large organizations can reach out and pull
into themselves minor threats and irritants.
And when they pull those things in, they assimilate them. Think of
the Borg in Star Trek--and if you are not familiar with the Borg, you
are missing out on one of life's great metaphors. So it's perfectly
natural for Elsevier to come late to the party, finally take a glass
of punch, taste it carefully one sip at a time, and then make their
independent conclusion. When they started out hundreds of years ago,
they did things that others did not--and prospered. Now they do
things that others do--do them later, do them better, and do them on
their own terms.
This is not to defend or attack Elsevier. The point simply is that
organizations have inherent properties. You can attack a start-up for
not being innovative, but a market leader has different arrows in the
quiver. Creative people need not apply.
Joe Esposito
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 2:09 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:11:37 +0400
>
> Hi All
>
> For example, BMC Medical Education. (I sold them rather short by
> saying that they make "earlier drafts of papers
> available" In fact, in addition to earlier drafts, they give the full
> publication history, including the reviewers' reports (and the
> reviewers are identified by name)).
>
> It strikes me as rather interesting that Elsevier is coming to the
> party so late on something like this, and then still treading so
> carefully that they are treating it as a pilot, and couching it in the
> market-speech of "improving the article
> value" (hmm - the "added value" bandwagon - which means it will be
> something else that they can list in order to justify and/or increase
> their prices).
>
> Regards
>
> Ken
>
> Dr. Ken Masters
> Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
> Medical Education Unit
> College of Medicine & Health Sciences
> Sultan Qaboos University
> Sultanate of Oman
> E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education
>
>
> On 10 April 2012 02:33, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > From: Patty Baskin <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2012 16:44:20 -0700
> >
> > Which other journals, Ken?
> >
> > Patty
> >
> > Patricia K Baskin, MS
> > Executive Editor, Neurology®
> > Neurology® Editorial Office
> > American Academy of Neurology
> > St Paul, MN 55116
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 18:17:41 +0400
> >
> > Hi All
> >
> > One of the advantages is to authors who sometimes have to toe the line
> > (because reviewers seem to have the final say, and editors appear
> > loath to cross the reviewers). As a result, things that authors feel
> > should have been said are removed in order just to get the paper
> > published. This way, authors can show their original intentions.
> >
> > BTW - A few other journals have been making earlier drafts of papers
> > available for some years already.
> >
> > Regards, Ken
> >
> > Dr. Ken Masters
> > Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
> > Medical Education Unit
> > College of Medicine & Health Sciences
> > Sultan Qaboos University
> > Sultanate of Oman
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