From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:03:10 +0000

Joe,  I don't regard you as being difficult. We just differ in opinion.

I agree with you where you question the term 'publishing' for what
'publishers' do, or think they do. I've long held the view that
science 'publishers' should really be called 'quality assurance
providers' or something in that vein, and I restated that in a recent
blog post (http://bit.ly/tI5odU). Where we seem to differ is our view
whether this applies to all science 'publishers' or just to open
access 'publishers'.

I am, frankly, surprised by your characterisation of a publisher's
role as suppressing production. It reminds me of the opinion I've
heard from quite a few prominent scientists over the years that
someone who wants to have access to less information rather than more
cannot really call himself a scientist.

The bringing to the attention of scientists of any more than the
occasional individual article is just not possible with the million+
articles published every year (and counting). As I made clear, I'm
talking about journal publishing and not book publishing, in which
realm your views may be more relevant.

Jan Velterop

On 13 Dec 2011, at 02:09, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011
>
> Sorry to be so difficult, Jan, but you keep making statements that
> make it hard to call this discussion closed.  Thus you write the
> following:
>
> "The role of a publisher nowadays is to provide the service to a
> scientist of having his or her contributions peer reviewed and
> subsequently added to the common pool (well, ocean) of knowledge and
> information in a standardised, accessible and attributable way."
>
> This is just not true.  The role of the publisher is to help readers
> by identifying the best work, investing in it, and bringing it to the
> reader's attention.  The role of the publisher is to SUPPRESS
> production.  There is always more information that could be read;
> publishers sort through it--not always successfully, but with higher
> standards than the open Web.
>
> Your description of what publishers do applies perfectly to open
> access publishing, if publishing is the right term for it.  It is
> different from the traditional model because it privileges a different
> audience.  For open access publishing, the author is the customer; for
> traditional publishing, the reader is the customer.  This is why over
> time the kinds of content for these different models of publishing
> will diverge.
>
> You are welcome to have the last shot.  I'm done with this thread.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 5:21 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 08:35:58 +0000
>>
>> Joe,
>>
>> I fear we are talking cross-purposes. My frame of reference is
>> primarily STM journals. In that frame of reference I just don't
>> recognise your definition of 'distribution' as "actually persuading
>> people to read something", unless 'something' means literally that.
>> Sure, publishers try to stimulate downloads, since they help them
>> making he case to li,rarians that they should renew their
>> subscriptions and licences. But it's a numbers game, in which
>> 'something' pretty much means 'anything', and the marginal cost of
>> extra downloads is negligible.
>>
>> Indeed, the bits on your hard drive are meaningless unless you engage
>> with them. Researchers do engage with the information they have access
>> to, and they would like to have even more to engage with, but all this
>> engaging isn't necessarily in the form of reading nowadays. Perhaps it
>> can be described as 'meta-reading', but it is more and more about
>> extracting facts and assertions, collating them with those from a
>> large number of publications, connecting and relating them, analysing
>> them, and using the information gleaned as a basis for further
>> thinking, experimentation, et cetera. Occasionally articles are still
>> being read linearly, but even then, particularly if they are being
>> read online (or nowadays also in PDF when the PDF is opened with the
>> likes of the scientific reader Utopia - free from getutopia.org) as a
>> starting point for further navigation of information and knowledge.
>>
>> Human attention is indeed a scarce thing. And that attention is less
>> and less being attracted by journals per se, let alone their
>> publishers. It's the connections between facts and information across
>> a vast array of publications and databases that attracts attention.
>> Fragmentation of information in all manner of different journals some
>> of which are accessible and some not is the scourge of many a
>> scientist. The observation that most articles are being accessed only
>> after having been found with general search tools such as Google are
>> testimony to the fact that practically nobody relies anymore on the
>> choices journals and their publishers make.
>>
>> The role of a publisher nowadays is to provide the service to a
>> scientist of having his or her contributions peer reviewed and
>> subsequently added to the common pool (well, ocean) of knowledge and
>> information in a standardised, accessible and attributable way. That
>> role is not satisfactorily played with the encumbrances of the
>> subscription model.
>>
>> You are right that the subscription model may be suitable to content
>> of a certain nature. Magazines – even scientific ones – and the like
>> come to mind. Nothing wrong with that. For the mainstay of scientific
>> communication, however, the model is not suitable any longer. Of
>> course it will amble along for a time. Quite a long time, even.
>> Inertia is a pretty strong force.
>>
>> Jan Velterop