From: Ivy Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 06:32:23 +0000

I find it fascinating that this paper attracted such wide notice and
that, as a result, so many of us have learned so much about the
challenges posed by the internationalization of scientific
communication.

Would that have happened with a toll access journal, I wonder?

And no sting was necessary to bring this about.

Ivy Anderson
California Digital Library


> On Mar 9, 2016, at 2:08 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Michael Magoulias <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 22:39:23 +0000
>
> Since my original post sparked a number of comments, I'll do my best
> to answer the most substantive points in one response without boring
> everyone into an early grave.
>
> First, careful readers will have noted that I referenced three
> occasions in which scholars formerly positive, or at the very least
> neutral, on PLOS One reversed themselves in the view of experience.
> One was the scholar who had been asked to review his own paper, the
> second was the commentary within the scientific community on the "Hand
> of God" article which expanded considerably after I submitted my
> comment on Thursday, and third was a former section editor who
> disassociated himself from the journal on the grounds that it was a
> "dumping ground."
>
> I thought it was worth making my comments since all three of these
> cases -- and if you want to call them "anecdotal," it's worth keeping
> in mind that anecdotes can be just as empirically valid as anything
> else -- occurred within a three-week period, which seemed to me much
> more than simple coincidence. For established journals, that kind of
> anti-trifecta could mean eternal disgrace, if not death, and at the
> very least, would normally result in staffing changes and a
> re-evaluation of editorial policies. While even the best of journals
> can occasionally be fooled by cases of plagiarism or fabricated data,
> the combination of triviality, horrendous writing, and misplaced
> metaphysics in the "Hand of God" article just doesn't happen in the
> leading subscription-based journals. This obviously doesn't mean that
> every article published by standard journals is brilliant, but it does
> mean that the kinds of peer-review failure seen in PLOS (and let's not
> forget the author who was asked to review his own paper) almost never
> happen in the best of the journals that PLOS was intended to replace
> or supersede.
>
> So if you want to defend PLOS, the only recourse you can have is to
> some version of "not every single article it publishes is quite that
> awful" or, to quote the Osmund Brothers: "one bad apple don't spoil
> the whole bunch, girl."
>
> This is undoubtedly true, but it is hardly a strong defense. It is
> essentially the defense used by Allison of the University of
> California Press which announced over a year ago that it intended to
> get into the megajournal game. Since to date, its Collabra service has
> published six articles, it's really more of a "minijournal" at the
> moment, but the aspiration is there. It also shares with PLOS One a
> crucial element of editorial philosophy: "The journal’s review process
> will focus on scientific, methodological and ethical soundness and
> credibility, and will not focus on more subjective notions of novelty,
> topicality, or scope."
>
> This philosophy is the heart of the problem for all megajournals (or
> non-megajournals, for that matter) that share some version of it. It
> represents nothing less than a repudiation of what all leading
> journals explicitly aim for and quite often achieve. The contrast with
> a journal like Nature couldn't be more striking. Nature highlights the
> following characteristics of the papers it accepts: "novel," "of
> extreme importance," and "ideally interesting to researchers in other
> related disciplines." Nature sums up its philosophy by saying that "a
> paper should represent an advance in understanding likely to influence
> thinking in the field."
>
> One of the graver instances of muddle-headedness in the editorial
> philosophies of PLOS and Collabra is the notion that considerations of
> novelty and significance are damagingly "subjective," whereas notions
> of "the scientific," "credibility," and "soundness" (applied to both
> methodology and ethics) are not. Nothing could be further from the
> case, as the extensive literature on objectivity in the philosophy of
> science demonstrates. It is impossible, and hardly even desirable, to
> have value-free science, and no one has so far been able to develop a
> statistical approach to data that can remove every hint of personal
> bias. This does not mean that all scientific research is hopelessly
> flawed or that there aren't effective methods of minimizing bias, but
> it does mean that the key editorial driver of this kind of OA
> publishing rests on a deeply flawed understanding of the nature of
> meaningful research. The most important research is never a catalogue
> of mute facts or data points, but always reflects considerable amounts
> of interpretation, judgement and creativity.
>
> It's a shame that the attempt to find another way of publishing
> academic papers has meant departing not just from a particular
> business model but also from shared and valid notions of quality. This
> is a case of drowning the baby before you throw it out with the bath
> water. I can see that for those whose worldview is based on the rosy
> and unfounded fantasy that the "market" is always right, knows how to
> correct itself, and is the ideal mechanism for settling all questions
> of value, there is no problem here. If the World wants lots of not
> very good articles, and you can charge a minimum of several hundred
> dollars to slap each one on a website, then you have got yourself a
> going concern. But I can't think of a single society or editorial body
> I've ever worked with that would seriously entertain even for a moment
> adopting the editorial philosophy of PLOS One. That would represent a
> betrayal of their academic mission. The idea of publishing
> non-significant articles in non-significant journals would certainly
> not be enough to get me out of bed. I would have to find a way to
> convince myself that I was doing something very different instead.
>
> Michael
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alison Mudditt <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2016 11:05:17 -0800
>
> I hate to point out the obvious, but I think you’re putting two and
> two together here and getting at least five, Michael.  What you have
> highlighted is a clear problem with the standard of at least some peer
> review for PLoS One, which you then extrapolate to a problem with peer
> review across megajournals in general and thus a question about the
> sustainability of this form of OA publishing (if not all OA publishing
> – I’m not quite clear). The conclusion you draw isn’t supported by all
> megajournals at all. And peer review itself is of course an entirely
> separate construct to that of the megajournal – there’s good and bad
> peer review across all journals and plenty of examples of poor or lazy
> “traditional” peer review.
>
> That said, I completely agree that you’ve highlighted a very real
> issue that requires our attention and response, but I suspect that the
> market will sort itself out on this one. There are now many more OA
> publishing options open to researchers, an increasing number of which
> are run by scholarly associations who are very protective of their
> quality brands. Thus if a journal such as PLoS One cannot maintain
> appropriate standards, the community will simply move elsewhere.
> Perhaps the declining number of PLoS One publications signals that
> this is starting to happen.
>
> Alison Mudditt
> Director, University of California Press
> 510-883-8240
> www.ucpress.edu