From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:48:33 -0600

I've visited the web site and can find no list of the 100 reviewers
anywhere on it. There is a list of the "Editorial Team" consisting of
14 members, only two of whom are based in the U.S., one of them being
the overall "Editor," William Martin Modrow, who is a Rare Books  &
Manuscripts Librarian at Florida State, who has an MA in history and
MLIS, both from that university:
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/about/faculty/profiles/ModrowB.html--a rather
odd choice, I'd say, to be the editor of a journal covering all of the
social sciences, which are outside his listed fields of expertise.
The other U.S. scholar on the "Team" is one Monroe Friedman, an
emeritus professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University, known
mainly for his work on consumer behavior.

Over the years as an editor in the social sciences (covering every
field except psychology) for 45 years, I have never come across the
names of any of the 14 members of this "Editorial Team." Moreover, the
description of the editorial peer-review process makes it clear that
each manuscript is assigned to one member of the "Editorial Board"
(which may or may not be different from the aforementioned "Editorial
Team") who, in most cases, do the peer review themselves and make the
final decisions, occasionally consulting with an expert not on the
Board. What Mr. Scott says about one of the key goals being speed of
dissemination is hardly reassuring about the quality of the
peer-review process. He boasts that it takes just weeks, instead of
months, suggesting to me, at least, that the reviews conducted are
pretty superficial. I wonder if Mr. Scott would care to share with us
a sample reader's report on an accepted manuscript, removing the name
of the reviewer (though the site also says that the Editorial Board
members's name always appears when the article is published)?

Sandy Thatcher



At 8:23 PM -0500 12/18/12, LIBLICENSE wrote:
> From: Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:20:16 +0000
>
> If any Liblicense members would like to know more about us, there is plenty
> of information on the website or you can read an article that was published
> recently in Insights, the journal of UKSG. To access, visit our homepage
> (www.socialsciencesdirectory.com) and scroll down the page below the main
> picture to follow the link.
>
> One of our key goals is dissemination - can we speed up the time to
> publication and will people then use the content? The answer to both is Yes:
> our peer review process takes weeks, rather than months or years; and in the
> three months since publication our COUNTER-compliant statistics show there
> have been over 3,300 downloads.
>
> Dan Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2012 22:38:16 -0500
>
> On 2012-12-16, at 4:07 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> From: Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:11:53 +0000
>>
>> A correction: as the press release and our editorial policy make clear,
>
>  >we carry out a full peer review. We also have over 100 registered
>  >referees.
>
> The editors of SSD appear to be a former Emerald publisher
> (http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dan-scott/10/b31/903) and a special collections
> librarian (http://guides.lib.fsu.edu/profile.php?uid=12572), not
> researchers.
>
> The only issue the journal has so far published has 5 papers published by
> the former publisher, which mainly appear to be marketing literature for the
> journal itself, and a short number of journals published by the journal's
> editorial board. Only two papers appear to be from outside the small group
> that run the journal.
>
> Submissions and peer-reviewers are recruited as follows:
> http://www.socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/article/view/32/6
> 9
>
> "Please support us in our efforts. We need submissions and we need
> volunteers to review them in their areas of expertise. Both can be done by
> registering with Social Sciences Directory as a User."
>
> University of Nottingham policy-makers are encouraged to read more about
> SSD: http://www.socialsciencesdirectory.com/index.php/socscidir/index
>
> and then to ask themselves:
>
> (1) Is this what U. Nottingham means by peer review?
>
> (2) Is this how U. Nottingham would assess whether there is a niche or need
> for a new peer-reviewed journal?
>
> (3) Is this how U. Nottingham would have assessed journal quality in
> deciding whether to subscribe to it?
>
> (4) Does U. Nottingham consider that journals should be selected (by
> authors, subscribers, or "members") on the basis of their economic model
> rather than their quality?
>
> Stevan Harnad