From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 20:50:14 -0500

I am a great admirer of the work of Andrew Odlyzko and have even
recently recommended some of his papers to someone who is putting
together a "greatest hits" collection on scholarly communications. (I
only recommended 4 people.)  But I simply do not agree with his view
of the editorial process.

First of all, editing is not just copy-editing.  Copy-editing is of
uncertain merit, at least to me.  Mark Kurtz's post on this thread
pretty much sums up my own view, so I won't restate it here.  The more
significant editorial decisions are, first,  in choosing the editor of
a journal.  This could be called a publishing decision rather than an
editorial one, but it certainly has a great impact on the final
product.  The second is what could be called "the personality of the
publisher."  This is hard to explain to people who have not seen this
in action, but it is fundamental to traditional publishing.  That
personality is what makes an editor accept or reject a piece because
it, well, just feels right to do so.  Editors, that is, are not just
looking or what is good as opposed to what is bad but are interested
in the direction that certain materials are taking.  Those who believe
that personality is "subjective" (as though that were a bad thing)
don't appreciate that scholarship, including in the sciences, is moved
forward as much by the force of an individual's will as it is by its
"correctness."  There are many things to be correct about, but why
choose one direction over another?  Thus the editorial process not
only reviews material but also helps to set the agenda for the domains
it covers.  (This of course is highly unwelcome in some circles.)
Finally, the editorial process helps to shape material (more true of
books than for journals), which is a great service to readers.  Peer
review is subordinate to these other editorial functions.

I should add (having just read Anthony Watkinson's and Ken Masters'
posts) that I am not asserting that traditional publishing is good and
that Gold OA is bad.  Nor am I suggesting that everything that goes
into a traditional journal is of high quality or that the traditional
publishers somehow or other have attained the moral high ground.
There are scoundrels everywhere.  In terms of my own professional
activity, I spend more time on OA services than on traditional ones.
If you are looking for an apologist for traditional publishing, you
will have to look elsewhere.  I am making a simple assertion, that the
need to drive down costs in Gold OA publishing is likely to have an
impact on the kind of editorial attention that OA materials receive
pre-publication.  You can argue that that attention is unnecessary (I
chuckled at Mark's example of the use of the "series [sic] comma"),
that post-publication review in the form of readers' comments is of
equal or greater value, and that the merits of openness outweigh
whatever is lost of the traditional editorial process.  But I don't
think you can argue that the editorial review, across all OA
publications, of the same kind as in the traditional model.  Note the
gap between the $5,000 revenue per article in Andrew Odlyzko's recent
paper and the $1,250 fee for articles in PLoS ONE.  That's a big gap
to close and editorial activity must contribute to part of it.

The number of Gold OA services is exploding.  I hear of about two new
ones each week.  We have a living laboratory here from which we will
be able to make judgments in a few years.  I am happy to wait.

A last technical point:  Ken Masters notes that some traditional
publishers have OA options and asks whether that means that standards
are lower.  No, it does not.  OA options for traditional publications
represent a "two-sided economy," in which revenue received from
libraries is supplemented by revenue from authors.  There is no
financial pressure to cut editorial activity in these situations.

Joe Esposito


On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 3:33 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Andrew Odlyzko <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 23:25:51 -0600
>
> That is a very questionable claim (that "lower editorial standards are
> part of the basic architecture of Gold OA").
>
> First of all, let's not confuse editorial standards, which are enforced
> primarily by the unpaid editors and referees, who are research experts,
> and copyediting standards, which are enforced primarily by paid employees
> of the publishers.
>
> Copyediting standards have been (as far as I can tell, based on my personal
> experience) declining just about everywhere, part of the general cost reduction
> pressures.  I can even see it, fairly dramatically, at the New York Times.
> This thread has been exclusively about copyediting standards, it seems.
> [As I explained in my recent paper:
>
> http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/libpubcomp.pdf,
>
> I do not see too much value in modern levels of copy editing, but I know
> I am an outlier, even among my closest colleagues and collaborators.]
>
> Editorial standards are a different matter.  There the editors (and to
> some extent referees, although those do not have the same degree of
> involvement with the journal) continue to have an incentive to maintain
> standards, and this does not depend much on whether the journal is Green OA,
> Gold OA, or traditional subscription.  (At least that is how I feel about
> the dozen+ journals I am on the editorial boards of, and how my editor
> colleagues that I have talked to feel.)  However, having rigid page budgets
> helps maintain the discipline, in that there are lots of papers that are at
> the fuzzy boundary of acceptability, and so if there is space, the inclination
> is to accept.  The publishers can make yielding to such temptation easier,
> by removing those page budgets, something that is easier to do with online-only
> publishing.  So yes, there might be an incentive to lower editorial standards
> with Gold OA.  But the same incentive already exists with subscriptions
> "Big Deals."  There the unit of selection is not a journal whose editors
> might want to maintain their high standards and prestige, but a huge bundle,
> and the incentives are to make the bundle as large as possible, as opposed
> to making a few tiny pieces of it ultra high quality.  So my guess is that
> the incentives to lower editorial standards with Gold OA are no different
> than they are with traditional subscriptions, now that those are mostly
> parts of "Big Deals."
>
> Andrew Odlyzko
>
> ------------------------------
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:54:08 -0500
>
> I think that many of the commenters on this thread are missing the
> point. The point is not that mistakes happen.  The point is not that
> you can find mistakes even in traditionally published work.  And the
> point is not that you can find errors in Gold OA publications (as I
> did).  The point is that lower editorial standards are part of the
> basic architecture of Gold OA.  That's a fundamental shift.  We don't
> know where it will lead, but when you build a road, don't you get the
> urge to ask where you are driving?
>
> Joe Esposito