From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 19:46:27 -0600

Mike refers in his article to just "scientific communication" but
presumably would also limit the label of "full open access" only to
journals in the humanities and social sciences that use the CC-BY
license. Mike tells us that encouraging translation into foreign
languages is one of the benefits of full OA. But this claim gives rise
to the question of whether scholarly communication is well served by
any translation, whatever its quality. I think it is reasonable to
wonder whether that is the case.

Communication in the sciences is often done in the universal language
of mathematics, where questions of accuracy of translation do not
arise.  This may make science less dependent on quality of translation
for communicating meaning. But that is hardly the situation for the
humanities and social sciences where poor translations can give rise
to misinterpretations.  And if a poor translation is the first to be
done, will its existence deter others from providing a better
translation? The CC-BY license takes away from authors any ability to
control the quality of translations.  Do they really want to be left
defenseless against poor translations?

One other possible downside of CC-BY is that predatory OA publishers
have the opportunity to republish articles for which other publishers
have arranged for peer review and benefit, like leeches, from the
value that others have added while contributing nothing of their own.
Do we really want to support that kind of bad behavior?

Sandy Thatcher


From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 09:30:22 +0000
An exciting development in science publishing, particularly in
non-biomedical areas.

To build on Mike's comment, it will indeed be important for this new
journal to embrace the optimal legal tools for content it publishes
and which its papers describe. This means not just CC-BY for papers
but also public domain (CC0 or equivalent) for data. This enables
maximum reuse potential and is in accordance with open data
principles. And had been adopted by some publishers/journals already -
F1000Research, BioMed Central.

I was also interested to see that the policy of accepting
scientifically sound articles for publication --ignoring, I assume,
perceived impact and importance -- and used by journals like PLOS One,
F1000Resesrch, BMC Series and many others has some new, succinct
terminology in "objective peer review". Although one could argue (and,
disclosure, has argued
http://blog.f1000.com/2013/10/10/peer-review-subjective/) that peer
review is something of a subjective process.

Best regards,

Iain

Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
Outreach Director, Faculty of 1000


-------- Original message --------
From: Michael Carroll <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 10:04:52 -0500

Very exciting news Marianne!  Many forward-looking features in the
description of the new publication, but no mention of copyright.  I
hope that when you say it will be an "open access" journal, the
Society means for it to be a fully open access journal and will
publish under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license for these
reasons.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001210

[Disclosures: I serve on the Boards of Creative Commons and the Public
Library of Science.]

All the best,
Mike

Michael W. Carroll
Professor of Law and Director,
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
American University Washington College of Law
Washington, D.C. 20016

********

From: "Haska, Marianne" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 16:39:20 +0000

[MOD. NOTE:  A little different from the "usual" such journals.]


Apologies for cross-posting

------------------------------

World's first scientific publisher launches new open access journal

Royal Society Open Science will publish on the basis of objective peer review

The Royal Society has announced the launch of Royal Society Open
Science, a new open access journal publishing original research across
the entire range of science on the basis of objective peer review.

Royal Society Open Science will be the first of the Royal Society's
journals to cover the entire range of science and mathematics. It will
provide a scalable publishing service, allowing the Society to publish
all the high quality work it receives without the restrictions on
scope, length or impact imposed by traditional journals. The cascade
model will allow the Royal Society to make more efficient use of the
precious resource of peer review and reduce the duplication of effort
in needlessly repeated reviews of the same article.

The journal will have a number of distinguishing features:

* objective peer review (publishing all articles which are
scientifically sound, leaving any judgement of importance or potential
impact to the reader)

* it will offer open peer review as an option

* articles will embody open data principles

* each article will have a suite of article level metrics and
encourage post-publication comments

* the Editorial team will consist entirely of practicing scientist and
draw upon the expertise of the Royal Society's Fellowship

* in addition to direct submissions, it will accept articles referred
from other Royal Society journals

Royal Society Open Science welcomes the submission of all high quality
science including articles which may usually be difficult to publish
elsewhere, for example, those that include negative findings. The
journal will launch officially later in 2014 and will cover life
sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering and computer
science.

On March 6th 2015 the Royal Society will mark the 350th anniversary of
the launch of Philosophical Transactions.  Sir Paul Nurse, President
of the Royal Society, said:

"Philosophical Transactions was the first journal dedicated to
scientific endeavour and introduced the concepts of scientific
priority and peer review. Today more than 20,000 scientific journals
around the world are based on these two key principles and it is
difficult to imagine a research process functioning without them. The
publishing model is continually evolving and it's important that the
Royal Society's own journal offerings do so too. We are delighted to
be publishing this exciting new journal. We hope that Royal Society
Open Science demonstrates our continued support for open access
publishing and a commitment to publishing research that benefits
science and humanity."

NOTES FOR EDITORS
For further information contact:
Nicola Kane
Press and Public Relations
The Royal Society, London
Tel: 020 7451 2508
E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>


Marianne Haska
Institutional Open Access Consultant
The Royal Society
[log in to unmask]