From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:32:44 +0000

Joe, beyond your one anecdote do you have any evidence to support the
contention that the average level of copy editing in OA journals is
lower than the average level of copy editing in subsription-based
journals?  Or, if little or no copy-editing is a matter of policy do
you have evidence that for those publishers that have both OA and
subscription journals they, on average, copy-edit articles more
rigorously for the subscription journals?

David



On 19 Feb 2013, at 15:35, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:06:13 -0500
>
> What is an OA issue is that no or little copy-editing is a matter of
> policy.  That is a big change.
>
> I'm ambivalent about this question.  Some copy-editing is silly (the
> regularization of footnote form).  I think, though, that traditional
> publishing puts greater weight on editorial refinement than do OA
> services.  The question is whether people will insist on that
> refinement and are willing to pay for it.  But even if they say it's
> not worth it (as many are), the decline in refinement is real.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:06 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:59:59 +0000
>>
>> Between 10 and 20 years ago I worked for two large journal publishers.
>> One a massive commercial publisher, the other a prestigious
>> university press.
>>
>> In neither of these organisations would copy-editors routinely
>> fact-check the articles they were working on, and the type of issue
>> that Joe has highlighted would not have been picked up.  I know that
>> it is tempting to view this as a failing of the APC OA business model,
>> but it really isn't.  The vast majority of publishers have been
>> striving to push-down costs, including costs for copyediting and
>> proof-reading.  I'm sure we all have our own lists of favourite
>> publishing errors (mine is a photo clearly upside-down in an article
>> put out by the aforementioned massive commercial publisher that made
>> it past the proof-reader), but let's not pretend this is necessarily
>> an OA issue.
>>
>> David Prosser