From: "Armbruster, Chris" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:26:23 +0000 The assumption that OAP entails cost reduction efforts that must affect quality strikes me as not thought out very well. As Joe's post demonstrates, OAP makes it easy to post comments that are then viewed by a large audience. This is embarrassing - not just for the journal but equally so for the author. You could therefore argue that because in OAP the author is much more easily and widely embarrassed if factual errors are not spotted, OA publishers must and will tighten quality control. Author will push them to do so, because else they will go to another journal. An additional factor supporting this assumption is the appearance of megajournals, because this makes the publishing outlet much easier to replace (from the author's point-of-view). I am not saying that this alternative assumption necessarily describes what will happen. But I think it is high time that educated commentators begin developing alternative assumptions (arguments) that are (equally) plausible and start testing them. Else commentators are just venting their prejudices, for which N=1 seems sufficient. Chris Armbruster ________________________________________ On 2/17/13 8:55 AM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 05:21:55 -0600 I have been sitting in a conference this weekend in which one of the principal topics has been the future of peer review. So it was with surprise and consternation that I happened to see the abstract to an article in PLoS ONE: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056178 The article covers a study of how people read ebooks. And there, in the very first sentence of the abstract, is a simple factual error. The abstract states that ebooks outsell print books in the U.S. and UK. Not true. Ebooks outsell print at Amazon, but the book biz is far bigger then Amazon, three to five times bigger, depending on who's counting. Is this a problem of peer review? A problem of insufficient copy-editing? A copy editor would have fact-checked that item, but copy-editing is one of those things that is being cut back or even eliminated to reduce costs for Gold OA services. The problem is structural: Gold OA requires lower costs because the burden of paying for the work rests with the producer instead of being spread across all the readers. Gold OA, in other words, structurally requires lower editorial standards. Much of the time we may not care about that, but then you stumble on one simple error and begin to reflect on the entire enterprise. Joe Esposito