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