I know that this has moved on but I do want to contribute my own hobby horse. Please forgive me. To my mind what is even more significant is the fact that Smits did not consult the representative bodies for researchers: learned societies and associations. He did not. He admitted as much at APE earlier this year. They are quite easy to find. Most disciplines have a European level body usually representing national entities. Most of them also have publishing arms.
Anthony
From: "Jan Erik Frantsvåg" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:52:30 +0000
My reading is that this is targeted at creating distrust of the process by implying collaboration beyond what is acceptable, between Smits and Frontiers. I notice, following the links in Rick Anderson’s post following yours, a lot of “seems” that indicate this is – presently – just speculation.
A survey of all communication between Smits and other central Plan S people, and publishers, would be more interesting. But it may not show anything making blogging worthwhile? Were Elsevier, Springer/BMC, PLOS, MDPI, Hindawi and other larger publishers really left out of the conversation – against their will?
To me, the major problem with Plan S is that Smits et al. obviously has a view of scholarly publishing as being done nearly solely by major commercial companies, forgetting all the small-scale publishing being done – OA or TA. The final requirements, fortunately, took into account some of the criticism made. But the small and/or non-commercial publishers of OA journals will still face problems, so will current TA publishers.
So, yes, more consolidation will probably be the result. If that means making the bigger bigger, that is lamentable. But if it means making the smaller less small, I think it could be a good thing.
Jan Erik Frantsvåg
[SNIP]