How important is the value added by the Publisher (and this is not an open access versus non-open access journal debate)? While the peer review process is certainly not without its failings, to any Publisher or Editor worth their salt, the integrity of the peer review process is paramount. To quote a previous blog post on this site, an author of a CMRO article on receiving his peer review comments said "I have never received 58 referee comments on a manuscript less than 3000 words long, but the referees' comments and the revision definitely improved the paper." An author of a recent paper submitted to Expert Opinion on Medical Diagnostics fed back "a comment about the reviewers: it was clear that they read the manuscript carefully. Regardless of whether they agreed with some of our arguments, their comments reflected readers that thought about what they read. This is how peer review is supposed to work. Excellent reviewer selection on your part, and a thorough job on theirs." Aside from assisting the author in critically reviewing their work and ultimately leading to a better paper, without the peer review process how do we ensure no dangerously inaccurate information is published that is indistinguishable from high calibre scientific research?
And it’s not just in the peer review that value is added by the Publisher. Who checks references are cited correctly and terms are not misspelled - will the institutions running their own open access repositories employ copyeditors? Who will ensure the figures are legible and of good quality – will the institutions employ production editors who lay the work out in such a way that it is easy on the eye and doesn’t give readers a headache? Will there be any independent quality check before the research is published? With a limitless amount of potentially unqualified freely available literature, how will the busy physician who only has 5 minutes in his/her day to digest the most important findings even know where to start? These are just a few of the questions that would need to be answered.
Ok, I’m playing devil’s advocate a little here. I do not envisage a world where the peer-reviewed journal ceases to exist, but the open access model of publishing is widely debated, both in terms of quality and sustainability. So what is the future of publishing? Even if the open access, pay to publish model is viable in the long term, does the scientific community agree to paying to publish all of their work in the future, rather than pay to read the work of others? The fact is, publishing a journal is a costly business and the money has to come from somewhere. Publishers are accused of placing scientific research behind ‘commercial barriers’, but surely the same argument could be applied to the pay to publish model. Is it fair that only authors with funding can afford to have it published? Will this lead to a bias in the literature towards sponsored research, not even so much through the choices of the Editor, but through the fact that only authors who can pay can publish? Or is there an alternative, free to publish, free to read, sustainable model for open access publishing that still maintains high standards of peer review and editorial quality?
While Publishers undoubtedly need to take steps to ensure the advancement of science through the widest possible dissemination of research, with respect to the whole principal of open access, how do we do this for free? Surely someone, somewhere has to pay something?
In summary:
- How important is value added by the Publisher?
- How will high calibre research be distinguished?
- How will the reader filter the wealth of freely available literature?
- Does the scientific community want to pay to publish all of their work in the future?
- Could this lead to bias in the literature?
- What if the pay to publish model doesn't work?
- Is there an alternative, free to publish, free to read, sustainable model for open access publishing that still maintains high standards of peer review and editorial quality?
By Anna Heinink, Publisher, Expert Opinion
Informa Pharmaceutical Science’s policy on NIH-funded research can be found here http://www.informapharmascience.com/page/resources/authors#nihfundedresearch
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