Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 15:44:20 +0100

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Christopher D. Green wrote:

> Page charges like those levied by PLoS and BMC will never be accepted in
> psychology, which is now among the largest of all academic disciplines
> (Amer. Psych. Assoc. -- ...the largest of several major
> psych. societies -- has some 150,000 members/affiliates and publishes
> nearly 50 journals). Stevan disagrees with me about this -- never say
> "never," he says.

Never say never. In the meanwhile, if you can't find a suitable
open-access journal to publish in (or don't want to have to pay any
publishing charges), continue to publish in the journal of your choice --
and self-archive!
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt

> institutional membership is, IMHO, the way to go. Otherwise, the vast
> majority of authors (who don't really care about this issue one way or
> another) will simply continue to send their work to traditional journals
> that charge them nothing to publish and whose issues they can pick off
> the library shelves (apparently) for free.

Fine. But don't keep losing daily research impact while waiting for the
day when all journals become open-access journals, funded by institutional
charges: Make your articles openly accessible by self-archiving them
right now.

And if you want to know why you need to care about whether or not your
work is open-access, see these:

    Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003)
    Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint
    Archives: Improving the UK Research Assessment
    Exercise whilst making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne 35.
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Ariadne-RAE.htm

    Harnad, S. (2003) Maximising Research Impact Through Self-Archiving.
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/che.htm

    Harnad, S. (2003) Self-Archive Unto Others as Ye Would Have Them
    Self-Archive Unto You. The Australian Higher Education Supplement.
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/unto-others.html

    Harnad, S. (2003) Measuring and Maximising UK Research
    Impact. Times Higher Education Supplement. Friday, June 6 2003.
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/thes.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):

    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
                            or
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Received on Tue Jul 22 2003 - 15:44:20 BST

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