No Such Thing As "Provostial Publishing"

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 19:07:41 -0400

There is no such thing as "provostial publishing". There is
only�peer-reviewed�publishing and non-peer-reviewed publishing. And
the peer review itself can vary in rigor and selectivity: The quality
standards and track records of journals differ.


Journals also differ in whether or not they make their articles
accessible for free online. If they do, this is called�Gold Open
Access (OA) Publishing. Otherwise it is ordinary, non-OA publishing.


Non-OA publishers differ in whether or not they give their "green
light" to authors to make their own articles OA (accessible free
online) by�self-archiving�them in their Institutional Repositories.
When articles have been made OA by their authors through
self-archiving, this is called�Green OA.


If provosts�mandate�that their authors self-archive their published
articles, that too is called Green OA -- but not Green OA publishing,
of course, because it is the journal that publishes and the author
merely self-archives, to provide (Green) OA to his own article.


The author may also self-archive articles published in
non-peer-reviewed journals; this too is access-provision, not
publication. The publisher is again the non-peer-reviewed journal
that published the articles.


The author can also self-archive unpublished papers. Legally
speaking, this counts as "publishing," but of course in an academic
("publish or perish") CV the author cannot list such a paper as
"published" (let alone as peer-reviewed). It is listed (and cited) as
"unpublished."


In all of this, there is no such a thing as "provostial publishing"
-- though�provosts�whomandate�self-archiving might perhaps be
honored, by calling this "provostial access-provision" (though the
author does the keystrokes)...


Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Wed Jun 04 2008 - 00:10:29 BST