Would Gold OA Publishing Fees Compromise Peer-Reviewed Journal Quality?

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SUMMARY: Some authors today no doubt try to buy their way into fee-based Gold OA journals, and some Gold OA journals that are short on authors no doubt lower their quality standards to win authors. But something very similar is already true of the lower-end subscription-based journals that prevail today, and this will continue to be true of lower-end journals if and when Gold OA becomes universal. The demand for quality, however, (by [some] authors, referees and users) will ensure that the existing journal quality hierarchy continues to exist, regardless of the cost-recovery model (whether user-institution subscription fees or author-institution peer-review fees). The high-quality authors will still want to publish in high-quality rather than low-quality journals, and journals will still need to strive to generate track-records as high-quality journals -- not just (1) to attract the high-quality authors and work, but (2) to retain the high-quality peer-reviewers and (3) to retain users. Usage will in turn be (4) openly tracked by rich OA impact metrics, which will complement peer perceptions of the journal's (and author's) track record for quality.

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It is likely that some fee-based Gold OA journals today (while Gold OA publishing is the minority route, in competition with conventional subscription-based publishing, rather than universal) are in some cases compromising the rigor of peer review and hence the quality of the article and journal. However, journals have always differed in quality and rigor of peer review, and researchers have always known which were the high and low quality journals, based on the journals' (open!) track-records for quality.

If and when Gold OA publishing should ever becomes universal (for example, if and when universal Green OA self-archiving should ever put an end to the demand for the subscription version, thereby making subscriptions unsustainable and forcing a conversion to fee-based Gold OA publishing) then the very same research community standards and practices that today favor those subscription journals who have the track records for the highest quality standards will continue to ensure the same standards for the highest quality journals: The high-quality authors will still want to publish in high-quality rather than low-quality journals, and journals will still need to strive to generate track-records as high-quality journals -- not just (1) in order to attract the high-quality authors and work, but (2) in order to retain the high-quality peer-reviewers (who, after all, do their work voluntarily, not for a fee, and not in order to generate journal revenue, and who will not referee if their advice is ignored for the sake of generating more journal revenue, making journal quality low) as well as (3) in order to retain users (who, although they no longer need to subscribe in order to access the journal, will still be influenced by the quality of the journal in what they choose to access and use). Usage will in turn be (4) openly tracked by rich OA impact metrics, which will complement peer perceptions of the journal's (and author's) track record for quality. This will again influence author choice of journals.

So, in sum: Some authors today no doubt try to buy their way into fee-based Gold OA journals, and some Gold OA journals short on authors no doubt lower their quality standards to win authors. But something very similar is already true of the lower-end subscription-based journals that prevail today, and this will continue to be true of lower-end journals if and when Gold OA becomes universal. The demand for quality, however, (by [some] authors, referees and users) will ensure that the existing journal quality hierarchy continues to exist, regardless of the cost-recovery model (whether user-institution subscription fees or author-institution peer-review fees).

Moreover, the author, user and institutional demand for the canonical print edition is still strong today, and unlikely to be made unsustainable by authors' free final, refereed drafts any time soon, even as Green OA mandates gradually make them universal. And there are already, among Gold OA journals, high-end journals like the PLoS journals, that are maintaining the highest peer-review standards despite the fact that they need paying authors. So quality still trumps price, for authors as well as publishers, on the high-quality end. Not to mention that as more and more of traditional publishing functions (access-provision, archiving) are offloaded onto the growing worldwide network of Green OA Institutional Repositories, the price of publishing will shrink. (I think the cost of peer review alone will be about $200, especially if a submission fee of, say, $50, creditable toward the publishing fee if the paper is accepted, is levied on all submissions, to discourage low-probability nuisance submissions and to distribute the costs of peer review across all submissions, rejected as well as accepted.)

(I also think that the idea of paying referees for their services (though it may have a few things to recommend it) is a nonstarter, especially at this historic point. It would (i) raise rather than lower publication costs; the payment (ii) could never be made high enough to really compensate referees' for their time and efforts; and referee payment too is (iii) open to abuse: If authors will pay to publish lower quality work, and journals will lower standards to get those author payments, then referees can certainly lower their standards to get those referee payments too! And that's true even if referee names are made publicly known, just as author-names and journal-names a publicly known) In short, universal OA, and the negligibly low costs of implementing classical peer review, would moot all that.)