Open access and subscription based journals have similar problems in terms of quantity and relaying science to the public | The BMJ

peter.suber's bookmarks 2019-05-26

Summary:

"In the Head to Head debate on whether to publish in an open access journal, Ashton and Beattie report that PLOS One accepts 70% of submissions.1 That might have been true in 2013, but a more recent and perhaps more accurate figure would be that as of 2017 PLOS One accepts about 50% of submissions, which is an equivalent rate to that of BMJ Open.2 I also question whether acceptance rate is a meaningful statistic when research is moving towards a publish first, curate later model.3 Simply not publishing, or batting manuscripts around various journals until one finally accepts it after a lengthy delay, constitutes a form of research waste and is something that ought to be avoided.4

The argument that certain forms of open access encourage higher quantity is also true of subscription based publishing. Predominantly subscription based publishers routinely market their subscriptions to library consortiums on the basis of price per article, the lower the better value. As the price of subscriptions that libraries can afford remains flat, subscription based publishers have an incentive to make their services look better by publishing more to reduce the apparent price per article that a subscription gets you. The publishers then further obfuscate this by bundling together journals full of chaff articles with journals full of higher quality material. But under so called diamond or platinum open access publishing models, in which neither authors nor readers pay to support the publication process, there is no such dangerous incentive to erode professional standards...."

Link:

https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l2248.full

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.objections oa.debates oa.gold oa.no-fee oa.business_models oa.big_deals oa.prices oa.quality oa.incentives oa.journals oa.fees

Date tagged:

05/26/2019, 15:13

Date published:

05/26/2019, 11:13