Open Access In Geoscience – Selva Marroquín
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-05-01
Summary:
"There are far more open access journals in the geosciences than I was expecting. I found a long list of open access journals on the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) website. Most of them are small sort of obscure regional journals, so I chose the one I felt would most relate to the specific branch of geology that I do, the journal Biogeosciences. Their website states that they are ‘An interactive open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union.’ This journal is interesting for having a different publication process than I’ve ever seen.
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Their website outlines their publication process in two stages. In the first stage, the editor approves any papers that pass a quick inspection and papers are published on their website Biogeosciences Discussion (BGD) right away. Once posted to the website they are open for public discussion (8 weeks), this is where referees’ can comment on the paper, other members of the scientific community can comment, and the authors are able to respond. All of this is compiled and published in BGD. The second stage occurs after the peer-review of stage one, where the editors decide whether to accept the paper at which point it must be revised and finally published in Biogeosciecnes (BG). Both the discussion in BGD and ultimate paper in BG are cataloged, archived, and citable.
Initially I was very skeptical of this process and I wondered how the editors would screen the online comments to only consider those from reputable sources. After reading through their publication process I actually think this is a novel way of getting a more thorough screening of scientific papers. The one concern I have is who is commenting on these papers…? It’s hard enough to get academics to peer review papers that come to their email inbox. How are they getting the scientific community to dedicate their time to commenting on these papers and providing feedback? I’m just thinking of any early faculty member and I don’t see them spending their hours on this website commenting on papers."