Open Access: credit where credit is due | @GrrlScientist | Science | guardian.co.uk
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-10-29
Summary:
Now, being technically good isn't good enough if you want to be a successful scientist... If your paper is rejected by that journal, then you move down the reputational ladder. Because open access works better when it ignores one aspect of quality, these journals will tend to be lower in the repuational hierarchy (it's worth noting that although Public Library of Science -- PLoS -- have journals like PLoS Biology and PLoS Genetics that use importance as a criterion for acceptance, these journals are not themselves financially viable: they have to be supported by PLoS One). This is creating a structure with high impact journals at the top and middle tiers of science publishing, with open access journals acting as buckets, catching anything that is allowed to fall through after having been deemed not important enough. The traditional publishers have, of course, noticed all of this. A couple of years ago Springer bought out the open access publisherBioMedCentral, and now both Elsevier and Wiley are launching a range of open access journals. I have been keeping a bit more of an eye on Wiley ... Wiley also publishes several other journals in this subject area so they have a "Manuscript Transfer Program": if one of the other journals in the programme rejects a paper, they can suggest it be transferred to Ecology and Evolution. The reviewers' comments are also automatically transferred, so the manuscript can be judged quickly, and the process of re-submission and re-evaluation is thus sped up. One of the effects of this programme may be to encourage researchers to tie manuscripts to a single publisher if it becomes easier to shuffle a manuscript between journals in one publishing stable rather than sending it to another journal (this, presumably, is what Wiley are hoping will happen: they want to take away PLOS One's market share by making it easier to publish in a journal with a similar profile)..."