...I am on the editorial board of an important specialist journal in its field - The Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence. It is a very serious, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal - published, however, by Taylor and Francis, so it is not open access. I don’t understand what the incentive is to continue to have a journal like this published by a for profit publishing company - no one gets paid to write for it, and the peer reviewing is likewise not paid, so it is hard for me to see what the supposed connection is between a for profit publisher and peer review. It’s not that I don’t take peer review seriously - on the contrary, I think it is a far better arrangement than the law journal setup with student editors. But I don’t understand the value added by for profit publishers, especially in light of the value subtracted, by not having the stuff available open access....
Comment. Exactly. TA journals add the value of peer review, but OA journals add the same value without making any subtractions. Here's how I put it in an article from July 2007:
...[A]fter publishers add value through peer review and copy editing they feel financial pressure [from the subscription business model] to subtract value by imposing password barriers, locking files to prevent copying or cutting/pasting, freezing data into images, cutting good articles solely for length, and turning gifts into commodities which may not be further shared....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/16/2008 11:42:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
