The humanities and open access publishing

A recent report from the National Humanities Alliance reports that:

Even learned-society publishers in the humanities and social sciences may be taken aback by just how expensive it is to publish an article in their fields. It cost an average of $9,994 in 2007 to publish an article in one of the eight journals analyzed, compared with an average of $2,670 for STM journal articles.

Makes me wonder how I manage to publish Information Research on a budget of zero!

Anonymous posts

I've removed a couple of anonymous posts from the 'Twitter' posting. I post openly and it seems to me only right that any commentator should do likewise.

Checking out Twitter

I've stayed away from Twitter, as I stay away from most of these so-called "Web 2.0" developments - they seem to offer huge amounts of scope for maximum time-wasting. However, I'm always curious as to what things like this are used for, so I joined Facebook for a few days, found nothing of interest to me and never used it again. However, you don't have to use Twitter to find out how it is used. And it bears out my worst imaginings.

Consider Stephen Fry, for example, hugely self-satisfied individual, whose TV appearances become more and more boring - here's something that would fit nicely into Private Eye's "Pseud" column:

"Just chatted with Clive Anderson in Proms interval. Lebecq sisters caused much delight with a Poulenc piece."

Or, Britney Spears (who she?):

"Just had dinner with my boys at the Eiffel Tower. So beautiful! -Britney"

John Cleese: "I like collective nouns... Like a spread of sticklebacks... an array of objects... or my favorite for politicians - a waste of time."

Neil Gaiman (surely he should know better?): "Am backstage at the fire festival. Things are flaming and festive."

These are from the Times Online article on the fifty most popular "celebs" on Twitter. Why on earth would anyone want to know these things?

Librarians, of course, are eager to get in on the act, as a way of publicising their activities, but I wonder how many people are likely to follow the thoughts of whoever is inputting the information from Little Hicksville Public Library? Perhaps this is all a sign that although technology has not led to the increase in leisure time that was anticipated fifty years ago, it has led to leisure time being incorporated into work time, since most of this stuff will be consumed when people are supposed to be working - just as e-mailing friends, Web searching, Facebook dwelling and even online gaming have been incorporated into work time. Now there's an interesting theory worth exploring - assuming that you could drag people away from their twittering long enough to interview them!

Bentham follow-up

Happily, the editor of The Open Access Information Science Journal, Bambang Parmanto, of the University of Pittsburgh has resigned - I wonder how long it will take the other Editorial Board members to do so? Tellingly, Dr. Parmato commented that he never saw the hoax manuscript and an Editorial Board member of another Bentham journal, who has also resigned, said that in his time on the Board he had never received a paper for review. Peter Suber comments: "In April, Marie-Paule Pileni, editor in chief of Bentham's Open Chemical Physics Journal, resigned when the journal published a 9/11 conspiracy-theory paper without her knowledge or approval."

It's a strange scholarly publishing activity where editors don't see what is to be published and where board members don't get papers to review. One wonders whether the term 'scholarly' should be used at all!

Dr Parmanto also commented, in respect of the author pays business model: "I see that [Bentham would] have the incentive to maintain the credibility of the journal, but I also see the potential for abuse."

Exactly.

Author pays, publisher profits & science loses?

Peter Suber reports on the successful submission of a hoax paper to the Bentham Science, The Open Information Science Journal, which claims to have peer-review. Last year Bentham Science announced about 200 new OA journals, all using author charges and, of course, the aim is to maximise profits. It does make one wonder, however, how far other more reputable publishers may be prepared to go in maximising profits and raises a question about the whole idea of OA based on author charging.

Readers of this blog will be well aware of my feelings on the subject: money spent to support corporate shareholders and executive bonuses should be spent, instead, on establishing really open journals, like Information Research. No money changes hands in any direction as far as publication or access are concerned: strict and strong peer review is applied because I don't need to fill pages. The only thing that counts is the quality of the content.

Any other process is flawed: author charging will encourage corruption, and 'toll access' puts money in the wrong place. Some day the policy makers are going to understand this, it's just a pity that it is a long time coming!

When this particular journal was announced several friends of mine and I were approached to be members of the Editorial Board - we conferred and we all declined. I trust that those who accepted the invitation will now resign - although I must admit that the names of only six of the Board members are known to me.

The missing link and open access

The Guardian newspaper had a number of items on the discovery of Ida - the 'missing link' in the evolution of primates. An interesting piece from one of them was this:

There will be some raised eyebrows in the scientific establishment that Hurum did not opt to publish the scientific description of Ida in either Science or Nature, widely regarded as the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world. Instead he and his team chose for PLoS ONE, an online open-access journal that does not charge people to read its papers.
Hurum said the main reason was to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to read the paper. "I'm paid by the tax payers of Norway to do this research. I'm not paid by Nature or Science and still they charge money for other people to read my scientific results," he says. "This fossil really is part of our history, truly a fossil that's a world heritage. A find like this is something for all human kind."

Now, wouldn't it be a good idea for all scientists to take note of Jørn Hurum's stand?
Here's the paper.

Jargon and the Local Government Association

Finally, someone in local government (no such wisdom in central government yet!) has decided that the unthinking use of jargon is not a good idea. The Local Government Association has come up with a list of words that it thinks ought not to be used.

Wonderful! Among the words are some of my pet hates, such as 'stakeholder' - which actually means someone who holds the money for parties to a wager - the LGA suggests 'other organizations' will do, but I think that there are alternatives, depending upon what is actually meant - assuming, of course, that the writer has something particular in mind when using the term. 'Typology' gets kicked out, with the comment, 'Why use at all?' - but 'classification' will serve just as well.

'Why use at all?' is attached to many terms, e.g., Mainstreaming, Management capacity, Network model, Overarching, Pathfinder, Peer challenge, Performance Network, Pooled risk and more. No doubt the managers in local government are now desperately trying to find copy-editors to peruse their texts to eliminate these and other words.

But what happens if nothing is left? :-)