Monday 20 February 2012

Open Access Journals

In response to that post, a quick comment about open access journals. I do not think they are the solution to everything but I think it is good to have some competition on the publication market. And not just always the same big players, like Elsevier, Springer, ACS.

Elsevier has apparently recently been criticized.

Aside from that I do not like the fact that I seem to publish everything for the American Chemical Society. Not only that my English girlfriend frowns everytime I write "neighbor" or "analyze". But I am appalled by their disgracefully unprofessional "exclusive invitation letter" everyone of us gets about once every month (I don't understand why they think it makes sense to do that).

I do think that the big publication companies play an important role in science. And they surely have the know-how and infrastructure to produce quality publications. But just as I sometimes like to buy fruit at the local market, rather than the big super market, I think it makes sense to consider alternative journals as part of a healthy science world. And in fact if I see PLoS publications or arXiv links in someone's publication list, I already think of that person as dynamic and open-minded.

3 comments:

Jan Jensen said...

"I do think that the big publication companies play an important role in science."

The problem is when they actively try to retard science in the name of profit, such as when they support the Research Work Act.

"And they surely have the know-how and infrastructure to produce quality publications".

But in the age of the internet, what function do they really serve? They can make the paper look pretty, and they provide secretarial support for the review process. Everything else is done by us.

Felix said...

i just wanted to say something nice, after I complained so much about the ACS letters ...

I do not know how easy or difficult it is to manage a quality review process. but there is definitely a lot of potential for innovation. and it is a good idea to look for alternative publication means

Open Access Journals said...

Jan H jensen i'll agree with you in that the big publication companies plays a very big role of profit gaining in publication process as they'll ask regarding the author processing fee and etc.