Re: Interview with Vitek Tracz

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 15:47:56 +0100

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Richard Poynder wrote:

> I will in the near future be interviewing the Chairman of Current Science
> Group Vitek Tracz for Information Today
> (http://www.infotoday.com/it/default.shtml). The interview will cover
> Vitek's various businesses, but will be particularly focused on BioMed
> Central and Vitek's role in Open Access publishing. It will also aim to
> explore his views on associated issues such as self-archiving.
>
> If anyone would like to suggest questions they would like me to put to
> Vitek, or issues/topics they would like me to raise with him, please feel
> free to e-mail me directly.

Here are 2 (publicized, so VT can reflect on possible replies in advance!):

(1) Is the reason BMC is so mute on OA self-archiving -- treating it as if
it were merely the archival-preservation function for OA journal articles,
rather than as the alternative way to make non-OA journal articles OA --
that BMC feels promoting self-archiving might weaken the rationale for
submitting articles to a BMC journal?

(2) Would BMC continue to be interested in OA publishing if its only
product/service were to be peer-review service-provision/certification
(i.e., just conducting peer review and then tagging its outcome with
the journal name), with all other former journal-publication functions
-- text generation, copy-editing, revision, mark-up, access-provision,
archiving -- offloaded onto the authors and their institutions?

Stevan Harnad

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Received on Sat Sep 11 2004 - 15:47:56 BST

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