Sally, I don't wish to belabour the point, but I also don't want it
to be missed. I appear to have been too oblique in my original
comment, which may have obscured its relevance to you as well as to
others on this listserv. What I meant to address was your assertion
that you think it is "a fallacy that publishers launch new journals
in order to make money". The link I provided was to a report by Peter
Suber that Elsevier in Australia launched 6 fake biomedical journals
that included "a series of sponsored article publications". Elsevier
declined to name the sponsors, although when this story initially
broke about the first two journals, it was reported that those were
sponsored by Merck. It is quite clear, however, that all 6 journals
were launched solely to make money, basically to provide
"infomercials" written by Elsevier's clients under the guise of
independent, peer-reviewed research results.
More important than addressing your assertion, however, was to bring
this scandal to the attention of the recipients of this listserv,
since these incidents do not appear to have been widely
reported. They strike me as a rather fundamental breach of scientific
integrity and publishing ethics in the sensitive area of public
health that should be of concern to everyone--researchers,
publishers, and the broader public.
Paul
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Sally Morris
Sent: Sun 5/17/2009 4:48 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Kathryn Sutherland's Attack on OA in the THES
Sorry Paul, I don't see the relevance of this to my general response
to a wide-ranging and, IMHO, unfounded comment
Sally
Sally Morris
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
Fax: +44(0)8701 202806
Email: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Uhlir, Paul
Sent: 15 May 2009 22:38
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Kathryn Sutherland's Attack on OA in the THES
Sally, you may wish to reconsider your assumptions and assertions in
light of the following:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/elsevier-confirms-6-fake-journals
-more.html
Paul
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Sally Morris
Sent: Fri 5/15/2009 10:56 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Kathryn Sutherland's Attack on OA in the THES
Tenopir and King found that the average number of articles per
journal was, in fact, increasing steadily. I think it's a fallacy
that publishers launch new journals in order to make money; it is,
surely, more profitable to expand an existing journal (assuming you
can increase the price accordingly)? New journals take years to make
any money, even if they succeed - and not all do
Sally
Sally Morris
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
Fax: +44(0)8701 202806
Email: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 15 May 2009 15:33
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Kathryn Sutherland's Attack on OA in the THES
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Colin Smith at Open University
I've just realised I quoted the wrong day in the email I just sent to
the forum. It should have been Mon 11 May, not Fri. If this reaches
you
in time, please correct it during moderation.
On Mon 11 May 2009 at 09:27 Sally Morris wrote:
While Andrew Adams' letter makes some valid points, I would like to
point out that the number of articles per author has not
changed over
many years (Tenopir and King have excellent data on
this). Thus neither
'publish or perish' nor 'greedy publishers' have
contributed in any way
to the steady growth (not 'explosion') of research
articles - it simply
reflects growth in research funding, and thus number of
researchers."
Even if the number of articles per author has not changed
significantly,
surely the issue here is the number of journals in which those
articles
are published? Is there any data on this? If the steady growth in
articles is being spread thinly across a larger number of titles then
this could be interpreted as evidence for the needless launch of new
journals in a saturated market.
Anecdotally, I seem to come across more and more journals publishing
two
issues in one, presumably because of a lack of copy-flow. Indeed, I
have
worked for at least one publisher where a decision was taken to
exploit
an (unconvincing) niche in the market by launching a new journal,
instead of looking to enhance the editorial content of an existing
title. That journal then struggled for copy, publishing very thin or
joint issues, but generated more income than if the publisher had
accommodated the extra papers by increasing the size or number of
issues
of an (appropriate) existing journal.
Colin Smith
Research Repository Manager
Open Research Online (ORO)
Open University Library
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
http://twitter.com/smithcolin
http://oro.open.ac.uk
Received on Tue May 19 2009 - 13:33:15 BST