Read other letters about this article

• Monday, January 29, 2007 01:07 PM

  Trust models and denial of access

  The issue is not peer review and the issue is not profit. One can be confident that the publishers will succeed or fail like any other company when confronted by the (relatively) free market. If the scientific, medical and technical communities perceive a benefit to a certain journal, then it will prosper. If they do not, no Orwellian PR firm or corporate welfare bonanza from vest pocket Senators will save them.

  Peer review is just one example of building and conveying confidence in the fruits of research. There are other trust models, and more are evolving every day on the web. Amazon has user ratings. Ebay places a direct dollar value on the most obscure items. The most fundamental trust model pertaining to journals themselves is not peer review, but rather the citations from other works in a community's literature. Trust ultimately derives from the entire community, not from individual reviewers - these are the true peers. Peer review per se serves simply as the gatekeeper to ensure a minimal level of compliance with the norms of a particular field. Truly revolutionary research often overturns those norms, of course, and may have a hard time getting published.

  The journals have been wrestling with the realities of electronic publication for ten or fifteen years now. Ultimately, the existence of ubiquitous computing, of the web and of cheap digital media will dominate future public policy questions regarding publishing. The final disposition of this issue will lie somewhere between completely open access and completely closed access. Few publishers will find that they have the clout to use the denial of access to their product as leverage to demand payment. Rather, the contravening demand inherent in most types of technical and scientific communities for open access will cause traditional publishers to find ways to provide at least semi-open access to their own publications (and not just to abstracts).

  One suspects that the lobbyists and PR firms will be long gone before the journals reach a new accommodation with the communities they serve (not to mention with the public interest). It is the journals who are squandering their budgets rather than wrestling with the inherent facts of the situation who are suffering here.

  —Rob Seaman
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel