A couple of posters have interpreted "publish elsewhere" as leading to publishing anarchy. This misstates the situation. There is still scope for review and evaluation of self-published papers (samizdat), and a framework could easily develop to simplify finding work of quality. The underlying issue is whether some papers should be suppressed because of the present system, whether it is because of poor peer review practices or other publishing factors. I still get angry when I think of all the good papers that don't get published because of lack of space, not lack of quality (a major fisheries conference I attended was so successful that many more papers were submitted than the organisers had contracted for with the publisher, so over half of the publishable papers were rejected - this is not sour grapes, mine made it, but I am still outraged).
We have an example in wikipedia, which has quite a bit of crap, but is still a very useful resource. I might comment that I have occasionally referred to papers of mine on the list which were rejected, and in every case I get a batch of e-mails saying that it was a really good paper and I should resubmit it somewhere else. In one case even the reviewer said it was a very good paper which he would distribute to his grad students, but not recommend for publication! No wonder I am down on peer review. Of course if you only want to read peer reviewed journals, you can always get a subscription to the Journal of Creation Research! But this is not just a matter of whether we seek alternatives to peer-reviewed journals. I think that the whole publishing structure needs to be examined and modified. Why should journals impose space limitations in the age of the internet? Why do we even need bound hard copies? The Bergstrom x 2 article recently referenced here points out that the high prices of many journals are a result of business decisions that do not benefit those of us in the field. I think it is time to fight back, and there is no reason why cheap peer-reviewed journals cannot be produced. After all, the reviewers are not paid, and for the journals I have been involved with, only the editor-in-chief gets paid for his work (the rest get free subscriptions, and one journal even tried to avoid that!). Anyway, if you want any of my papers, they are on my website, peer-reviewed or not -- assuming that I can steal a PDF of my own paper! Bill Silvert http://bill.silvert.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne Tyson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:39 PM Subject: SCIENCE Access to information Obstacles Open Source Re: Bill to address science journal publishing > All that is needed is for scientists and other scholars to publish > elsewhere and for review committees and other authoritarians to > recognize work based on merit, not on the journal.
