Although a semi-outsider, I find the debate between Henderson and Rouse fascinating, less for its contextual implications than for the character of the argumentation itself. Let me first delcare two interests. First, I work in the same library system as Ken Rouse; second, my field is history and therefore well outside (whew!)some of the arguments being made.
Still, one does not need to be in the STM stable to recognize the pointlessness of arguing respective "quality" here. Let's face it, even the scientists would be unable to determine an "objective" set of criteria to determine inherent "quality" and then to find an equally objective method to apply it and finally to disseminate it. So, why bother? We have no choice in this instance then but to call "quality" a wash. The question then becomes, if none of the antagonists can demonstrate that they publish better quality materials than the others, why does one party (guess who?) charge so much more for roughly the same merchandise. It almost induces one to think of the word "monopoly," doesn't it? And it is just here of course the other Q word comes into play. While not one usually to sing the praises of quantification, here it can legitimately serve as a tie-breaker. This, I gather, is the burr that abrades certain parties in the dispute. Regardless of the "bias" of Prof. Barschall, several courts at least have shown that his quantitative methodology is sound. After all, we all recognize that the Chicago Cubs' announcers are Cub-friendly, and this might affect their read on various things. But it hardly affects onfield play. In other words, bias is not necessarily a fatal flaw. If it were, we all would "know" even less than skeptics imagine we know. Even an outsider can only be amused by Henderson's attempt to portray the terms of the debate as those of "class struggle." And the outsider might be tempted to laugh out loud at the notion that the downtrodden commercial publishers represent the underclass, or, in terms of "class struggle," the proletariat. Desperately frivolous statements like this can only have the effect of destroying whatever credibility there might otherwise be in a given argument. Personally, I think it is much too kind to argue (per Rouse) that the commercial publishers altruistically stepped in when they perceived a failure of nerve on the part of academic publishers. To be sure, they were quicker off the mark, more attuned to the spoor of the dollar, but it is a matter of blaming scholarly organizations (and not just those in STM) for shortsightedness. It is time to correct the prescription by seeking aggressively to recapture what the scholarly community gave up without a struggle so many years ago. Henderson notes that "[c]ommercial publishers . . . attracted many editors and authors of the highest quality." What is missing from his formulation are the reasons for this. Could we have more details? 1099 forms? Finally, Henderson speaks of the "embarassment [sic]" that scholarly organizations must have felt at the inability to keep pace with the demands of the publish-or-perish system. Maybe they did--or maybe they just hoped to stem the tide of more and more about less and less.
