The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on.
The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its "journal-like" identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that "journal". As a result, an article could be associated with several "journals", but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each "journal" could repackage the articles it "owns" to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pains of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large linguistic groups. Then further refinements can appear such as translations of the "best" papers in the main trade languages of the world (e.g. English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). In this fashion, the globalization of HSS studies could begin in earnest. Of course, there are many devils lurking in many detail crannies, but some good thinking should allow overcome most if not all of them. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 18 janvier 2013 à 12:29 -0500, Omega Alpha|Open Access a écrit : > If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and > social sciences <http://wp.me/p20y83-BF> > > The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group > promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly > prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group > proposed the formation of an online public library "that would provide the > full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in > medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, > interlinked form." ... > > Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social > sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities > scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is > correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, > and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable > article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly > communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of > providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone > who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be > able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a > pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from > monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared > multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per > article costs low. ... > > Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in > English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall > back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent "Starting an Open > Access Journal: a step-by-step guide." The tweet linked to a post on his blog > soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for > the Humanities and Social Sciences. … > > Gary F. Daught > Omega Alpha | Open Access > <http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com> > oa.openaccess at gmail dot com > @OAopenaccess > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal
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