Le samedi 14 mai 2011 à 20:17 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca> wrote:
> I am not talking about replacing the peer review process. I am talking about > either complementing it with another system, or re-aiming the peer review > process on publishing processes that rely on the repositories rather than > the journals. Complementing peer review is fine, but the complement that's really urgent (and already long overdue) is OA. Indeed, and to get OA, you need some incentives. Creating complementary and alternative forms of value around repositories (including OA journals) will help. Just as getting mandates is helping. Getting a consortium of repositories to take over peer review means getting them to take over journal publishing. Good luck. Again, let us not confuse everything. If repositories complement the evaluation of already published articles, but with different emphases, and different objectives (quality rather than competition-based excellence, for example), this is not publishing, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. If repositories begin to accept articles whose peer review they organize themselves, then, indeed, it is publishing. Obviously, a credible peer review has to rest on more than one institution. This is the reason behind recommending the formation of repository networks, preferably across national boundaries. I would see the second hypothesis gradually evolving out of the first one. (But why? So far we haven't been very successful yet at getting most authors to provide OA to their published journal articles either by depositing them in their repositories or by submitting them to OA journals...) The lack of success may well be due to the fact that the present modes of evaluation, especially when used in the context of tenure and promotion processes, do not seem generally to lead to the conclusion that OA is really useful to one's career. Like Stevan, I truly believe there is an OA advantage measured by impact, but, alas, this conclusion has not penetrated the collective consciousness of scientists. My conclusion: let us work all together on all possible and credible hypotheses that can help OA, including, of course, the quest for mandates. Jean-Claude Guédon Stevan Harnad
