Barry Wellman wrote:
1. Evil senior professors have more -- rather than less -- scope to publish where they want. So they don't have a vested interest in squelching journals. I don't think somewhat paranoid discussion about what evil senior professors want and do helps analysis.
I think that's right. People with established reputations have low switching costs. Young academics may feel forced to go the traditional route.
2. Printing and mailing costs are not the only costs of journals.
Very true, and I think we can think seriously about a wide variety of ways that technology can radically alter the cost structure of high quality journal production in ways beyond simply doing away with printing and mailing costs.
3. The real problem is readers need filtering. Not eveyone wants to read everything. Journals serve as a filtering mechanism. Sometimes they make mistakes, but as a frequent editor, I am usually gladdened by the rough consensus among reviewers. As someone who has solicited pieces from all-comers and then filtered for publication, I know how much is not ready for prime time. Do you, as a reader, want to wade through this? I am not talking about genre, theory, qual vs quant, or stuff like that. I am talking about quality level.
4. Refereeing also serves a mentoring function. Not everyone was lucky enough to be mentored at a good university by a caring advisor or three. Moreover, I've had the experience of turning down a paper written by someone at a great university. "How dare you?" they basically asked. We explained why, and with luck, they learned something. One of the unsung benefits of refereeing is having some folks take a careful look at what you wrote and give you feedback
I don't think the question of open access has anything at all to do with eliminating either filtering or mentoring. Why should it?
5. I was at a conference last week at which a frequent blogger was often quoted as the authority, although I think this blogger has had at most one refereed article published. "Have you checked on the validity of [this blogger's] assertions?" I asked. "Well now, we just assumed," was the answer. Is this any way to build a discipline?
Is ignoring someone because they don't adhere to the antiquated rituals any way to build a discipline?
6. So the real question is Open What?
If you don't know the definitions of what open access means, perhaps you should go learn about it.
JCMC avoids printing and mailing, but is still a refereed journal -- of high quality. That is quite different than the anything goes model. Of course, there are variations in that. I tend to put on my web page serious conference papers and even recently, developed ppts. One of my mentors, by contrast, will only put up articles a decent interval after they have been published. "I like to know that I am right when I go public with something."
7. I'd love to see more journals and other venues. But the day a journal abandons the refereeing process, is probably the day I will stop reading it.
It's sad that the open access movement has not yet done a good enough job in educating people. Because obviously you have absolutely zero concept of what we are talking about. --Jimbo