We have focused this week
on scholarly publishing. The old and the
new. The traditional and the Open
Access. I think that my major learning point this week is that publishers do a
lot more than just publish.
1.
They register – and time stamp to officially
note who submitted scientific results first
2.
they certificate through peer-to-peer reviews,
3.
they disseminate scholarly articles
4.
And they preserve them for posterity.
Elsevier – one of the world’s largest scholarly publishers
employs and/or supports thousands of people – editors and staff, editorial board members and 300,00 referees
and 600,000 authors
Then we have ‘predatory publishers’ emanating from the third
world, disrupting and corrupting the business – although I suspect the
predatory publishers can be quite easily identified.
We also learned about the peer review process. The complexities, the differences between
blind, double blind and ‘OPR’ (Open Peer Review). We also learned that the peer review process,
which is considered an essential element of ensuring quality of scholarly
publications, doesn’t work very well at the best of times.
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