Comments on Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Professor Carlos Brebb...

Thank you for your comment. As I pointed out on yo...

2008-03-11T09:18:00.000Z

Thank you for your comment. As I pointed out on your blog, I do not believe that scholarly publishers can be trusted to self-regulate. Were they capable of doing so the research community would not have been so blighted by the serials crisis for all these years.

The problem is compounded by the nature of the scholarly communications market, which appears not to be susceptible to traditional market forces. And it is not clear to me that (in the short-term at least) OA publishing will change the nature of that market in any fundamental way -- since peer review remains a bottleneck.

For that reason, I believe what is needed is an organisation with a wider mandate, and one that represents the interests of all those within the OA community. An Open Access Foundation perhaps?

So while I would support the formation of an Association of OA Publishers, I am sceptical that it would be enough.

I've read this interview with interest. I have to ...

2008-03-11T03:31:00.000Z

I've read this interview with interest. I have to say that I find little objectionable in this editor/publisher asking an author whether his institution can subscribe, especially if it ends up to be cheaper for the author. That's my personal opinion.
But if anything, then this case too shows that there is a need for industry self-regulation (much as in other industries), i.e. some sort of Association of OA Publishers - for profit or non-profit - who sets standards and codes of conducts [1].

Reference
1. Eysenbach, Gunther. Black sheep among Open Access Journals and Publishers (see comments). Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog. 2008-03-08.
http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-sheep-among-open-access-journals.html. Accessed: 2008-03-10. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5WEKJ714T)