Open Journals ( last time, really )

Clinical (archive)
1

I wonder if the avaible technology says it is time to shift the paradigm and to post articles to wikis FOR PEER REVIEW… FWIW: Quasi-tangentially, I just saw a PR on the theme that OpenClinica is launching a wiki at http://www.openclinica.org/dokuwiki/

Thanks for everyone’s patience on this thread.

Ed

OJS is for example used by the open-access electronic Journal of Health Informatics (eJHI, http://www.ejhi.net) with quite good experiences. However, one problem you don’t tackle with this is the problem that a thorough peer-review process takes quite a bit of time, even if subsequent publishing after acceptance can be faster than with conventional journals. My personal view is that both ad-hoc (email discussion lists, wikis etc) and peer-reviewed content in journals (preferably, but not necessarily open-access) are needed.

Sebastian

2

Ed Dodds wrote:

I wonder if the avaible technology says it is time to shift the paradigm
and to post articles to wikis FOR PEER REVIEW...

An new open access journal, PLoS ONE (see http://www.plosone.org )
offers a rapid, traditional (albeit fully online, no paper) peer-review
process together with the ability for readers to annotate and comment on
papers after they are published. It has only just started but is
attracting quality papers, in part because it is a sister publication
tot he PLoS (Public Library of Science) stable of open access journals
(see http://www.plos.org ), which are really excellent. All of these
journals charge author fees, as does BioMed Central (see
http://www.biomedcentral.com ) as a means of covering costs without
having to resort to too much advertising.

An alternative model is that used in the physical sciences, in which
draft papers and manuscripts are self-published online, without
peer-review, on sites like arXiv.org (see http://www.arxiv.org/ ), where
others can comment on the papers. Authors may then submit the papers are
they are refined to peer-reviewed conferences or journals. Excellent system.

Of course the biomedical open access journals, and in fact many of the
traditional closed-access biomedical journals, if you read their fine
print, allow authors to self-publish pre-prints and manuscripts on Web
sites for initial review. It is just that there is no tradition of doing
so in the biomedical sciences, unlike the physical sciences.

Tim C

3

The British Medical Journal, which was the first paper
medical journal made freely available online, has
allowed this for several years with success.

Putting up ones paper for comment before publication
may worry many authors as it can be "stolen". When the
number of publications are given so much importance in
ones CV, this problem remains real.

nandalal

4

Nandalal Gunaratne wrote:

--- Tim Churches <tchur@optushome.com.au> wrote:

Ed Dodds wrote:

I wonder if the avaible technology says it is time

to shift the paradigm

and to post articles to wikis FOR PEER REVIEW...

An new open access journal, PLoS ONE (see
http://www.plosone.org )
offers a rapid, traditional (albeit fully online, no
paper) peer-review
process together with the ability for readers to
annotate and comment on
papers after they are published.

The British Medical Journal, which was the first paper
medical journal made freely available online, has
allowed this for several years with success.

The BMJ permits "Rapid Responses" which are like the traditional
"Letters to the Editor" but are published more quickly, and online only,
and are linked to the article or paper to which they refer.

PloSone also provides for such comments on papers but goes one step
further (quoting from
http://www.plosone.org/static/commentGuidelines.action#annotation ):

<begin quote>
"How to Create and View Annotations
To make an Annotation, first make sure you are logged into PLoS ONE.
Then, highlight the text to be annotated, and then click the "Add your
annotation" link in the right-hand navigation menu. Enter the title and
text for the annotation, and when you are satisfied, click "Post" to
attach the Annotation to the manuscript. Any correctly formed URLs in
Annotations automatically will become working links.
Notes:
    * Annotations can be started at any point within the text, but for
ease of reading we ask that you do not begin Annotations in the middle
of words.
    * We advise that longer Annotations are first written in a
word-processing program that allows for spell checking before they are
copied and pasted into PLoS ONE.

Annotations are represented by the small blue "bugs" within the online
text. The number in the bug indicates the number of Annotations that
begin at that point in the text. To see what selection of text is
associated with an Annotation, run the cursor over the bug, and the text
will be transiently highlighted. Click on the bug to view the title,
date, contributor, and first 250 text characters of an Annotation. For
Annotations longer than 250 characters, click the "View/respond to this"
link to view the full text. "
</end quote>

Putting up ones paper for comment before publication
may worry many authors as it can be "stolen". When the
number of publications are given so much importance in
ones CV, this problem remains real.

Really? Do you have any data to support this assertion? Are there many
(or any) documented cases of this actually occurring in the biomedical
domain due to online self-publication of manuscripts for comment? Or are
these just unfounded fears?

Tim C

5

Nandalal Gunaratne wrote:
> --- Tim Churches <tchur@optushome.com.au> wrote:
>> Ed Dodds wrote:
> Putting up ones paper for comment before
publication
> may worry many authors as it can be "stolen". When
the
> number of publications are given so much
importance in
> ones CV, this problem remains real.

Really? Do you have any data to support this
assertion? Are there many
(or any) documented cases of this actually occurring
in the biomedical
domain due to online self-publication of manuscripts
for comment? Or are
these just unfounded fears?

Unfounded fears, most likely. While it is not my
personal view, this is likely to bother some of those
who publish.

I am not talking of the bio-medical domain alone.

Nandalal

Tim C
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6

Nandalal Gunaratne wrote:

7

Tim,

Is this OK?

I do not know why this is happening with your mails!

Please let me know if the problem persists.

Nandalal

Nandalal Gunaratne wrote:

Nandalal,

An open request: could you please check your email
client as it is
repeatedly making it look like your replies have
been written and posted
by me. While I respect your views, I do not share
them and do not wish
them to be inadvertantly attributed to me.

Thanks,

Tim C
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