[Tccc] Research without Walls
Jakob Eriksson
jakob
Sat Oct 22 14:10:59 EDT 2011
On Oct 22, 2011, at 12:52 PM, <L.Wood at surrey.ac.uk> wrote:
> Peer review is not visible; quality control can be skipped (and often is, in some venues.) Peer review is not the issue. Submittal is the issue.
>
> Constrain input by not pledging not to submit in the first place as an author, and you'll have more effect. That's a visible impact.
This is a good point. I can see both sides of this argument. Below is what "Research without Walls" has to say about it on their about page. I feel it addresses your point well---a personal pledge not to submit would be much more difficult to make, due to our obligations to our students.
"The pledge does not require you to withhold submissions from these venues. Many signatories will be faculty members who are ethically bound to ensure their students submit to the venues most likely to benefit the students' careers. By shifting their program committee and board associations, faculty can help make open-access venues more attractive.
Furthermore, committing not to submit to a conference or journal is far less likely to create change. There will always be a long line of authors who want to get papers accepted into conferences and journals that are on their institutions (often dated) list of prestigious publications. Whereas withholding submissions will have little impact on conferences and journals, the departure of even a few prestigious program committee members or editorial board members can make a venue signfiicantly less attractive to both potential authors and readers. The same social pressures that make a program committee or editorial board attractive to join can be used to shift researchers to favor open-access publication venues.
With all that in consideration, we hope that signatories consider open-access publication venues whenever possible and encourage others to do so. If you are early in your career and rely on publishign a prestigious venues to build your reputation, consider talking to those who will be evaluating your future academic record to gauge how supportive they would be if you were to aim your publications at open-source venues that may not currently be on your institutions currently list of top-tier publication venues."
Jakob Eriksson
Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
phone: (312)77-JAKOB
851 S Morgan (M/C 152), Room 1120 SEO, Chicago, IL 60607-7053
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