If someone says that OA publishing is strictly incompatible with high-editorial standards, then a single exception should dispel that argument. But no one here is making such a categorical statement.

Shieber is making a market argument based on the general trend of two regression lines.

Since his dataset is only composed of journals with article influence scores, he eliminates the possibility of even deriving a reverse conclusion. If we were to find evidence of a vanity press market, it should be in those journals that charge authors but have no scholarly influence.

I agree that zero price may work differently than a non-zero price.

My main argument is that Shieber systematically ignored two major journal groups in his analysis:
1) zero-priced journals with no article influence scores, and
2) non-zero priced journals with no article influence scores

These two groups make up 98% of the OA journal market (as represented in the DOAJ) and are ignored in Shieber’s analysis.

But more importantly, if we are to look for evidence of a vanity press market, we should be looking at the uncited journals, not at the journals that have built prestige (like PLoS Biology).

This is like looking at the incomes of Bill Gates and his friends and declaring that there is no evidence of poverty in the United States.

1a) Yes, Shieber plots two lines (one which includes zero-price journals and one which excludes them). Remember, however, that he is is missing two other kinds of journals: 1a) zero-priced journals with no article impact score, and 2) non-zero priced journals with no article impact score. These two excluded groups make up a full 98% of the DOAJ. To reiterate one of my points, Shieber cannot make a statement about the general OA market based on his data.

1b) Yes, Shieber makes an argument about profit-motive related to pricing (something that Stuart Taylor (comment #3)critiques as “nonsensical”). If you look at Shieber’s dataset, you will note that profit status is not a variable nor does he include it in his analysis.

2) No, my principle argument is that Shieber cannot derive his conclusions (that vanity publishing is not a dominant model) from his data because of 1) a flawed economic model, and 2) a biased dataset.

Sincerely,
Phil

What I said was:
“the high ranking of Open Access journals from BioMed Central, PLoS and other OA publishers in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Report has largely silenced those critics who originally suggested that Open Access would not be *compatible* with high editorial standards”

[emphasis added]

Clearly, there are large numbers of titles in existence (some closed access, some open access) which do not have high editorial standards.

The only point I am trying to make is that BMC and PLoS (and many other high quality OA journal publishers) demonstrate that there is no *incompatibility* between author-side fees and high editorial quality. This seems rather uncontroversial, especially given that many traditional subscription journals also charge author-side fees of various kinds.

You don’t have to agree with everything Chris Anderson writes ( http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free ) to realize that free is *not* “a price like any other”. Yes, free is a price. But in most fundamental respects free is a price totally unlike any other. The economics of something which is priced as “free” are very different from the economics of something that is priced at, even, say, $0.01.

And so if you are seeking to come up with an equation to link price to some other factor, then excluding free makes a lot of sense, as an equation which accurately links a finite positive price to that factor is unlikely to extend accurately to the case of something being free.

1a) Shieber does make a distinction between 0-price publishers and others. There are two lines in the plot. The blue one doesn’t include 0-price publishers.

1b) Also his analysis is explicit about the profit motive. It starts: “A profit-maximizing open-access journal can only increase revenues [...]”

2) Shiebers point was to show that there is a correlation between price and impact. Your argument seems to be more like “if you pay more, you’ll get more glittery paper” – (publisher price, publisher service quality) which seems to need something more to be relevant to Sheibers point.

But Shiebers conclusion is so unsurprising that I don’t know why you bother quibble with it: Vanity journal *domination* is not occurring, nor is it likely to occur, among OA journals.

Best
Anders

1) Shieber does not make the distinction between commercial and non-profit journals. He only plots those journals that have article influence scores. Likewise, his economic model that predicts a negative correlation does not make a distinction based on profit/non-profit. Perhaps, as you argue, he should have.

2) I’m not sure I understand your question. If the publishers that select and publish high-quality articles also tend to provide high-quality production services, then we should see the same positive relationship between article influence and article processing fees.

1) “Without including all the data, we have no idea of what the entire market is doing.” – But “including all the data” is exactly the mistake. Because then you will include data from outside the market. Eg. you will include grant based not-for-profit publishers and society journals. If some publishers don’t publish for profit, they are simply not in the same market as vanity publishers.

2) “The real driver of scientific impact is content.” – I think so too. But with that in mind, I don’t think your comment about publishing cost and quality of publisher service, can be applied to Shiebers graph. Right?

Best,
Anders

1. Zero is a price just like any other price. In the trade book market (Shieber’s comparison), there are publishers who charge zero prices to authors, as well as a negative prices (author royalties). Without including all the data, we have no idea of what the entire market is doing.

2. If I understand the first part of your question, author publication charges should have some positive relationship with production quality in a business model where total costs only include fixed — but not marginal — costs.

I think there is (and should be) a strong correlation between quality of publisher services and scientific impact, although the correlation may be associative and not causal. The real driver of scientific impact is content.

1. Why do you want to include OA journals that charge no author fees in this analysis? If they charge no author fees how can they ever fit any definition of “vanity press”?

2. Shiebers graph is “impact” vs. author price. You make an argument about the relation of the quality of publisher services against the fixed cost of those services. Why is that relevant to Shiebers graph? How strong do you think the correlation between quality of publisher services and scientific impact is?

Best
Anders