Open Access

The question I have from the discussion today: Gideon Burton noted that peer review is one bottle neck in getting knowledge from scholars to the public. How can we further promote the distribution of available open access materials from peer-reviewed journals while maintaining quality?

Personal Experience: During law school, I was a member of the BYU Law Review’s Editorial Board. My position required me to review professional submissions and select what the journal would publish and what it would not. I had to open a new, separate e-mail account simply to manage all of the submissions we received. Even if that position would have been full-time and even if I had not required sleep, food, etc. during law school (which some of my classmates did not seem to require by the way), I could not likely have read the entirety of each submission. We accepted and published a spoonful of the lake of articles we received.

We justified the limited number of articles we published because of (1) restraints on the number of editors who could prepare the article for publication; (2) the cost of printing the journal; and (3) we only wanted high-quality articles associated with the BYU name. While we have largely overcome the second hurdle by publishing the journal online (we still print off copies for the library), I wonder how to increase publication of available knowledge while maintaining quality of information.

Random Note: Gideon Burton mentioned "Dance Your PhD" on YouTube. I looked at a few selections. Genius.... :)