"Science is advanced by scientific publication. These changes in publishing will affect the future of science profoundly."
Yes it will, and yes there are and will be problems. However science is fubar without open publishing. Its the future. There are not absolute reasons why open access has to be any less rigorous. Even with open access there will be rankings depending on quality. A journal that publishes rubbish regularly will still go under, as no scientist of worth will publish there, and credible scientists wont read it.
Publishing problems are a bottleneck in science. They actually slow the scientific process, and worse than that they slow public participation in science at a time when its very important that the public be scientific literate. This is especially true due to failure to publish negative results and replication studies. Online open access publishing is a much better means to publish less spectacular but still very important research.
Simon, you are quite right that the conventional publishing is not necessarily publishing quality, especially in medicine, and as part of medicine psychiatry and psychology probably have the worst track record. That special issue was saying the things I have been seeing more and more since January when I started investigating these issues, and I found it very welcome. At least many in psychology are aware of the issues and trying to address them ... if they succeed then psychology might be able to advance enough to get a solid footing in the sciences. Mind you I think this applies to biopsychiatry, and probably social psychiatry, and discliplines like cognitive science. I am not sure it applies to psycho-psychiatry. I am leaning more and more to the view that its reached its used by date. Its already long past its best before date.
Bye, Alex