[open-science] Mike Eisen responds to NYT's anti-open-access story

Wed Apr 10 22:31:08 UTC 2013

Michael's reply is excellent. 

I am wondering whether there is more to this than meets the eye at first. Why single out PLoS as an example? If anything, PLoS was an early leader in competing with the high-end journals like Nature and Science - and now it is the top publishers like Nature that are emulating PLoS ONE.

One possibility is that open access discussions are underway in the UK and the US. In the past, whenever such discussions have taken place it has not been unusual to see highly misleading information appear.

In 2006, representatives from Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society met with "the pit bull of public relations", Eric Dezenhall. The NYT article seems to reflect the kind of strategy employed by Dezenhall.

As reported by Jim Giles in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html

Some of Dezenhall's advice:
"The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles".

The latter suggests the kind of strategy behind the NYT article - paint the open access world as equated with low quality. I wonder if anyone at the NYT would be interested in doing some digging to find out where the ideas for this article came from? This might make for an interesting investigation!

best,

Heather Morrison

On 2013-04-10, at 2:57 PM, Jonathan Dugan wrote:

> 
> http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1354
> 
> 
> :: 'suggesting, as the article does, that scam conferences/journals
> exist because of the rise of open access publishing is ridiculous.'
> 
> and
> 
> :: 'if Gina Kolata and the NYT are really concerned about scams in
> science publishing, they should look into the $10 BILLION DOLLARS of
> largely public money that subscription publishers take in every year
> in return for giving the scientific community access to the 90% of
> papers that are not published in open access journals'
> 
> 
> 
> Original:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Jonathan
> 
> 650 646 5369
> 
> 
> PS (I work for PLOS) Bio on me: http://biocontact.org/jmdugan
> 
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