[open-science] Crucially overlooked Ebola research article is paywalled at... Elsevier

Wed Apr 15 11:45:49 UTC 2015

You have to advocate before you perform a study. The two are apples and
oranges, the latter is way more resource intensive, even though it will be
helpful.

Research can also be easily and willfully ignored by publishers and
funders. Like it or not, "lobbying" will happen from both sides of any
argument, and that's what OA advocates have been doing. Pretty good
progress so far I'd say. Yes, the EC *now* has an OA unit. But how did that
come about? Why are they bothering to create one now, after years of
"lobbying" from both sides?

Of course now we've gone this far (and now that there is a lot of OA
research available, and big (inter)national funders have mandated OA), such
a study would *be very useful*, but the "lobbying" will continue.

This Ebola article is a perfect example. How'd you know it wasn't
"discovered" by loads of people in Eastern Europe, Turkey, the far east,
who could have then built on it and submitted work to high-vis journals,
but who gave up when they saw the payment requirement? A lot of scholars in
said areas don't have Western HEI access to research, that's why they're
significant doaj.org users.

We can speculate in either direction, as you can see in the previous
paragraph. Ross and PMR are hypothesising in one specific direction.
There's nothing to prevent publishers from doing the opposite. So, what
they're doing is not "wrong", and it should (and will) be done alongside
more rigorous scientific work.

You're spot on about OA's credibility problems, but I don't think the right
approach (as of now) is to stop advocating (which, yes, requires far less
evidence than a study and is almost entirely opinion-based). A lot of
advocates are full-time scholars in other fields, not OA effectiveness and
science communication, they might have significant trouble getting funding
and time to do this properly. That doesn't mean they can't have an opinion.

Greetings,
Emanuil

On 15 April 2015 at 12:12, Paweł Szczęsny <ps at pawelszczesny.org> wrote:

> Ross and others,
>
> As this happens again, I will reiterate my previous arguments:
>
> 1. You have no hard data showing that "closed access kills". The whole
> Ebola story is more like "search failure", "no liberian scientists
> were coauthors", etc than "closed access" per se (the article you cite
> is easy to find using Google Scholar). Unless you factor other things
> in, back it by rigorous research, the statement is unscientific.
>
> 2. Lots of people around the world are working hard on introduction of
> science-based policies into the way governments are run. Sometimes
> it's working - for example, Europan Comission's unit on Open Access
> has an evidence-based protocol in use to assess the real impact of OA
> (at least that's what I was told).
>
> 3. By repeating unscientific statements, you are making the community
> fragile to publishers' lobbyist (and any other that has a need to
> attack science) that can state to governmental officials: "Look, these
> scientists cannot even make a proper study on impact of closed access.
> The truth is that ... ".
>
> 4. It undermines the credibility of research community. Credibility
> that I think is needed to advance both open science, and science-based
> policy making as a whole.
>
> Please, stop. Or better, make a research showing that "closed access
> kills". I believe that indeed there's an effect to measure and show
> (although that it smaller than other factors), but that doesn't mean I
> can use my "belief" as an argument in public debate.
>
> Best wishes,
> PS
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I hope you've all read the interesting piece in the New York Times last
> week
> > about global & local knowledge of Ebola being hampered in part by
> paywalls
> > and publisher-imposed restrictions:
> >
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html
> >
> > What I've only just learnt is where the crucial paper is - PMR & the
> > ContentMine team struggled to find it ourselves!
> >
> > The paper containing crucial, overlooked knowledge, hidden behind a
> paywall
> > is for sale at Elsevier for $31.50 + tax:
> >
> > Knobloch, J., Albiez, E. J., and Schmitz, H. 1982. A serological survey
> on
> > viral haemorrhagic fevers in liberia. Annales de l'Institut Pasteur /
> > Virologie 133:125-128.
> > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0769261782800282
> >
> > Peter Murray-Rust has said before that "Closed Access Kills". This may be
> > another reasonably concrete example.
> >
> > :(
> >
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