Self-Perpetuating Misinformation About Open Access Self-Archiving

Theodorou, R (2010) OA Repositories: the Researchers' Point of View Journal of Electronic Publishing 13 (3) DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0013.304

"[H]ow often do researchers... choose to publish in an OA journal or institutional repository? How trustworthy do they consider those journals and repositories? Would they prefer that OA repositories be more selective?"

If we keep asking researchers the wrong question we will keep getting the wrong answer:

(1) Publishing an article in an OA journal is one thing ("Gold OA"). Publishing an article in a subscription journal and making it OA by self-archiving it in an OA institutional repository is another ("Green OA"). Conflating the two is sowing confusion. Depositing a refereed, published paper in an institutional repository is not an alternative form of "publication"; it is a way of providing OA to refereed, published articles.

(2) To talk about institutions and institutional repositories needing to "referee" already-refereed journal articles is therefore to build non-sequiturs upon non-sequiturs.

(3) A journal is as good as its peer-review standards, no better, no worse, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with its cost-recovery model -- subscription or OA. It depends purely on its quality-control standards. (Since a track-record for quality-control standards must be established across time, older journals will -- rightly -- be trusted sooner than new ones; this too has nothing to do with OA.)

Surveys should not simply chronicle ignorance and misinformation: they should try to dispel it, both in the way they ask their questions and in the way they report and interpret their responses.

"This research examined how researchers view OA publications, and whether they want a more strict method of evaluation for scientific information published through OA repositories."

The underlying logic here is alas comparable to solemnly inquiring whether respondents have or or have not stopped beating their spouses! If one plays into a false assumption one is inevitably fed back the same tune one has sung:

When refereed journal articles are deposited in institutional repositories it is a way to maximize access to them, not an alternative way of publishing them. They have already been "evaluated" by the journal that accepted them for publication. Researchers need to be told that fact, rather that just rehearsing, broadcasting, and thereby reinforcing their ignorance of it.

"This research is trying to determine why acceptance and growth of open access, particularly open access repositories, has been so slow."

A worthy goal -- but not likely to be reached if the study simply echoes and compounds the very misinformation that has been slowing down OA growth, rather than debunking it.

"The majority of the participants in this survey have, at some point, used OA publications as readers, although not all of them seem to trust them as much as they trust traditional subscription journals."

A downright self-contradiction -- if the question was about refereed articles published in traditional subscription journals and made OA by depositing them in an institutional repository. And a non-sequitur if the question was about OA journals, interpreted as an answer about institutional repositories. Or completely irrelevant if it was a question about depositing unrefereed, unpublished papers in institutional repositories (which is definitely not what OA is about: OA is about freeing access to peer-reviewed research, not about freeing research from peer review).

"The vast majority of the participants said they would welcome more strict acceptance procedures for institutional repositories. This would enhance their trust and they would feel much more inclined to submit their works for publication."

Again, this is just compounding misunderstandings, since the target of the OA movement is refereed, published research, not unrefereed content. And what is missing today is not "strict acceptance procedures" for deposits to repositories (repositories don't "accept": journals accept; repositories simply provide access to refereed, accepted work); what is missing is the deposits themselves. And the remedy for that is already known too: deposit mandates (not re-refereeing of refereed content!).

Stevan Harnad

EnablingOpenScholarship