From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:48:46 -0700

With open access policy under discussion in the US and the UK, this
might be a good time to ask whether something like the "media
messaging" recommended by the "pit bull of public relations" to
representatives of Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society
in 2006 is underfoot.

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!

Note that the article brings up a very real problem - pseudo
conferences and predatory journals - but falsely equates this with
open access publishing. As Michael Eisen commented on his blogpost,
connecting these operations with PLoS is like blaming NYT for people
who sell fake newspapers door to door.
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1354

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Librarian, academic & open access activist
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com