From: Richard Smith-Unna <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 05:16:41 -0500

Hi Tom,

I am the person who posted the original document about fake DOIs
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uTVHPI8r4VO31KihsyiBHsh_gp8jZ38fMvP5nP5XOkw/).

Every single claim you make above is demonstrably false.

You said:

> Wiley does not use fake DOIs.

Wiley does have fake DOIs on its website. I have attached a
screenshot, and I refer you to this blog post:

https://go-to-hellman.blogspot.co.ke/2016/06/wileys-fake-journal-of-constructive.html

To claim otherwise is creatively redefining 'fake DOI'. What you're
doing is polluting the web with things that are designed to match the
pattern of real, Crossref registered DOIs, but which are in fact
designed to trigger access restriction.

In addition to creating fake DOIs, the blog post linked shows that
Wiley is creating fake articles attributed to real institutions.

> We strongly support the DOI system and were a founding member of CrossRef

Goeff Bilder at Crossref has explicitly said
(https://twitter.com/gbilder/status/736979917720702977) that Crossref
discourages the behaviour you have exhibited. So whether you claim to
support them or not, they don't support what you are doing.

> What was contained in the document were URLs

The URLs in my original post were constructed by me using the pattern
I observed on Wiley's site to reach a PDF directly from a Wiley DOI.
That is, "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/" + DOI + "/pdf". I found
those DOIs in the wild and tried to resolve them via Wiley's website,
as explained in the first link.

> These URLs are not discoverable online, they cannot be indexed

Here's one being indexed on Google:
https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=Constructive+Metaphysics+in+Theories+of+Continental+Drift&cad=h.

> ... and will not have an impact on the DOI system

The entire problem is that they *are* having an impact. If academics
in the course of their work find an apparent Wiley DOI and try to
visit the corresponding page, then find their institution blocked,
that is a very serious and damaging impact.

> Only individual IP addresses were affected, no institutions were banned from accessing Wiley content

After I initially visited the URLs corresponding to the fake DOIs in
the first link, several departments and a separate institute at
Cambridge were blocked from visiting Wiley, including open access
titles. The block lasted at least a week.

> All access has now been restored and clicking on those links will no longer disable access.

Here's a thread on Twitter demonstrating this to be false:

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/745860745611591680

> The URLs are a security measure visible only to Wiley and our customers’ security officers, and we do not know how they came to be known more widely.

See my first post and the google link above. They came to be known
more widely because I posted about them after you blocked my
institution.

I see only two possible explanations for your email: deliberate
misinformation or complete technical incompetence. Either way, I hope
the library community and the broader academic community will continue
to hold Wiley accountable for their harmful behaviour.

Richard Smith-Unna
Mozilla Fellow for Science, University of Cambridge