From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 20:34:24 -0400

Fred Friend is, of course, entitled to his opinion.  I don't think
there is anything unfair (or inaccurate) in the observation that many
OA advocates immediately circle the wagons whenever OA journals are
criticized, whether rightly or wrongly.  It would be much easier to
have productive conversations about OA if it were not a matter of
religious fervor to so many.

Re.  Thomas Krichel's message: Plagiarism is only one problem and of
much less concern than articles that are just wrong or based on cooked
evidence.  Robots are not so likely to solve that aspect of failed
peer review.  And, in response to Scott, I certainly don't exempt the
toll journals from this failing.  We see far to many retracted papers
in ostensibly sound, respected journals.  More of them should have
been caught before publication.  It will never be a perfect system,
but it has to be better than this.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
University of Dayton Libraries
106A Roesch Library
300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469-1360


On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 6:27 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Friend, Fred" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 09:30:55 +0000
>
> Fred Jenkins comment is unfair. One of the reasons I and others have
> been promoting OA for many years is to open up research publications
> to greater scrutiny by making them available to a wider group of
> researchers. OA journals deserve no more protection from scrutiny than
> subscription journals. In fact the most serious damage caused by
> unreliable science that I have known in my career was the effect upon
> child deaths from measles resulting from the poor research on the MMR
> vaccine published in a distinguished subscription journal a few years
> ago. If the data from that flawed research had been published on open
> access at the same time as the journal article the consequences for
> many children could have been avoided. Rather than criticising either
> the OA publishing models or the subscription models for such results
> we should be looking at ways to improve the quality of peer review -
> and make all research data and text fully open.
>
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> ________________________________________
>
> From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 18:06:47 -0400
>
> What is disappointing is that so many OA advocates seem more concerned
> with protecting OA journals than with protecting readers from unreliable
> science.
>
> Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
> Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
> University of Dayton Libraries
> 106A Roesch Library
> 300 College Park
> Dayton, OH 45469-1360