The Corruption of OA
Started with pristine idealism, OA has become more corrupt in some ways than we might want to acknowledge
Complaints about subscription publishing seem prosaic when compared to the mess that a headlong rush into OA publishing has created, with benefits touted without evidence:
- Opening the literature to more participants and more rapid publication and feedback loops would improve it
- More negative studies and different perspectives and claims would expand and improve our scientific knowledge
- OA would broaden participation in publishing at all levels
- The“open” community would walk the talk, and provide transparency for all involved
- Peer-review, editorial selection, and other factors leading to quality outputs would only be enhanced in the OA era
- Low marginal costs would mean free access was possible, decreasing the overall costs of the scholarly and scientific publishing enterprise
Of course, very little of this has come to fruition, and in many cases, the opposite has happened.