Page 66 - Becoming Metric Wise

56 Becoming Metric-Wise

thin line between predatory OA and low-quality OA journals. Early 2017
Beall removed his list from the Internet. Instead of Beall’s list one may
now use the DOAJ list as a “white” list of nonpredatory OA journals.
Problems with predatory journals were nicely illustrated by Bohannon
(2013), working for Science, who sent out a spoof paper (in slightly differ-
ent versions with different—fictitious—authors) containing grave scien-
tific errors and with the sensational conclusion that the author would
prove subsequently that a certain molecule is effective against cancer in
humans and animals. Papers were sent to OA journals largely taken from
the DOAJ and many featuring on Beall’s list. Of those versions that went
through the whole editing process leading to acceptance or rejection, 157
were accepted and 98 were rejected. Many did not show any sign of
external review which is good if the paper is rejected.

3.2.6 Delayed Open Access: An Oxymoron

In reality there are many cases in which full OA as stated by the BOAI is
not granted, but rather in some restricted version. Sometimes reading is
only permitted to humans, excluding the use of data mining software,
and often the final published version is not free, but only a preprint
version. According to the Budapest Initiative the term OA, whether
Green and Gold, refers to immediate OA. Yet, many journals do not
provide OA, but only so-called delayed OA (after an embargo period).
This so-called delayed OA is one of the ways in which publishers (com-
mercial or society) fight to retain control of their content. Many collea-
gues note that the term delayed OA is an oxymoron as OA is by the
BOAI definition instantaneous. Laakso and Bjo ¨rk (2013) note that
delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the scholarly
literature, even including a substantial proportion of high impact journals.
At the moment, such journals include Science, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences USA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Cell.
From a practical point of view one may remark that even delayed OA is
better than permanently priced access.
So, instead of delayed OA, one should just use the term Delayed
Access (DA). This access can be provided by the publisher at the publish-
er’s website, in which case one could use the term Gold DA, or by
authors themselves (either because the publisher requests a delay, or
because they themselves want to provide access only after some time).
This could be called Green DA.