[GOAL] Bohannon study potential damage to scholarship as a whole

[Heather Morrison]

The Bohannon "study" published in Science may have consequences beyond what was intended. While Bohannon and Science may have meant this as an attack on open access, this study could easily be picked up by those who oppose science and scholarship.

For example, the Economist article begins with a focus on the Sokal hoax; this was a subscription journal, not OA, so not focusing too strongly on OA is much appreciated. However, this means that an Economist article is focusing on a critique of scholarly peer review.

Similarly, a CBC article focuses on the problems with peer review, rather than problems with a few new journals that happen to be OA:
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/10/11/why-a-harvard-scientist-wrote-a-bogus-paper-and-submitted-it-for-publication/

This article illustrates what I consider to be a potential danger to all of scholarship / science, not just open access. Here we have a newspaper article quoting a study as saying that the majority of peer-reviewed journals will accept an article that is obviously fabricated. It is not hard to imagine newspaper articles like this being used as fodder for climate change denial types.

To me, this in itself illustrates the need for careful quality control in scholarly communication. It is unethical for Bohannon and Science to publish an article that could so easily be misinterpreted in this way and used as arguments by opponents of science and scholarship. This is a bigger problem for science and scholarship than all of the predatory journals exposed by the Bohannon sting. 

best,

-- 
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa

http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca