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No peer review without open access

I was recently asked to do peer review of a paper in the Elsevier journal Icarus.  Here’s what I said.  I encourage you to say something in the same vein:

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the peer review process which is so vital to the progress of scientific knowledge.  However, I unwilling to contribute any review or editorial work to publications which do not satisfy very liberal Open Access criteria as set out by, for example, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing from 2003, or the Creative Commons Attribution license used by the Public Library of Science Journals.  I look forward to a day hopefully not too far off when Elsevier decides to support free access to scientific knowledge (PDF) for all, and especially for scientific knowledge which was gained in part through publicly funded research.

Peer review is only one necessary ingredient for science to work.  Open access and systemic transparency are others.  All of them need work.

By Zane Selvans

A former space explorer, now marooned on a beautiful, dying world.

2 replies on “No peer review without open access”

Now this is interesting. In response to my declining to participate in the peer review of a non-OA journal, I get this note, refusing even to admit the reason I gave:

Dear Dr. Zane Selvans,

You were recently invited to review the above manuscript, but we have not yet received your reply. Because of production and time restrictions, we must now proceed with evaluating this manuscript without your input.

Thank you for your past efforts on behalf of the journal. I hope that we may have the privilege of using your services in the future when the timing is more convenient.

Yours sincerely,

Oded Aharonson
Editor
Icarus

Maybe there really is no reform in this world without collapse.

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