I wrote recently about several examples of humorous articles written largely to parody the scientific enterprise which had found themselves, bizarrely, behind paywalls. I argued that libraries are not only footing the bill for access to genuine scientific papers, but also this more frivolous content. Indeed, individual researchers may end up paying an extra fee to access these papers having been lured in by their titles, which seem to be about genuine research.
Today I was made aware of another example, albeit one with a title unlikely to give people the impression that it reports on a genuine scientific advancement. A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper was published in 2000 in the Journal of Systems and Software. It echoes many of our frustrations with the publication process. But the icing on the cake? It’s behind a paywall.
Just another frustration to add to our growing list, I guess. Plan S 2.0 can’t come soon enough, in my opinion.
To be fair to certain publishers, Wiley namely, responded quickly to my LinkedIn post and made the article open access. How magnanimous. Let’s see if Big Bad Wolf Elsevier responds in kind.
Open Warfare 