Letter on Open Citations From International Society for Informetrics and Scientometrics (ISSI)

Openness is central to the research endeavor. It is essential to promote reproducibility and appraisal of research, reduce misconduct, and ensure equitable access to and participation in science. Yet, calls for increased openness in science are often met with initial resistance. The introduction of pre-print servers, open access repositories, and open data sets were, for example, initially resisted, but eventually adopted without adverse effects to the scholarly ecosystem. The launch of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) is facing similar obstacles. This initiative has campaigned for scholarly publishers to make openly available the references found in articles from their journals. Many publishers, including most of the large ones, support the initiative and have opened their references. However, the initiative still lacks support from a minority of the large publishers.