Peter Suber - Google+ - New "sting" of weak open-access journals. This afternoon…

"This afternoon John Bohannon published an article in Science exposing lamentably low quality at a large number of OA journals. He and Science call it a "sting" and it's easy to see why. Unfortunately it may be hard to disentangle what the article does and doesn't show....Many people incorrectly believe that all OA journals are weak and dishonest. Hence, many will put all OA journals under the cloud of suspicion. Many people incorrectly believe that all OA is gold OA, or that OA journals are the only way to deliver OA. Hence, many will put all OA, not just gold OA, and not just the weak subset of gold OA, under the cloud of suspicion. Bohannon is not responsible for these widespread, pre-existing misunderstandings. But his conclusions combine badly with them, especially when he is not careful in drawing his conclusions or in characterizing OA. He refers to "an emerging Wild West in academic publishing" as if low-quality journals were something new. This is unjustified and invidious, especially since he chose to study only OA journals, which tend to be new. Because he deliberately omitted to study non-OA journals, he should carefully avoid the conclusion that the kind of low quality he exposes is something new...."