Open and Shut?: Let’s be open about Open Access

"To what extent should we expect publishers who profess a commitment to Open Access (OA) to be open in other ways too? This is a question often raised in discussions about OA. Some, for instance, argue (e.g. here and here) that OA ought to go hand-in-hand with open peer review (particularly in light of the recent “sting” of OA journals by Science). Others have argued that OA publishers have a duty to be more open in the management of their business. And it has been suggested that OA publishers should be more transparent about their finances. But what about when publishers make use of social media like blogs? How transparent should they be about who is behind the site, and what their objective is? This thought occurred to me recently when I was trying to find out who runs the Open Science blog.  Like companies everywhere, scholarly publishers have in recent years taken an increasing interest in the social web. Most, if not all, now have their own Twitter accounts, some have Google+ accounts, and most now run their own blogs (see for instance those run by PLOS, BioMed Central,Wiley and Elsevier).   In doing so, they invariably view the new platforms as useful new marketing tools for promoting their products and services — or in some cases as a space where their authors can promote their own books or journals (see, for instance, the blog run by Springer). Given these objectives, it is apparent to anyone reading or subscribing to these blogs exactly who runs them, what their purpose is, and the nature of the relationship they are asking readers to enter into with the site. If nothing else, the URL will invariably flag ownership.  But what if a publisher were to run a blog without indicating that it owned and/or controlled it? Suppose, for instance, that the intention was simply to provide a platform for discussing and reporting on a particular topic (e.g. Open Access). In such circumstances, could anonymity (or at least some degree of non-transparency) engender more productive discussions? In other words, might it be possible to provide a more effective communication platform if ownership of the site was cloaked in some way? Or would the interests of the site owner make it impossible to provide an independent platform?  These questions presented themselves to me in August, after I linked via Google+ to an article on the Open Science blog. Entitled Green vs. Gold OA. Which one to choose, the stated aim of the article was to outline the pros and cons of the two main forms of OA.  Publisher FUD?  Almost immediately Toma Susi, a researcher based at the University of Vienna, posted a comment below my link, 'What? The article is all wrong — in green OA the authors can keep publishing in prestigious journals, while gold OA is only available in specific new journals,' he said. 'Even if the writer is conflating hybrid and gold OA, it still seriously misrepresents green. Any idea who is behind this site?' ... My curiosity as to who owned and ran the blog was now sufficient that I did a search on the name Kamil Mizera, which led me to Mizera’s profile on the web site of the Warsaw-based OA publisher Versita. There his role was described as 'Keeping company’s blog about Versita and e-publishing worldwide.'  A search in my inbox also threw up a message from Mizera that I had received (but apparently not replied to) last December. Mizera had contacted me in order to promote an 'Emerging Scholar Monograph Competition' that Versita was then running — with the winner getting the opportunity to have their dissertation published as a book with Versita. Subsequently, I discovered that the competition had also been advertised in a blog post on Open Science — with no mention that I could see that the author of the advertisement was associated with Versita. (The winner was announced in March).  But it would be wrong to suggest that Versita completely hides the fact that it has a relationship with Open Science, since there is a link to the blog from