Going for Gold, or Gold Diggers? – COAR

"Recently, Springer Nature published a white paper entitled, “Going for Gold”. The paper presents an analysis of a subset of their articles comparing the usage across closed access, open access (OA) via the Springer Nature platform, and open access through repositories. The paper concludes that “there is an ‘OA effect’ which sees OA articles in hybrid journals achieving greater impact, usage and reach than comparative non-OA articles” and goes on to assert that “there is no significant corresponding ‘Green OA effect’”. Despite Springer Nature’s stated commitment to scientific rigour and reproducibility in their journals, this white paper does not live up to those standards. A closer examination of the underlying data finds that the research does not provide an accurate picture of the use and impact of repository-based, green OA, because it does not include the usage statistics of corresponding open access articles in repositories. Without comparing usage patterns of repository versions of an article, it is impossible to claim that the published OA versions have greater usage than repository OA versions. Furthermore, the articles used in the citation analysis have not been randomly chosen, but rather have been taken from the Times Higher Education rankings, which favours prestigious western institutions, introducing a huge selection bias. This white paper seems to be an unsubstantiated and self-interested narrative to protect the lucrative business models of the commercial publishing industry...."