Hi Giacomo,

Yes, this “sting” operation which Science Magazine carried out is getting much press. However, as the Guardian points out, the real revelations uncovered are the problems with the peer review system:  http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/oct/04/science-hoax-peer-review-open-access

And Heather Joseph of SPARC highlights the serious methodological flaws, which you point out below, of Science’s actions: http://www.sparc.arl.org/blog/science-magazine%E2%80%99s-open-access-sting.

Unfortunately, for those who just read the Science article, it does cast OA publishing in a bad light.

Melissa Hagemann
OSF

From: openaccess-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:openaccess-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Giacomo Cossa
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2013 10:26 AM
To: openaccess@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [OpenAccess] OA and peer-review

You've might already noticed.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

Interesting article from Science about the new boom of low-level journals, most of which are OA. Despite the clear disclaimer at the end ("everyone agrees that open-access is a good thing"), the article's mood is quite skeptical about OA, although the conclusions could maybe have been drawn also for non-OA low-level journals (but the author didn't test them).

Giacomo