A controversial new 'amateur' palaeontology journal has angered academic researchers, who fear that the project will give a sheen of scientific legitimacy to the dealings of commercial fossil hunters.

The organizers of the Journal of Paleontological Sciences, launched this month, say that it will publish details of privately held fossils, bringing them in from the “scientific darkness”. But traditional palaeontologists say that the journal undermines the field and could fuel the black market in fossil specimens.

The journal is inviting anyone, including commercial fossil hunters and keen amateur collectors, to publish details of their finds. “Lurking in many private collections are valuable fossil treasures. This is the first journal that gives an outlet to the amateur and commercial palaeontologist to try their hand at writing a scientific article,” says Ken Carpenter, a member of the journal's publication committee and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado.

But academics are upset that the fossils will not be in the public domain, and will therefore be unavailable for future study. “This is absolutely imperative in order for our science to exist,” says Mark Goodwin at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley.

Palaeontologists who publish their results in traditional journals, such as the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, agree to abide by a code of ethics, whereby they catalogue their specimens in a recognized repository, most often a national museum. Goodwin thinks that the new journal is an attempt to circumvent this practice.

The fears are fuelled by the fact that many of the fossils that change hands in commercial deals do so on the black market. “Promotion of this online journal will encourage the commercialization of vertebrate palaeontology, which unfortunately results in increased illegal collecting activities on public lands in the United States, and the illegal trade and export of fossils from China, other regions of Asia, and the former Soviet Union,” Goodwin argues.

Fossil hunters can now publish without making their specimens available. Credit: J. BLAIR/CORBIS

Walter Stein, chair of the journal's publication committee and president of PaleoAdventures in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, disagrees. He thinks that some exposure for the privately held specimens is better for science than none at all, even if the fossils themselves remain behind closed doors. He adds that there will always be “ten per cent of academics we will never convince, who think we are only in it for the money”.

In an apparent bid to deflect accusations that they are interested mainly in promoting commercialization of the field, the journal's publishers have changed their name from the American Association of Paleontological Suppliers to the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences. The nine-member publication committee will review submissions before drawing on a 22-member pool of potential peer reviewers. “If you can prove it, we will publish it,” Stein says.

Goodwin says that the palaeontologists who have agreed to review submissions “should be ashamed of themselves”, adding that their efforts would be better spent encouraging private collectors who hold fossils to consider other means of allowing access and study. Donating fossils to a museum and enlisting the help of an academic researcher would ensure that the fossils can be studied in perpetuity, he argues. “When this occurs, science wins over greed.”

Commercial fossil trading in the United States has its roots in the 1960s, when private landowners began to realize the potential value of fossils found on their property, causing academic researchers on tight grants to worry that they were being priced out of the field. Typically, the owner of a property can expect to receive up to 25% of the sale value of a specimen, and some US landowners reportedly earn as much as $25,000 a year from the practice. Many collectors also buy fossils as an investment, similar to dealing in artworks or antiques, which fuels the activities of commercial fossil brokers.

In a bid to confront these activities, the US government offers a tax deduction on individuals or estates who donate specimens to national museums. Many museums offer to make a high-quality cast in exchange for the genuine article, in a bid to encourage collectors to donate their treasures.