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Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Published online 27 May 2009 | Nature 459, 496 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459496g
News in Brief
That fossil frenzy in full
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Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
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The space that Nature has devoted to fossil story (p. 484 and 496, this issue) is really impressive. More impressive however is the space occupied by self-praising words (p. 484) reproduced below. ...."There is no reason to think that PLoS ONE's editors and reviewers did less than their duty to the paper. Nonetheless, the clock was ticking at the time of submission. Nature has over the years received occasional offers of papers associated with television documentaries, and the offers usually come with broadcast dates attached. Where the refereeing process might have been compromised, we have always said no to the paper." One wonders if the journal is interested more in comparing itself with a reputed open access journal that itself believes, more than any other journal in the entire world, public scrutiny of science. By prasing and comparing itself with fellow journals, a reputed journal like Nature has lost for ever any chance of being the moral policeman and the custodian of science. In future, readers may take any such criticism by a journal, even if justified, with a pinch of salt.
It will be in the true public interest that all journals become open access. Imagine a media report on a paper that is not open access! How will general public access the paper to see to themselves if the media report is correct! If anything, fossil story serves as a dry run for the public to demand open access.