Editorial: Pay to criticise? Rebuttal articles in open-access journals should be published for free

Montesinos, Daniel

Abstract

Open access has not quite lived up to the utopian expectations we once envisaged (Borrego, 2023). Regardless, open access brought a much needed shift in the editorial world, with many positive outcomes, some negative ones, and many other neutral ones (see a thoughtful analysis by Racimo et al., 2022). The viability of the open-access system is dependent on the existence of a minimal set of agreed principles, the most obvious one being that any article published under this model will remain freely available to everyone in perpetuity. On a larger scale, the above-mentioned case points to a clear need for reputable open-access scientific journals to establish an unavoidable ethical commitment to waive all APCs for rebuttal articles and possibly also for all critical comments. This should be clearly stated and publicised in the instructions for authors of each open-access journal. Failure to do so will result in a strong disincentive to critical discussion that is at the core to scientific progress. More immediately, it will also result in a clear loss of credibility for the open-access journals, editors, and publishing companies that, for all practical purposes, are putting a hefty price on criticising their own publications. There are finer details that are more difficult to standardise, though; one such area is the fee-waiving policies of critical comments on published articles and particularly of rebuttal articles. Such articles are always unpleasant to write, and, for open-access journals, they might also involve costly article processing charges (APCs). Presently, authors willing to unveil critical flaws in published research might not be able to overcome the added burdens of cost, time, and confrontation risks in exchange for small professional recognition.

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Web Ecology

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1399-1183

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Copernicus Publications

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DOI

10.5194/we-23-131-2023