BMJ  2005;330:759 (2 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7494.759

Commentary

Open access publishing: too much oxygen?

¹ Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford OX2 6HE Jeffrey.aronson@clinpharm.ox.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." This assertion of the US founding fathers betokened their zeal for human equality and rights. But such an attitude can betoken intellectual arrogance. It was, for example, self evident to paediatricians in the 1950s that it would be beneficial to give premature babies 100% oxygen without proper trial. But 100% oxygen caused blindness, and the balance of benefit to harm was unfavourable.

In their survey of the attitudes of a small sample of scientists to open access¹ Schroter and colleagues don't actually trumpet its self evident benefits, but their call for evidence refers to the author pays model, not open access publishing itself, although open access will not be possible without an author pays scheme or something comparable. But scientists' opinions should not frame policy without supporting evidence. We need to ask whether immediate free access to readers, with whatever method of payment . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Evidence for the Status Quo?

David C Prosser
bmj.com, 1 Apr 2005 [Full text]

Reply to D C Prosser

Jeff Aronson
bmj.com, 4 Apr 2005 [Full text]

Oxygen in neonates not a good analogy

Iain Chalmers
bmj.com, 5 Apr 2005 [Full text]

A Response to Dr Aronson's Second Set of Points

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