The Royal Society claims that a critical open letter it received from a number of its members was written under false pretences.

The Royal Society claims that a critical open letter it received from a number of its members was written under false pretences.

The letter, which urged the UK’s national academy of science to take a more positive stance on open access publishing was signed by over 40 RS fellows, including Nobel laureate James Watson. The letter was coordinated by open access publishers BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS). It referred to an RS position statement on open access (Chemistry World, 24 November 2005), and the reluctance of the society to back Research Councils UK in their move to make open access repositories for research results compulsory.

’In seeking to delay or even to block the proposed RCUK policy, the Royal Society appears to be putting the concerns of existing publishers (including the Society itself) ahead of the needs of science,’ wrote the authors.

An RS spokesman told Chemistry World that several of the signatories had been unaware of the open access publishers’ involvement. ’We leave it to others to assess whether BioMed Central’s involvement was appropriate, but we suggest that it would be better for any potentially competing interests to be openly declared. This is, of course, normal practice for authors who submit journal papers. It is therefore surprising that BioMed Central have not mentioned their involvement in the news story on their home page and their involvement is not mentioned in the open letter itself.’

BioMed Central publisher, Matthew Cockerill, said the RS was ’not responding to the substance of the letter’. He said a number of RS Fellows who were authors and editors of several open access journals were unhappy that they hadn’t been consulted by the RS over the position statement. This is why BioMed Central and PLoS offered their support, said Cockerill.

The RS responded to the letter saying that it ’certainly does not, as the collective letter implies, take a ’negative stance’ on open access. We are simply concerned that open access is achieved without the risk of unintended damage to peer-review, quality control and long term accessibility of the scientific literature.’ Katharine Sanderson