[SOAF] Why AAAS Science unpublish corr questioning its academic integrity? Natalia Koudinova 18 Dec 2003 13:42 UTC

I thought that this follow up OA Forum posting (pasted and referenced
below) will be of interested:

See posting archive record:
https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/362.html or

Copy-and-Paste version:
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Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 14:07:51 +0200
Subject: [SOAF] Why AAAS Science unpublish corr questioning its academic integrity?

Dear Colleagues and friends,

Following my earlier posting
"<https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/361.html>AAAS Science and
academic integrity - breakdown of the year?" at the
<https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/List.html>Open Access Forum Archive I
would like to raise the following question:

Why AAAS Science did unpublish correspondence questioning AAAS/Science
academic integrity?

The reference follows:

Koudinov AR. Open letter to Donald Kennedy, Science Editor-in-Chief: AAAS,
Science, Alzheimer's disease and academic dishonesty. Sciences' SAGE KE
Published <http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/pmid;12805530#192>16
June 2003,
<http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/pmid;12805530#192>unpublished
(along with another letter by a SAGE KE member) at the beginning of August
2003 Freely available at the following links: [
<http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/editors/alexeikoudinov/pdfdocs/submittedletters/koudinov2sageke16june03.html>Direct
FullText ][
<http://www.anzwers.org/free/neurology/reports/eletters.html#pmid12805530>via
Koudinov sci correspondnce page ].

Is the above item unpublished by AAAS because AAAS prefers to hide from
the world the bothering facts rather then openly investigate allegations
and punish those responsible? Is this a practice of AAAS serving its' own
self interest (or an interest of one of its' top officials?) rather then
serving true advancement of science?

Is it moral for Donald Kennedy, AAAS Science Editor-in-Chief to present
<http://web.sfn.org/content/Meetings_Events/AnnualMeeting2/SessionsandEvents/Lectures1/dana.html>Dana
Alliance lecture on Neuroethics at the major annual event, The Society for
Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2003 while keeping code of silence and making
no determination on the cited above Open letter?

Who Science aim to fool: scientific community, lay audience/taxpayer or
both? Who this practice will damage first? No doubt AAAS and Science
itself, don't you think so? Is this the major scientific breakdown of the
year?

To make it bold: As for the true breakthrough of the year (and not the one
to be shortly offered by a troubled journal) please remember:

Breakthrough of the year is the advancement of the Open Access.

Don't think so? Then study
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html>Open Access News to know
what all major scientific (including Nature, see below) and political
(including UN) bodies all over the world are talking about.

Here is the latest news quote: a question raised in today issue of Nature
(<http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v426/n6968/full/426755b_fs.html>Nature
426, 755, Dec, 18, 2003; doi:10.1038/426755b): "Will the scientific
literature in future be dominated by journals that do not charge their
readers? That is the goal of the 'open-access' movement, which argues that
the costs of publishing should be borne up front by those who fund
research, rather than those who want to read about it. Open-access
journals, which charge publication fees, have been proliferating over the
past few years. October saw the launch of the most prominent, Public
Library of Science Biology, which is competing for top biology papers with
Nature, Science and Cell."

The dead habits entertained by Science, Cell and Elsevier (referenced in
another <http://www.podbaydoor.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=1106>Open
Letter - on a call to boycott Cell Press) warrants the academic suicide of
the conventional publishing system much faster then one might think about.

Sincerely,

Alexei Koudinov, MD, PhD
neuroscientist and editor

cc: Editors of 50+ neuroscience journals, scientists and editors quoted in
the Open letter