When I saw the pay-per-view screen shot of this article on Twitter, I almost dismissed it as Photoshop-based humor. But, anything is possible so I searched for the title, only to find:
How publishing in open access journals threatens science and what we can do about it by H. Charles Romesburg (Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA).
Abstract:
The last decade has seen an enormous increase in the number of peer-reviewed open access research journals in which authors whose articles are accepted for publication pay a fee to have them made freely available on the Internet. Could this popularity of open access publishing be a bad thing? Is it actually imperiling the future of science? In this commentary, I argue that it is. Drawing upon research literature, I explain why it is almost always best to publish in society journals (i.e., those sponsored by research societies such as Journal of Wildlife Management) and not nearly as good to publish in commercial academic journals, and worst—to the point it should normally be opposed—to publish in open access journals (e.g., PLOS ONE). I compare the operating plans of society journals and open access journals based on 2 features: the quality of peer review they provide and the quality of debate the articles they publish receive. On both features, the quality is generally high for society journals but unacceptably low for open access journals, to such an extent that open access publishing threatens to pollute science with false findings. Moreover, its popularity threatens to attract researchers’ allegiance to it and away from society journals, making it difficult for them to achieve their traditionally high standards of peer reviewing and of furthering debate. I prove that the commonly claimed benefits to science of open access publishing are nonexistent or much overestimated. I challenge the notion that journal impact factors should be a key consideration in selecting journals in which to publish. I suggest ways to strengthen the Journal and keep it strong. © 2016 The Wildlife Society.
On a pay-per-view site (of course):
You know about the Erdős number, which measures your distance from collaborating with Paul Erdős.
I propose the Romesburg Number, which measures your collaboration distance from H. Charles Romesburg. The higher your number, the further removed you are from Romesburg.
I don’t have all the data but I hopeful my Romesburg number is 12 or higher.