ISTOCK, HYWARDSA watchdog site calling out academic publishers for incorrectly charging readers for open access papers is gaining momentum. The site, Paywall Watch, tracks papers published in open access (OA) journals that are supposed to make content freely available online but instead appear behind a paywall for readers.
“I do think it is disappointing that we still see these errors happening. It should not be complex to accurately tag articles with their license and hence OA status,” says Virginia Barbour, director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group in Brisbane who was the chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics until last week.
The issue of inappropriately paywalled papers is most likely a result of mistakes rather than publishers deliberately charging more, according to Graham Steel, Paywall Watch’s editor based in Glasgow, U.K.
Since Steel got on board in March, the site has flagged more than 30 posts, some highlighting old, now-resolved examples and others that have been fixed since they were flagged.
Paywall Watch is currently a pet project and a labor ...
