OASPA welcomes Phil Davis's exercise

[Caroline Sutton <caroline.sutton@co-action.net>]

On behalf of OASPA I wish to express that OASPA in no way wishes 
to undermine the excercise carried out by Phil Davis, and that 
the use of the word 'prank' was in no way meant to be derogatory 
(our use of the word was more inspired by Richard Feynman who was 
quite keen on pranks).

To the contrary, we welcome his exercise as it demonstrates how 
important sound, ethical publishing practices are and the 
important role OASPA can play.

Our intention in reacting to the debate surrounding Phil Davis's 
original piece is to assure the community that the reported 
actions of one open access publisher are not indicative of the 
community of OA publishers at large, the majority of which are 
scholars themselves.  We recognize that there are potential 
conflicts of interest associated with all publishing models and 
we recognize that peer review is a critical element of upholding 
trust among the research community.

It is important for both scholars and publishers to be vigilant 
regarding any abuses of the publishing system. Indeed, one of the 
scholar publishers on our board, Gunther Eysenbach, was perhaps 
the first to comment on the behavior of some open access 
publishers long before this debate:  see e.g. 
http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-sheep-among-open-access-journals.html

Our concerns regarding possible abuses was one of the important 
incentives behind establishing OASPA and the reason why we have 
developed a Code of Conduct.  On behalf of OASPA, I would also 
call upon Bentham to address the important questions raised in 
the debate surrounding this incident and in particular to clarify 
their peer review policies.

Caroline Sutton, PhD