Catch 44

In Joseph Heller's novel, the military introduces a requirement entitled Catch 22: the insane will be removed from flight duties if requested, but asking to be relieved from flight service proves the serviceman is, in fact, sane.

The Catch 22 is essentially whenever fundamentally flawed logic is applied in a surprisingly rational way. And unfortunately, one has been applied, with a modern twist, to scientific publishing -- Catch 22, Version 2.0, with multiplication, 44.

One argument against Open Access goes something like this: the scientists don't actually want OA, because if they did, they would make sure all of their research is published OA. And clearly, not all researchers ensure free access to their research, though the number that do is growing.

But here's the rub: this situation exists because of the Catch 44. New discoveries need past research to build upon (Newton's shoulders of giants), and scientists relying on OA are more likely to return the favor (publish their own research OA).

So in our current predicament, there often isn't enough OA research available in a targeted field of discovery for OA-dependent investigators to use. We end up with fewer OA-inclined authors and thus fewer OA-papers. Or at the very least, these authors, due to their lack of resources, publish less freqency.

This gives us a low signal-to-noise ratio (I call closed access research noise because its important message is hidden from the rest of us), so the noise prevails. And this ingenious trap de facto seems more likely to be enforced by law if the likes of John Conyers (D-MI) get their way.

Nathan