"Threatens Science" is very bizarre opinion. It goes too far. Maybe some of the OA journals are with not so high quality, but some of them are e.g. some EGU journals with very innovative form of open discussions (Interactive Public Peer Review). We should keep in mind that OA is not only gold OA journals but also and green OA: article repositories, researchgate.net etc. OA is crucial for sharing scientific results not only for developing countries but for all.

Thanks Jordan... yes, you make some very good points. One big disservice to the scholarly communications world is the very large set of "parasite" open access journals. Unfortunately, they get lumped under the OA flag, and that hurts the real, serious, and genuine journals...

I have looked at Professor Romesburg's paper and seem to find several things lacking or missing. A quick list of them: First, he argues OA journals are bad quality journals (stating poor peer review, hasty review process and excessive paper throughput rate, but relying on secondary sources to back up this claim). On the other hand, he states scientific society journals as the extreme opposite of this quality spectrum. This misses the point that several established journals have embraced the OA model, and that many researchers have vouched for the development of new ways of publishing science (eLife, PeerJ, PlosBiology, Pos One, Scientific Reports, as well as the option by journals such as Proc. Roy Soc. A and B). Thus, I think he seems to blame OA journals por poor success of Scientific Society journals. This in itself may be true, but seems to reflect an economic competition among different business models, with different OA journals striving to provide more interesting alternatives to scientists searching for publication outlets. I have published in both "established" (i.e. PNAS, Ecology, Ecology Letters, MEPS, Journal Experimental Biology, Oikos) and OA journals (Plos One, Ecology and Evolution, PeerJ) , and have experienced equally rigorous peer review processes. The only difference I can point to is that "traditional" journals have been quicker to reject a manuscript which when submitted to an alternative OA journal, have been through a peer review process and eventually have been accepted. In none of these journals (which are not predatory ones, by the way), have I been offered an easier or fast-tracked peer review. Furthermore, I have received rejection letters in OA journals, which even though meagre in terms of a statistical testing approach, does argue the case that there is no bias in my experience so far. What I would love however, is to see discussion on whether full disclosure of peer review process may improve the quality of scientific articles, as opposed to blind or double blind review processes. The prospect of a fully transparent peer review process seems enticing for some, but too anarchical for others, and I still haven't made up my mind on that score yet.

Although my country (Chile) is not formally a developing country anymore, we still face strong funding constraints, and choosing to pay a strong publication fee is not an option for many. Nonetheless, for researchers with access to grant funding or University based publication fees, OA journals have become an interesting alternative as they receive higher impact factor scores, and improve their peer review experience (notably the response time, time to publication and the constructiveness of peer review criticism). I would argue that these are positive contributions, which together with the pressure for open access to research databases, improve and do not threaten science as a whole.

One last point is that in other research disciplines, such as biomedical sciences, there`s an important debate going on regarding the reproducibility of results. Most of the cases I have perused are established, traditional journals, rather than OA ones. This seems symptomatic of a weakness in their editorial process and peer review criteria, which do strive for high impact decisions, and have yet failed to avoid the publication of results that are not reproducible. That does not mean that established journals are also threatening science, and that OA ones will save it. That means that the scientific community must develop new, better and mature ways to foster the development of science and the peer review process