Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers?

Question

I wonder how reviewers would react if authors of a submitted paper refuse to cite paywalled papers. Is it a valid reason to refuse citing some papers?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues.

Well it certainly won't go down well if you're submitting to a paywall'd journal ;) — Wetlab Walter, Feb 08 '16 at 19:56
IMO by failing to cite someone's work, I think you'd be doing the authors a disservice rather than the publisher. — CKM, Feb 08 '16 at 21:37
Will you also refuse to cite papers published only in paper form, where you have to subscribe to see them? — GEdgar, Feb 08 '16 at 21:57
In my own field (physics), there is almost no such thing anymore as a paper that is only in paper form, or a paper that is only available digitally behind a paywall. Essentially all new papers go on arxiv.org. If your field is not like this, then is the problem (a) that certain authors are too clueless to post preprints, (b) that your field doesn't have the equivalent of arxiv.org, or (c) that the journal has a contract that prohibits posting preprints? — , Feb 09 '16 at 01:04
Maybe just add the information to the citation: (currently paywalled). — Dronz, Feb 09 '16 at 05:51
This may be a novel idea to the young folks, but the traditional way one could go and read a journal article was to get out of your chair, go to the library, and get the journal. If it's not there, you can request the library borrow it from another that does. Even if you're not affiliated with a local university, members of the public can usually get library access for either free or close to free. What you're paying for is convenience more than access - the paywall is rather less daunting than you're making it out to be. Protesting inconvenience is not likely going to get you very far. — J..., Feb 09 '16 at 10:53
@BenCrowell ... In my own field (mathematics) we frequently refer to papers written before the invention of the Internet. Some of them have been digitized by now, but far from all. — GEdgar, Feb 09 '16 at 12:56
@J... people on this site have strong opinions against going to the library. Apparently, an inter-library loan is a form of obscurantism. — Cape Code, Feb 09 '16 at 14:49
@J... I would protest inconvenience, but I can't find anywhere to fit that into my schedule... — Michael, Feb 09 '16 at 22:17
Do the non-paywalled papers cite paywalled papers? If so, then maybe you shouldn't cite these non-paywalled papers, too. — JRN, Feb 10 '16 at 01:16
It is absolutely possible to cite a paper while explaining in the main text that you were not able to access it for one or another reason (or that you were not able to understand it for one or another reason, including language). This probably will make a better political statement than not citing it. — darij grinberg, Feb 10 '16 at 03:03
(Another way to make a statement is to thank the authors of the paywalled papers for providing you with a copy. Acknowledgments are probably the most frequently read part of a paper, so yes, this will be noticed :) ) — darij grinberg, Feb 10 '16 at 03:21
@FranckDernoncourt: A less daring stance that you could take would be to prefer citing the author's version of papers and technical reports (on open access repositories, institutional repositories, or the authors' webpages) rather than citing the publisher version, when both are equally relevant. A related idea is to make sure that the works in your bibliography that are freely available online are given with a URL where they can be downloaded (this is surprisingly uncommon), and maybe indicate "Not freely available" for citations that cannot be accessed. — a3nm, Feb 10 '16 at 09:12
I don't see how you could possibly cite them, since I assume you also refuse to read paywalled papers. — Colin McLarty, Feb 09 '16 at 13:36
Yes, the whole premise of the question already grants that there's a game being played requiring some hypocrisy... E.g., if "you" read paywalled stuff but then act as though it doesn't exist... that is surely beyond unethical to simple dishonesty. — paul garrett, Feb 09 '16 at 14:36
+1 And what about the non-paywalled papers that cite paywalled papers? Maybe the OP should refuse to read them too. — JRN, Feb 10 '16 at 01:15
@J...
Many people don't have access to a library containing every paywalled research paper. (I know, this is shocking to some) If you build on top of paywalled material your work becomes significantly harder for many others to judge meaningfully. — Murphy, Feb 10 '16 at 16:48
@Murphy I'll say again - inter-library loan. Any academic library will have facility to do this. Yeah, it's a bit of work and it takes some time, but that's what research and academia are about. It's only shockingly recently that we've become accustomed to the instant convenience of information one click away - for most of all time prior there was legwork. If you want cheap or free access to journal articles, you do the legwork. It's really that simple. I'd go so far as to say it is among the chiefest of skills and job requirements for an academic. — J..., Feb 10 '16 at 17:14
anything we can do to discourage the disgraceful and no longer necessary tradition of making it hard for 99.9% of humanity to review research is a positive step. Hopefully the old guard will be dead soon and science as a whole will be improved. — Murphy, Feb 10 '16 at 17:28
@j... I find your assumption that every library will have such access ridiculous. It may well be possible for researchers in developed countries, but you are forgetting the countries which don't have such arrangements for whatever reason. The actions of the publishers are some of the chief reasons journal piracy websites exist. — March Ho, Feb 10 '16 at 20:30
Are not journals themselves something of a paywall? Access to a journal is (generally) not free - somewhere along the line someone is paying out some money. Arguing that one should not cite papers published in journals which require no payment is ridiculous - you'd have nothing to cite. Arguing that you should not cite papers which are not freely available is at best quixotic and at worst foolish. In order for the journals to exist they have to make money somehow. If you believe making money is a bad thing, I suggest you work for free for a while and see how it works out. Best of luck. — Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні, Feb 10 '16 at 23:13
@BobJarvis many branches of science have already moved pretty much entirely to open access like physics did with arxiv.org . We've long passed the point where distributing copies of research papers is a significantly costly afair. It's only bad habits, bad assessment metrics for academics and elderly researchers who don't know better who are causing the harmful practice to continue. — Murphy, Feb 11 '16 at 10:59
Just to be sure... Is this question asking about refusing to reference paywalled material i.e. not use any content from it at all, or about using the material without referencing it? — brichins, Feb 11 '16 at 18:26
@BenCrowell: somehow, in CS arxiv lacks the prestige it has in physics. Many readers don't value it, so many authors don't submit there. Worse, ACM (one important publisher) forbids putting the camera-ready text on arxiv just so. — Blaisorblade, Feb 11 '16 at 18:43
@MarchHo If an university lacks sufficient access to literature, it might be better for one's career to do research elsewhere, especially because in such a university I'd expect on average bigger problems (say, it might lack successful scientists that can act as advisors). I don't presume that's fair, only that it might be true. — Blaisorblade, Feb 11 '16 at 20:28
@J... This is not necessarily about protesting inconvenience; it may be about protesting a publication system that relies on publishers whose business model is being a quasi-natural monopoly and who externalize their costs to the scientific community. (Having said that, I think it's a bad idea, due to the answers below.) — henning, Feb 12 '16 at 04:28
@J... Is there an app that lets you browse the library remotely? — corsiKa, Feb 12 '16 at 04:30
Refusing to cite relevant literature is tantamount to plagiarism. Paywall or no paywall. — slebetman, Feb 12 '16 at 05:04
What about refusing to cite at all? Would make the work much more easy! :) — Zaibis, Feb 12 '16 at 09:56
@henning There is absolutely no monopoly here. Journals are highly competitive, even. "Freeware" alternatives can and do compete successfully. Journals provide a service - peer review management and dissemination. They charge the consumers of that service for that service - that's not "externalizing costs", that's how almost every single enterprise works on this planet. The exceptions are those which are, in fact, monopolies (forcibly maintained by government mandate) and charities. Charities can readily compete with free enterprise. Want change? Start a donationware journal. — J..., Feb 12 '16 at 10:47
@CapeCode "people on this site have strong opinions against going to the library" -- please explain? As a librarian, I find this disturbing :( — LindaJeanne, Feb 12 '16 at 16:25
@LindaJeanne I wrote my thesis in the library in order or avoid distractions from everyone else. It was highly productive. — Calchas, Feb 13 '16 at 21:48
@GEdgar What percentage of research papers have been digitalized? — Franck Dernoncourt, Jan 07 '17 at 19:50
The comments here seem to assume the author has read the paper and refuses to cite it, which would be unethical. But what if the author cannot access the paper due to the paywall and their financial situation? You cannot expect the author to cite a paper they cannot access. — Thomas, Nov 06 '18 at 08:28

score 174 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:00

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If I was reviewing a paper, and the authors failed to cite important literature, I'd recommend rejection until the authors provided correct citations. It's the authors' responsibility to provide appropriate references.

I assume that many other reviewers would feel the same.

answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:00

iayork

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Indeed. While I understand the OP's argument, you can't just ignore relevant literature.. – Fábio Dias Feb 08 '16 at 20:21
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I don't think this answers the question because the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. If the authors refuse to cite paywalled papers but still cite appropriate sources (however unlikely this is in your field), should the refs reject the paper on principle? I think this is what OP is asking. – user1717828 Feb 09 '16 at 15:22
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@user1717828 I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Are you talking about a situation where an author makes some statement citing paper X (non-paywalled), but the referee believes the author should have used paper Y (paywalled) to justify that statement? If you're citing just to justify a statement, that could be fine, but citations are often used to give credit, and in that case there is no flexibility in which paper you need to cite. – David Z Feb 09 '16 at 16:18

score 107 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:05

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I wonder how reviewers would react if authors of a submitted paper refuse to cite paywalled papers. Is it a valid reason to refuse citing some papers?

Certainly not. There are a few areas where this could be OK; for example, if you are citing expository material for background (rather than to assign credit), then you can choose whichever sources you feel are best.

However, in many cases you have a scholarly obligation to cite papers, for example to give credit to people whose work you are building on, and there are no acceptable grounds for refusing to do so. It's a serious form of academic misconduct, even if it is done for idealistic reasons.

If I ran across an author who refused to make necessary citations, I would be extremely displeased, and I would recommend that the paper not be published until the citations were included. I would not fully trust that person's judgment in the future, and I would be suspicious that other papers might be missing important citations.

Instead of omitting citations, you could add some brief commentary about the lack of open access. (Reviewers or readers might dislike it, but it's in no way academic misconduct.) You should be very careful with that, since you could really offend an author who has made the paper available, just not where you looked. For example, it might be in an institutional repository. If you want to avoid giving offense but still encourage open access and help readers, you could give suitable arXiv or repository links to each paper for which you can find them.

answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:05

Anonymous Mathematician

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you could really offend an author who has made the paper available - and those who haven't as well. – Dan Romik Feb 08 '16 at 20:19
@DanRomik: Good point. – Anonymous Mathematician Feb 08 '16 at 21:44
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At what point is an author ethically justified in refusing to go through the hassle and expense of acquiring a paper that is not made accessible by the authors? – DQdlM Feb 09 '16 at 01:44
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@Kenny this is not an ethics question. Authors are free to acquire or not acquire anything they wish/don't wish to, and make various other decisions. Eventually, as a result of those decisions the author will either produce high quality, useful research that other scientists will appreciate, or he/she will produce low quality, useless research. There is nothing unethical about producing useless research (assuming it's not done with fraudulent intent), but it's not good for your career. (I guess one can argue that sabotaging your own career is unethical, but I would just call it incompetence.) – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 02:20
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@DanRomik Since the comments are not for extended discussion, we probably should not delve too much into this but I was commenting on the idea that it is a "scholarly obligation" to acquire papers but not apparently a scholarly obligation to make them accessible. – DQdlM Feb 09 '16 at 02:40
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@KennyPeanuts yes I think I understand the point you were trying to make, but I disagree: I don't consider it a scholarly obligation to acquire papers, it's just something you may need to do if you want to produce good research that's relevant to the work other people in your field are doing. – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 02:56
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@KennyPeanuts: The scholarly obligation is to cite, not to acquire. If you are aware of a paper, you can't pretend you don't know about it just because you don't want to track down a copy or can't. Of course citing a paper you haven't seen is awkward and can look bad. In practice it's almost always worth the effort of tracking it down. But the difference is that omitting the paper entirely is unethical, while citing it with an explanation that sources say it contains something but you do not have access to it is unusual but ethical. – Anonymous Mathematician Feb 09 '16 at 05:06
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(Incidentally, I think authors do have a scholarly obligation to make their work as widely available as reasonably possible. But much of the world apparently disagrees, as judged by their publishing behavior.) – Anonymous Mathematician Feb 09 '16 at 05:08
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@AnonymousMathematician your point is well taken but the challenge is in its implementation. At one extreme, you are made aware of a paper written only in Chinese and only available in the reading room of a library in China (most reviewers would accept that it is OK to not track this one down). At the other extreme, the paper requires ILL but is available (most reviewers would say you should track this down). So there is a line somewhere between these two extremes. Where is it? – DQdlM Feb 09 '16 at 16:16
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@AnonymousMathematician The problem is that for the most part, where that line sits is determined by first-world researchers at well funded institutions and thus what it means to meet one's scholarly obligation to cite is largely defined by a rather privileged group of people. As a researcher at a small, less well, resourced school, it can be a huge time and resource commitment for me to acquire papers that are paywalled, so I am regularly confronted with this as a practical problem. – DQdlM Feb 09 '16 at 16:21
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@KennyPeanuts I find the problem you posed interesting. An even more extreme example is that we are aware (via reference) of ancient papers that we do not have possession of (e.g., Aristotle's lost works). How should these works be cited? – emory Feb 10 '16 at 17:13

Dan Romik · Answer 3 · 2016-02-08T23:01:37.490

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If you would like to boycott paywalled journals, go right ahead - that is your right. As a reviewer I would reject your paper for not citing relevant sources. As a reader of your paper and/or author of a paper you didn't cite, I would be severely antagonized as well.

The bottom line is, your ideological battles should not be waged on the backs of honest readers and authors who dedicate their lives to producing and disseminating good science. But if you want to commit career suicide, be my guest - no one will stop you.

Edit: the saying "Be the change that you wish to see in the world" also comes to mind. In that vein, if you don't like paywalled journals, the honorable course of action would be to simply not publish in them yourself. This would be vastly superior from a moral, ethical, and philosophical point of view to waging some kind of take-no-prisoners, collateral-damage-be-damned nuclear warfare against them, which is effectively what your question is proposing.

edited Feb 08 '16 at 23:01

answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:13

Dan Romik

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Said better than my comment said it, comment withdrawn and upvoted. – keshlam Feb 09 '16 at 03:38
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Regarding your edit, I don't think it's a good idea to encourage early-career academics to "boycott" the reputable journals of their field because they read on the internet that they have a bad karma. – Cape Code Feb 09 '16 at 09:03
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@CapeCode thanks for your comment, but to clarify, I wasn't (and am not) encouraging anyone to boycott anyone else - quite the contrary I should think, considering my use of terms like "career suicide". In my edit I was expressing an opinion that if OP was going to boycott paywalled journals, then one particular kind of boycott is more legitimate than another. This is not the same as encouraging a boycott though. – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 15:31
It's up to the reader to decide whether they want to pay out for a paper that is behind a paywall or not (they might decide against it out of poverty, lack of interest, or because they are boycotting such papers; that's entirely up to them). It's not up to the author to decide whether the reader should be informed about the existence of such a paper or not. On the other hand that implies the reader has no right to complain if a paper is only available behind a paywall. – gnasher729 Feb 15 '16 at 10:50

score 20 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:47

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I am in agreement with a number of the prior answers that state that it is an author's responsibility to ensure that appropriate literature is cited.

It is often the case, however, that multiple possible citations are reasonable. For example:

A single extended work can often be effectively cited from any of a family of related publications, e.g., the original idea, a refined and well-formalized version, a practical demonstration, a review paper with a good discussion, etc. Typically one needs to cite just one or a few out of the set.
Some works are cited to give examples of a large class of related work, rather than for that individual work per se.

In cases like these, where there are many reasonable alternatives in citation, it seems entirely reasonable to me for an author to choose to favor more open publications over less open publications. It will not allow ideological purity, as there are of course those many cases where you do need to cite something that is not open access. Still, rewarding those who choose openness may be a good compromise position to promote openness without compromising other key ethical principles of science.

answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:47

jakebeal

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I disagree. You should cite the *most relevant" previous work(s). Doing otherwise is to do your readers a disservice. You can cite an alternative, open access one, too (and I'd appreciate that, if I can't get the paywalled one). – vonbrand Feb 09 '16 at 00:20
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@vonbrand And how do you define "most relevant"? In my experience there is often a lot of flexibility and subjectivity in the choice. – jakebeal Feb 09 '16 at 01:05
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@jakebeal I suggest the following as an operational definition of "most relevant": "a paper I'd be most inclined to cite if I did not know or care whether the journal it was published in was paywalled". Subjective or not, this is well-defined, and I agree with vonbrand that not citing the papers that in your opinion as an author are most relevant is doing a disservice to your readers. Whether you can somehow hide behind subjectivity to get away with it and not get caught is beside the point, since it seems pretty clear that the OP wants to wage his war on paywalled journals publicly. – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 02:08
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@DanRomik That seems a bit silly. If I am citing a lemma which is well known and where the original source isn't known, or if I am citing expository material which is in many places, then I should choose the source most useful to my readers. That means things like well written, in a major journal, using modern vocabulary, written in English (if I am publishing in English) and so forth. I have no problem adding "publicly available, on the arXiv or in an open journal" to that list; it is another thing which will make the citation more useful to my readers. – David E Speyer Feb 09 '16 at 16:09
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@DavidSpeyer good point, and I see my operational definition is flawed. I guess the correct definition of most relevant is that it best serves the interests of the readers, and you've convinced me that accessibility of the paper is a legitimate factor to consider - as long as this is done from the point of view of considering what serves your actual readers (in contrast to the OP's idea of trying to fight a crusade that, while well-intentioned and having the goal of ultimately helping the community of all readers, will do a disservice to the specific readers of his specific papers). – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 16:47
@DanRomik: but there is in practice no difference between the questioner "fighting a crusade" vs merely "holding the opinion that free access is of more benefit to actual readers, than you or I think it is". So the most likely outcome is that the questioner will do the latter and you will still think they're doing the former, because they over-weight (in your opinion) this property that you initially thought should be weighted at zero, but David persuaded you is non-zero. – Steve Jessop Feb 15 '16 at 10:20

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 08 '16 at 20:49

Many of the answers have talked about fairness of citing other papers and that is hugely important. You need to cite others for both academic honesty and to give credit to the work that you've built off of. But another (possibly more important) reason of including related works is proof that you're knowledgeable in the area.

If you're publishing on a topic and skip half the relevant papers, how are readers and reviewers able to know that you've done your due diligence and understand the area? It's an important indication that you actually know what you're talking about and are knowledgeable enough for someone to take you seriously.

score 8 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 10 '16 at 08:36

Instead of refusing to cite paywalled articles, what about contacting their authors, encouraging them to upload their articles to an open repository? John Dove has proposed this idea recently.

He imagines that the (open access) publisher itself could do this work on behalf of the author, checking each reference against a database of open access articles and emailing the author if it was not found.

Laurent Duval · Answer 7 · 2016-02-09T06:00:18.997

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"I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues."

You do not really talk about journal standards and reviewer quality. In an epoch of "publish or perish" perils, there is a lot of computer science conferences and journals, with different levels. Some won't care about the quality of your paper, as long as you pay. This is a first option.

If the intent is to address publications with higher standards, and one has a strong religion against paywalls, computer science is a world where you have options: indeed, many CS people publish online, preprints, extended versions, or open access journnals. Then, if you really want to play, you can cite the online etc. versions, and put the "paywall ref" as a note:

Alan Turing, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem", http://turing.sci/comp-numb.pdf (also appeared in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society s2-42, 230–265, 1937)

Thus, you show you know the relevant literature to the reviewers. Some may like or not that you do not put the references in the standard way, but you might have more troubles with the editors or the publisher. But it might be ok with open access CS journals, because the times are changing.

edited Feb 09 '16 at 06:00

answered Feb 08 '16 at 21:47

Laurent Duval

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What is the most important, with respect to the reviewers, is to show and prove that you know what you are writing about. I disagree. What is the most important is to serve the readers you are ostensibly trying to inform by writing your paper. Intentionally hiding relevant information from the readers is unacceptable from a reviewer's point of view and would be immediate cause for rejection, regardless of whether the author has shown himself to be knowledgeable about the subject he was writing about or not. – Dan Romik Feb 08 '16 at 22:16
You do not disagree. The question was about reviewers. Publishing means making something public, and thus should serve the readers. Reviewers and publishers are filters. I do not see (yet) where I promote hiding relevant information. – Laurent Duval Feb 08 '16 at 22:35
Additional comments: a handful lot of the papers published are not read (apart from the authors and the reviewers). A lot of papers are published only because academia requires publishing. It would be nice if only worthy papers were written and published, but only in a beautiful world – Laurent Duval Feb 08 '16 at 22:40
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LaurentDuval I do disagree. Specifically I disagree with your statement about what's most important to reviewers (and since I have a lot of experience as a reviewer, I dare say my opinion about what's important to reviewers counts for something). Are you seriously saying that you know better than me if I disagree or not? Maybe it's an English language thing, but you should know your statement that I don't disagree comes across as pretty bizarre. – Dan Romik Feb 08 '16 at 22:59
I do respect your opinion and expertise. I do apologize if my formulation sounded offending. I believe that we were not talking at the same level of the review process. Let me rephrase: as a reviewer, one thing important to me is that the authors prove they know the relevant litterature, since science should be a cumulative process. I am picky about accurate references, but that's a personal think. Some editing could be done at the editor or publisher side. I removed the sentence because I do not think my opinion is a general rule – Laurent Duval Feb 09 '16 at 18:47
Okay, thanks for the clarification, and no worries, I wasn't offended. – Dan Romik Feb 09 '16 at 21:35

einpoklum · Answer 8 · 2017-08-06T21:42:31.680

Franck, you're forgetting that not very long ago most sources were only available in physical form anyway, so paywalling-or-not was irrelevant. Whether an article is behind a paywall or not is irrelevant w.r.t. citing it - in my opinion. If you used it, you need to cite it (choice of versions notwithstanding).

Of course, if you wrote your own paper and it really doesn't relate to paywalled work, then you don't have to cite any of it - but remember it might be relevant and you didn't know it.

Now, it would be interesting if you could make the argument "I did not cite paper X because I did not have the money to get the copy and read it" - but that's unlikely to be true unless you're, say, an undergrad from a poor country or something. And even then it probably won't be accepted.

score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 08 '16 at 19:59

It's a reason, it might even be a good moral reason, but how do you intend to communicate it at first? I'd hate to have to go through a round of reject/resub. in order to let the reviewers know that I didn't cite a critical and well-known reference on purpose. Also, it hardly seems fair not to cite an article that is relatively ancient which was written, submitted, and published when authors had no or few alternatives for submission and this issue was not so hot. The Elsevier math journal boycott seems to have petered out, do you expect that another boycott is going to pick up steam?

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 13 '16 at 16:12

If an author studies certain papers and they contribute to the work, such that the citations would actually show where certain ideas came from, then by omitting them, the author behaving like a hypocrite at best and plagiarist at worst.

If there is a paywalled paper that you didn't actually read, you shouldn't cite it, because then you're only citing it to stuff your list of citations. If someone were to interrogate you about that cited paper, you would be immediately exposed as not knowing anything about it beyond the superficial summary of its results given in the non-paywalled abstract.

Useless citations that exist just for the sake of inflating the list of citations (to make the paper appear more important and more thoroughly researched) should be trimmed, regardless of whether they are paywalled.

If you did read the paywalled paper, then it behooves your readers to know that you read that paper, and to make up their own minds whether they want to chase the citation through the paywall. You're not actually yourself conforming to the ideology of eschewing paywalled papers, so don't foist that ideology on your readers.

score 3 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 09 '16 at 23:32

If, by some marvelous coincidence, all the most relevant papers are non-paywalled it would be mostly okay. You absolutely must cite any paper whose work you're building on, regardless of the paywall. If you use any information/data/ideas from a paper, you have to cite it. To do otherwise is academic dishonesty. I wouldn't say that you can "refuse" to cite any paper for any reason. If it so happens that your paper doesn't need to cite any paywalled papers, then you're in the clear. This happens a lot in physics, where the most relevant papers are often free. If you have read a paywalled paper and it helped you in any way with the paper you're working on: cite it.

On a side note, if you're at a university, corporation, or research facility, they usually provide free access to a majority of the reputable journals out there.

Joel · Answer 12 · 2016-02-11T23:30:04.777

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It would be fine not to cite paywalled articles. You just have to make sure that for readers to understand the context of your work the paywalled articles are all completely and totally irrelevant.

If on the other hand the work is relevant and you don't cite it, then I (and most reviewers) would advise the editor to reject your article.

Translation - if being paywalled is the basis for not citing the paper then most reviewers would recommend rejection.

edited Feb 11 '16 at 23:30

answered Feb 08 '16 at 23:43

Joel

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Note - since I've gotten a surprising number of downvotes, I'm curious for anyone else downvoting - do you disagree with my answer that you have to cite all relevant work whether paywalled or not? Or do you think I've somehow failed to answer the question? – Joel Feb 11 '16 at 22:56
I did not downvote, but downvoting signifies "This answer is not useful." If people find this answer not useful for whatever reason, downvoting is warranted. If an "answer" fails to answer the question, then flagging is warranted instead. – Michael Hoffman Feb 11 '16 at 23:06
@MichaelHoffman - I recognize what downvoting is supposed to signify (I've got 5000ish reputation across stack exchange). But I recognize that people might find this "not useful" because they disagree with my answer or they feel I didn't answer the question. Whether/how I should edit the answer is very different depending on why they feel it is not useful. So I am asking anyone else downvoting if they would explain which it is. – Joel Feb 11 '16 at 23:17
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I mostly only get downvoted when I don't give knee-jerk support to charging authors for writing. – Joanna Bryson Feb 25 '16 at 02:17

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 25 '16 at 02:15

Are you aware that the decision of the international community not to cite research done on Jewish prisoners by Nazis was considered highly controversial? There was no question that the knowledge had come by unethical means, but the question was whether it is right to flush away any human knowledge? Given the arguments over that, it's pretty unlikely that an academic community would back you shunning those who prefer the traditional strategy of charging readers over the new strategy of charging the authors.

Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers?

13 Answers13

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