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Open Access Journals, part 2 (October 14, 2007).
I'm giving a talk at the Grand Rounds for CMH on Thursday, October 17.
I'm using PowerPoint for this talk, and here is a summary for my web pages.
Open-access (OA) journals and their impact on research and the practice
of medicine.
This talk will cover the following topics:
- What is open-access (OA)?
- What are the historical antecedents to OA?
- What are the costs and benefits of OA?
- How you can help promote OA?
This presentation was inspired by a talk by Jim Pitman at the 2007 Joint
Statistics Meetings and which is summarized on the web at stat-www.berkeley.edu/users/pitman/ims_pres_address.pdf
What is open-access (OA)?
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free
of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm
Some journals provide partial support to OA. They might:
- allow OA for some articles,
- allow OA after a time delay, or
- allow authors to store copies on their personal web site or a
centralized repository.
OA is not public domain, because it does enforce several copyright
restrictions. Restrictions vary by the journal. The most common restriction on
copyright is the requirement that any user acknowledge the original source.
Most OA journals allow the author to maintain the original copyright. This
allows you to re-use your own work without having to get permission first.
OA is not (necessarily) low quality. OA is compatible with the peer-review
process and is capable of producing research of high quality.
PLoS Biology is ranked as the most highly cited general biology journal
by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), with an impact factor of
14.1.
www.plos.org/journals/index.html
There are several historical events which have laid the way for the OA
publication.
1. The Internet (1974). The Internet and especially the World Wide Web have greatly reduced the
costs of publishing and disseminating information. I don't have a good quote
or source on this, but hopefully, my audience will take it on faith. I'm
including a screen shot of the famous Al Gore quote about inventing the
Internet.
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative
in creating the Internet.
www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/
2. GNU (1984) and FSF (1985). I will show a screenshot of the
main page for GNU (www.gnu.org). GNU stands
for "GNU's Not Unix" (the acronym is a mathematical play on recursion). The
GNU operating system, developed under the direction of Richard Stallman, represents the first
major effort to produce a major software project where the software was freely
distributed and where the source code for the software was openly published.
The Free Software Foundation was set up to promote similar efforts for other
software projects.
3. Cheap digital storage (1988). It's difficult to put a date on
when digital storage became cheap, but one important development that allowed
cheap digitial storage, was the discovery of giant magnetoresistance by Albert
Fert and Peter Grunberg that won them the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. I am
including a screenshot of the New York Times article mentioned below.
Dr. Fert, 69, and Dr. Gr'nberg, 68, each working independently in 1988,
discovered an effect known as giant magnetoresistance, in which tiny changes
in a magnetic field can produce huge changes in electrical resistance. The
effect is at the heart of modern gadgets that record data, music or snippets
of video as a dense magnetic patchwork of zeros and ones, which is then
scanned by a small head and converted to electrical signals.
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/world/10nobel.html
4. arXiv (1991). The development of preprint servers for papers in mathematics and physics.
I will show a screenshot of the main page for arXiv (www.arxiv.org)
arXiv (pronounced "archive", as if the "X" were the Greek letter Chi or
Χ) is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields
of mathematics, physics, computer science and quantitative biology which can
be accessed via the Internet. In many fields of mathematics and physics,
almost all scientific papers are placed on the arXiv. As of September 2007,
arXiv.org contains over 440,000 e-prints, with roughly four thousand new
e-prints added every month.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv
5. PubMed Central (2000). PubMed Central is a resource sponsored by
NIH that allows journals to contribute their articles to an archive that is
free and open to the public. When you are performing a PubMed search, you can
set one of the search limits to restrict your search to articles that have the
full free text available in PubMed Central.
PubMed Central (PMC) is the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
Participation by publishers in PMC is voluntary, although participating
journals must meet certain editorial and technical standards. PMC, itself, is
not a publisher. Access to PMC is free and unrestricted.
www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/faq.html
6. The Public Library of Science (2001). The Public Library of
Science (PLoS) is a publishing project that produces several journals
(including PLoS Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS
Medicine, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLoS ONE, and PLoS Pathogens).
These journals require that the authors pay a fee for submission (currently
$900) and make the content available for free under an open source license. I
am inlcuding a screen shot from the PLoS main page (www.plos.org).
PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to
making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public
resource. www.plos.org
7. Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001). This meeting, held in
Budapest and sponsored by the Open Society Institute.
The Open Society Institute (OSI), a private operating and grantmaking
foundation, aims to shape public policy to promote democratic governance,
human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. On a local level, OSI
implements a range of initiatives to support the rule of law, education,
public health, and independent media. At the same time, OSI works to build
alliances across borders and continents on issues such as combating corruption
and rights abuses.
George Soros is founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute and
the Soros foundations network. He is also the chairman of Soros Fund
Management LLC.
www.soros.org/about
The first paragraph of this initiative reads:
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an
unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists
and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals
without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is
the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic
distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and
unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and
other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will
accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the
poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be,
and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual
conversation and quest for knowledge.
www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
8. Ancestor (2007).
9. Journal of Topology (2008).
Who pays the bills? There are many economic models for publication,
but the most common models are:
- 'Author pays' model
- 'Reader pays' model
There are also hybrid models that combine these two approaches. Other
revenues, such as advertising, apply equally well to both models.
Academic journals are "paradise" for commercial publishers.
First the public pays for most scientific research through, for example,
the National Science Foundation. Then universities pay the salaries of
scientists who do virtually all the writing, reviewing and editing.
Universities sometimes even provide free office space to journals. Finally,
authors typically sign over their copyright to publishers, who can sometimes
bring in many millions of dollars a year in subscriptions for a single
high-priced journal ' subscriptions paid by university libraries supported by
tax dollars and tuition.
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E1DC173AF93BA35751C1A96E958260
Who benefits from OA? Although there is controversy over the general
benefits versus costs of OA, some parties clearly benefit:
- medical professionals in the developing world,
- patients researching their own disease,
- students/teachers (especially high school), and
- researchers studying research publications at the 'Meta' level.
OA increases research visibility. There are many studies that have
shown this, but one of the best looked at a series of articles published
between June and December 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. The researchers tracked the publications over time to see how often
they were cited by other publications.
A total of 1,492 original research articles were analyzed: 212 (14.2% of
all articles) were OA articles paid by the author, and 1,280 (85.8%) were
non-OA articles. In April 2005 (mean 206 d after publication), 627 (49.0%) of
the non-OA articles versus 78 (36.8%) of the OA articles were not cited
(relative risk = 1.3 [95% Confidence Interval: 1.1'1.6]; p = 0.001). 6 mo
later (mean 288 d after publication), non-OA articles were still more likely
to be uncited (non-OA: 172 [13.6%], OA: 11 [5.2%]; relative risk = 2.6
[1.4'4.7]; p < 0.001). The average number of citations of OA articles was
higher compared to non-OA articles (April 2005: 1.5 [SD = 2.5] versus 1.2 [SD
= 2.0]; Z = 3.123; p = 0.002; October 2005: 6.4 [SD = 10.4] versus 4.5 [SD =
4.9]; Z = 4.058; p < 0.001).
biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157
Various groups have offered support for OA. Here are some important
ones.
The Medical Library Association (MLA) supports both the concept of open
access to information generated from federally funded scientific and medical
research and current copyright law, and maintains that having access to
timely, relevant, and accurate information is vital to the health of our
nation and its education and research programs.
www.mlanet.org/government/info_access/openaccess_statement.html
Beginning May 2, 2005, NIH-funded investigators are requested to submit
to the NIH National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) an
electronic version of the author's final manuscript upon acceptance for
publication, resulting from research supported, in whole or in part, with
direct costs from NIH. The author's final manuscript is defined as the final
version accepted for journal publication, and includes all modifications from
the publishing peer review process.
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html
[The Wellcome Trust] requires electronic copies of any research papers
that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are
supported in whole or in part by Wellcome Trust funding, to be deposited into
PubMed Central (PMC) or UK PMC once established, to be made freely available
as soon as possible and in any event within six months of the journal
publisher's official date of final publication.
www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html (Note: according to WIkipedia,
The Wellcome Trust is a United Kingdom-based charity established in 1936 to
administer the fortune of the American-born pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry
Wellcome. Its income was derived from what was originally called Burroughs
Wellcome & Co, later renamed in the UK as the Wellcome Foundation Ltd (Wellcome
plc). The trust is the world's second richest medical charity after the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, with net assets at 30 September 2006 of over
'13.4 billion ($26.8 billion). The trust states its mission as being "to
foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal
health." In addition to funding biomedical research, it supports the public
understanding of science.)
[The Max Planck Institute's] mission of disseminating knowledge is only
half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to
society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the
classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via
the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive
source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the
scientific community.
www.mpg.de/pdf/openaccess/BerlinDeclaration_en.pdf (Note: according to
Wikipedia, The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur F'rderung der Wissenschaften e. V.
(abbreviated MPG, meaning Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science)
is an independent German non-profit research organization funded by the
federal and state governments. The Max Planck Society has a world-leading
reputation as a science & technology research organization. In 2006, the Times
Higher Education Supplement rankings[1] of non-university research
institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the Max
Planck Society as no.1 in the world for science research, and no.3 in
technology research (behind AT&T and the Argonne National Laboratory in the
United States).
What you can do to support OA. Jim Pitman has a list of
recommendations that I have excerpted for my talk.
Readers:
- Encourage your librarians to subscribe to journals published by
societies supporting OA.
- Encourage your departments and universities to support OA
publication.
- Acknowledge the value of high quality OA publications in promotion
cases.
Authors:
- Preferably submit your articles to society-run journals with
copyright agreements which allow self-archiving of final versions on arXiv;
open access to publisher version, at least after some delay; and re-use of
content in derivative works.
- Don't sign restrictive copyright agreements: amend them to retain
the right to post the final version of your work on arXiv or other open
access repository.
Referees/editors:
- Refuse to work for journals with overly restrictive copyright
policies.
- Work for society-run journals which promote OA publication.
- Work to raise the standard of OA journals to be more attractive to
authors than commercial journals.
stat-www.berkeley.edu/users/pitman/ims_pres_address.pdf
Summary. OA journals offer digital content at no cost and with
limited copyright restrictions. OA journals offer benefits to medical
professionals in developing countries, improve the visibility of your
research. Since so much of the research endeavor is supported by taxpayer
money, there is an obligation to offer this research openly and without
limitation. There are many things that you can do to promote OA.
Here are some resources I probably will not use in my talk.
What does the term "free" in "free software" really mean?
The term "free software" is sometimes misunderstood--it has nothing to
do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition of free
software. A program is free software, for you, a particular user, if:
- You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To
make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the
source code, since making changes in a program without having the source
code is exceedingly difficult.)
- You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a
fee.
- You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the
program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.
Since "free" refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction
between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies
is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the
community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free
software development. Therefore, a program that people are not free to include
on these collections is not free software.
www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/stallman.html
Note that this quote is from a book, that sells for $24.95, but which
includes the entire contents online for free.
The Ingelfinger Rule and its relationship to pre-publication.
The following quote is a bit dated, but shows is consistent with the
medical journals hostility towards pre-publication. Michael Gottlieb had noted
in 1981 an unusual series of five patients with Pneumocystis carinii and
wanted to get word out rapidly about this.
"I've got something here that's bigger than Legionnaire's," he said.
"What's the shortest time between submission and publication?"
The editor explained it would take three months to send the story around
to a panel of expert reviewers who would make sure that it was scientifically
sound. There would be another delay between the time the review was finished
and the publication date, he said. He didn't need to tell Gottlieb about eh
ironclad rule that the journal, like virtually all major scientific
publications, maintained about the secrecy of material about to be published.
If there was any leak whatsoever to the popular press about the research, the
journal would pull the story from its pages.
"We'd like to see it," the editor concluded. "Sounds interesting, but
there's no way we can guarantee that it will be published."
But this is an emergency, Gottlieb thought as he hung up the phone in
frustration. You don't just run business as usual in an emergency.
And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts, page 63.
In fairness to gated journals, they do offer better alternatives today in a
medical emergency. Nevertheless, many medical journals today do not allow
pre-publication in an archive repository. This is part of a controversial
policy called the Ingelfinger rule.
Ingelfinger rule: The policy of considering a manuscript for
publication only if its substance has not been submitted or reported
elsewhere. This policy was promulgated in 1969 by Franz J. Ingelfinger, then
the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. The aim of the Ingelfinger
rule was to protect the Journal from publishing material that had already been
published and thus had lost its originality.
www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13488
Another nice resource about the Ingelfinger Rule is
Pro/con debate about "author pays" model. There is a nice pair of
articles in the BMJ which take opposite viewpoints about OA and the "author
pays" model of research.
- Scientific literature's open sesame? Charging authors to publish
could provide free access for all. Tony Delamothe, Fiona Godlee, Richard
Smith. BMJ 2003; 326: 945-946 (3 May).
[Full text]
[PDF]
- Open access publishing: too much oxygen? Jeffrey K Aronson. BMJ
2005; 330:759 (2 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7494.759.
[Full text]
[PDF]
[extra
resources]
A sharply critical view of Open Access was published by Nature.
BioMed Centeral has a list of 11 myths about OA.
- Myth 1 The cost of providing Open Access will reduce the availability of
funding for research
- Myth 2 Access is not a problem - virtually all UK researchers have the
access they need
- Myth 3 The public can get any article they want from the public library
via interlibrary loan
- Myth 4 Patients would be confused if they were to have free access to
the peer-reviewed medical literature on the web
- Myth 5 It is not fair that industry will benefit from Open Access
- Myth 6 Open Access threatens scientific integrity due to a conflict of
interest resulting from charging authors
- Myth 7 Poor countries already have free access to the biomedical
literature
- Myth 8 Traditionally published content is more accessible than Open
Access content as it is available in printed form
- Myth 9 A high quality journal such as Nature would need to charge
authors '10,000-'30,000 in order to move to an Open Access model
- Myth 10 Publishers need to make huge profits in order to fund innovation
- Myth 11 Publishers need to take copyright to protect the integrity of
scientific articles
www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/inquiry/myths/
This webpage was written on 2007-10-14
and was last modified on
2008-07-08.
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