[FSF India] [NEWS] Scientists Demand Open Access to Research Papers

[Raj Singh]

Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org/)

Should the record of scientific research be privately owned and controlled?

We believe that the permanent, archival record of scientific research and
ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by publishers, but should
belong to the public, and should be made freely available.

We support the establishment of international online public libraries of
science that contain the complete text of all published scientific articles
in searchable and interlinked formats.

If you agree, we ask you to join 16,842 of your colleagues from 139
countries in signing an open letter that urges publishers to allow the
research reports that have appeared in their journals to be included in
electronic archives and to be read and used without obstruction.

Open Letter

We support the establishment of an online public library that would provide
the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly
discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully
searchable, interlinked form. Establishment of this public library would
vastly increase the accessibility and utility of the scientific literature,
enhance scientific productivity, and catalyze integration of the disparate
communities of knowledge and ideas in biomedical sciences.

We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a
legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific
communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record of
scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by
publishers, but should belong to the public, and should be freely available
through an international online public library.

To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor, we
pledge that, beginning in September, 2001, we will publish in, edit or
review for, and personally subscribe to, only those scholarly and
scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free
distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have
published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources,
within 6 months of their initial publication date.

======================= Related News Item ======================

Publish Free or Perish

Life scientists are urging publishers to grant free access to archived
research articles

When a molecular biologist or a biochemist has made a discovery -- often
after many months or even years of tedious experiments -- they tell the
rest of the world by publishing their results in a scientific journal. So
far, these journals have controlled who can read them and who cannot -- but
maybe not for much longer.

E-mail, Internet discussion groups, electronic databases and pre- or
e-print servers have already transformed the way scientists openly exchange
their results. And in the life sciences, researchers are now demanding that
their work be included in at least one free central electronic archive of
published literature, challenging the traditional ownership of publishers.
The demand has sparked widespread discussions among scientists, publishers,
scientific societies and librarians about the future of scientific
publishing. The outcome may be nothing short of a revolution in the
scientific publishing world.

It all started last fall, when an advocacy group called the Public Library
of Science (PLoS) distributed an electronic open letter urging scientific
publishers to hand over all research articles from their journals to public
online archives for free within six months of publication. To add weight to
their demands, the authors threatened a boycott starting in September 2001,
pledging to "publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to,
only those scholarly and scientific journals" that agreed. As of April 21,
2001 some 15,817 life scientists from 138 countries had signed the letter,
among them several Nobel laureates.

The authors of the letter feel they have every right to make these demands.
After all, it is the scientists who supply the journals with their
productsthe manuscriptsfor free. Scientists also help journals by reviewing
and judging the quality of each others work, a process called "peer
review," without pay. Publishers, in exchange, edit the articles, organize
the review process and provide news items and other content. Finally, they
produce, market and distribute a printed or electronic journal.

In the eyes of Michael Eisen, one of the initiators of the Public Library
of Science initiative, the work that publishers do, however, does not
justify that they then own the copyrights to the articles. "We think of the
publishers as being like a midwife," he says. "They are paid for their
role, and at the end of the day, they give the baby back to the parents."

Publishers argue that unless they own the copyright, they cannot protect
articles from misuse. And scientific publishing is big business: like other
scientific societies, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), for example, finances most of its activities with income
from its publication, Science magazine. "I think scientists all over would
be shocked to realize what a phenomenally lucrative business scientific
publishing can be," Nicholas Cozzarelli, editor-in-chief of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), says. "There are
huge sums of money to be had in this field."

Journals Don't Play the Game

What urged the authors of the open letter into action was the slow progress
of PubMed Central, a free electronic full-text archive of research articles
started by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the
NIH in early 2000. By storing articles in a common format on a single site,
PubMed Central wants to facilitate sophisticated literature searchesfor
instance, those restricted to certain parts of a paper, such as the figure
legends. Ultimately it also wants to link the literature to other online
databases.

PubMed Central asks journals to contribute their articles voluntarily as
soon as possible after publication -- at most after a year -- giving the
journals time to offer exclusive access to make a profit (studies have
shown that the demand for research papers decreases sharply after only a
few months). But so far, only seven journals, including PNAS and a
collection of e-journals, are participating, and a few additional journals
have signed up. Even though some journals make their back issues freely
available at their own Web sites, they are reluctant to give them away
elsewhere. "Journals have just not wanted to play the game," Eisen says.

In physics, free electronic archives are old hat. Scientists have been
submitting their own research papers -- both before and after publication
-- to the Los Alamos e-print archive since 1991, without the participation
of publishers, which simply had to accept the practice. Yet the American
Physical Society, for example, still sells subscriptions to three journals
that publish 14,000 research articles a year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, though, many publishers, threatened with either
financial losses or a boycott, have been overtly hostile to the open
letter. A number of scientific societies depend on the income from their
journals to support their activities. But some scientists liken this system
to a tax on their papers and think societies should subsidize their
activities in other ways.

Also, some journals worry that outside archives hosting their articles will
introduce errors into the files, lowering the reliability of the
information. What if a ug (microgram) suddenly becomes a mg (milligram)?
PubMed Central actually detected errors in some of the papers they were
given, thereby increasing the overall quality. "The more eyes to look at it
and fingers trying to work with it, the more things you can find," says
David Lipman, director of the NCBI.

On another level, some publishers resent a central, NIH-run archive like
PubMed Central because they fear that technical failures would affect all
users at once, and because the government might impose restrictions in the
future, for example, by ruling not to publish certain kinds of research. On
the other hand, PubMed, another NIH-managed database that grants free
access to references and abstracts from 4,300 biomedical journals and links
back to their Web sites, has been extremely successful and popular among
both scientists and publishers.

Moreover, publishers point out that a commercial electronic archive,
managed by HighWirePress and including nearly 250 journals from many
scientific disciplines, already exists and that government money is wasted.
Unlike access to PubMed Central, however, most of the HighWire Press
journals are not free.

As a group, commercial publishers appear unsure about the recent
developments and do not seem to have formulated their policies yet.
Elsevier Science, Nature Publishing Group (a sister company to Scientific
American, which is not a peer-reviewed journal), Cell Press and Academic
Press declined interview requests, and Springer Verlag, as well as Allen
Press, did not return phone calls. In a written statement, Annette Thomas,
managing director of the Nature Publishing Group, commented that "many
complex issues have been raised, and we are currently soliciting feedback
from scientists, librarians, and other interested parties."

Charging Authors, Not Readers

One of the main questions to come from the current controversy is, Who will
pay for publishing original research articles in the future if
subscriptions decline? Only a small fraction of the publication costs of a
print journal -- some estimate as little as 10 percent -- covers the
editorial and peer review process. Many journals produce a costly print
edition and add news, review articles and other valuable information, for
which they have to pay. To offset their costs, journals derive income
largely from subscriptions, as well as from advertisements, both in print
and online, and reprints.

But since subscriber numbers may decrease if the access to journal
information becomes free elsewhere, various publishers are thinking about
changing their business model: instead of billing readers, they plan to
bill authors, a practice that is already common in the form of page
charges. Overall, these submission charges would amount to only a small
fraction of a scientist's total research costs, they say, and could easily
be included in research budgets. Libraries, freed from subscription
charges, could also chip in on behalf of authors at their institutions.

Publishers would make exceptions for researchers from poor countries to
ensure that no one is excluded for economic reasons. "We feel it is
probably a better system to put the charges on the authors than the other
way round," says Peter Newark, editorial director at BioMed Central, a
commercial publisher from the U.K. But steep submission charges could steer
budget-conscious scientists away from these publications.

Many libraries seem to be in favor of open access archives like PubMed
Central. "I think these are important efforts, and the library community is
very supportive of them," says Joseph Branin, director of the Ohio State
University libraries. In recent years, rapidly rising subscription rates
for scientific journals have forced libraries to cancel many titles. Most
of them now negotiate for electronic access to large sets of journals in
consortia, giving them greater bargaining power.

If journal articles became freely available after a while, some libraries
might stop subscribing to them. But for many scientists, instant access to
the literature is crucial to keep up with current developments, so
libraries will probably keep subscribing to the most important titles.
"Because its available freely over the Internet after the first year of
publication does not necessarily mean we are going to cancel our
subscriptions to those," Branin remarks. Smaller, specialist journals,
however, might be in danger of going out of business.

Libraries hope that subscription rates for the first few months -- before
free access takes hold -- will come down. But the opposite might be true:
if many libraries opted out, publishers might try to recover their costs
from the remaining ones. "And for those institutions, my own surely
included, this free information could be very expensive indeed," writes Ann
Okerson, a librarian at Yale University, in a contribution to a Nature Web
debate. Scientists and libraries in developing countries, which often
cannot afford subscriptions, would probably benefit most from free
electronic archives.

A Possible Compromise on the Horizon

Come September, will the scientists who signed the open letter really go
through with a boycott? Journals depend on their authors, but equally,
researchers in the life sciencesespecially young investigatorsneed to
publish in "brand name" journals, such as Cell, Nature and Science, to
advance their careers. "I can't afford to boycott these journals because my
career is not established yet," says an assistant professor from a New York
medical school, who asked to remain unnamed. Nobel Prize winners, on the
other hand, may find it easier to divert their papers to less established
publications.

One of the practical problems of a boycott would be providing enough
alternative journals for scientists to publish in. Some are thinking about
starting their own journals. In mathematics, for example, some editorial
boards in Europe have already left their commercial publishers and created
new titles at their own institutions. "They are finding that while it does
cost money, the costs are actually quite minimal," notes Mary Case of the
Association of Research Libraries. BioMed Central also offers to provide
the logistics for scientists who want to start their own journals. quote

That said, a possible compromise has recently appeared on the horizon: only
two weeks ago, PubMed Central announced it would allow participating
publishers to link back to their own Web sites, rather than insist that
they display full-text articles on the NIH server. PubMed Central would
still obtain a full-text copy for search purposes, but they would hide it
from public view. Many publishers are currently considering this solution.
"I think lots of publishers will grant free access after a period of time
on the basis proposed in this compromise," says Donald Kennedy,
editor-in-chief of Science. He also thinks that "under those circumstances,
the threat of a boycott will vanish."

But for Eisen and many others, such an arrangement doesn't go far enough.
Eisen still wants to see free access to alternative archives as well: "I
remain absolutely convinced that the real future of publishing, five years
out, is one in which nobody controls the literature."

Whatever the outcome, the scientific publishing world is in turmoil. Both
Nature and Science have started e-debates on their Web sites, and
contributions from many sides are pouring in. "It [the open letter] was not
an unreasonable proposal," Kennedy comments. "It has gotten a good
conversation started." In the end, it will probably be the authors who
decide the issue. As Case puts it, "It is the scientists who are going to
have to figure out how they want their work to be available."

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Scientists Demand Open Access to Research

Over 16,500 scientists from across the world have threatened to boycott all
journals that refuse to provide free public online access to their articles
within 6 months of publication. After all, the scientists provide the
articles free of charge. What's the excuse the journals use? They claim
that public archives introduce errors into the articles, making them
unreliable!

It sounds like scientists are getting a bit peeved now -- good for them.
The lesson that "No, you don't have to give up all your rights to your work
in exchange for publication anymore".

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