RE: Boycott Greedy Publishers

["De Beer, Jennifer" <jad@maties.sun.ac.za>]

Colleagues,

In a recent mail to the humanities computing list vol 14 no 805
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/> Ken Friedman posted i.a. the
original proposal by several prominent scholars urging the boycott of
journals that will not release articles to free archives. I have extracted
the most salient points (see below) from said mail. The content is
included as follows:

1 - The original proposal as published in Science
2 - Science's response

Regards,

Jennifer De Beer
---
IT - Universiteit Stellenbosch University
(W3) sun.ac.za


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1 ORIGINAL PROPOSAL

Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature

Richard J. Roberts,* Harold E. Varmus, Michael Ashburner, Patrick O.
Brown, Michael B. Eisen, Chaitan Khosla, Marc Kirschner, Roel Nusse,
Matthew Scott, Barbara Wold

Since the time of the great library of Alexandria, scholars have
recognized the value of central repositories of knowledge. As scientists,
we are particularly dependent on ready and unimpeded access to our
published literature, the only permanent record of our ideas, discoveries,
and research results, upon which future scientific activity and progress
are based. The growth of the Internet is changing the way we access this
literature, as more scientific journals produce online editions to
supplement or replace printed versions. We urge journal publishers, their
editors, and all working scientists to join together to create public,
electronic archives of the scientific literature, containing complete
copies of all published scientific papers.

Anyone who has spent time in a library searching for a key paper, result,
or method will immediately see one of the benefits of comprehensive
repositories. Those gems of information that are often buried within
papers, but are not referred to in the abstract or keywords, will become
readily retrievable. You will be able to locate descriptions of methods or
find the original data that underlie crucial conclusions. You will be able
to trace connections between observations originally scattered among many
papers in different journals and databases. However, the value of central
archives goes well beyond facilitated searching and retrieval. Bringing
all of the scientific literature together in a common format will
encourage the development of new, more sophisticated, and valuable ways of
using this information, much as GenBank has done for DNA sequences.

Some have argued that central repositories are of no additional value
because many journals already make their online contents freely available
after some delay through their own Web sites. However, material that is
freely accessible, on a controlled basis, one paper at a time, at a
journal's Web site differs from material that is freely accessible in a
single comprehensive collection. The latter can be efficiently indexed,
searched, and linked to, whereas the former cannot. Imagine how much less
useful DNA sequences would be if instead of GenBank and other global
repositories, we had dozens of smaller sequence collections that could
only be accessed one at a time through a genome center's Web site. Only by
creating repositories with uniform, explicitly defined, and structured
formats, can a dynamic digital archive of life science research literature
become possible. Unimpeded access to these archives and open distribution
of their contents will enable researchers to take on the challenge of
integrating and interconnecting the fantastically rich, but extremely
fragmented and chaotic, scientific literature.

To ensure that complete public scientific archives become a fully workable
reality, the necessary infrastructure must be constructed. The National
Institutes of Health has taken an important step by creating PubMed
Central (PMC) (1) with the goal of storing the life sciences literature in
digital form and providing free and convenient access, linked to the
popular bibliographical database, PubMed. We envision PMC as only the
first of many public archives. However, such archives will not realize
their potential until they are populated. This requires that journal
publishers allow their digital content to be distributed and used through
online public archives. Several journals, including the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, the British Medical Journal, Nucleic Acids
Research, Molecular Biology of the Cell, and the BioMed Central (2)
journals, have already agreed to deposit their content with PMC,
following, at most, a short delay after print publication. Publishers now
have a wonderful opportunity to reinforce their partnership with the
scientific community by supporting extant archives like PMC and by
allowing archival material to be freely used and distributed, and we
strongly urge them to do so. It would be natural and simple for journals
that have already decided to make their back issues freely accessible at
their own Web sites to make the same content available in electronic
archives. The costs of participating in open archives would be minimal and
would be more than offset by the benefits their participation would bring
to the scientific community.

Historically, publishers have left the job of archiving to the libraries.
Library archives have become more accessible as we have moved from indexed
abstract books to rapidly updated online abstract searching tools. Public
online archives should be viewed as the logical continuation of this
tradition and, thus, as a complement to the publisher's normal activities.
For electronic archives to assume this role fully, decades of volumes that
currently exist only in printed form will need to be digitized. We do not
expect journals to bear the cost of the digital conversion of their
printed archives. Indeed, efforts to raise the necessary funds are under
way, so that digital conversion of archival volumes can proceed rapidly.

It is important not only that PMC succeed, but also that other
institutions be encouraged to provide independent online sites for the
distribution and use of the same comprehensive archives. Multiple
independent online sites will help ensure ready access for users around
the world and will guarantee that no single government or institution can
control access to our common scientific heritage. This diversity will also
foster innovation in the ways the material in the archives is used.

We feel that if journal editors and publishers were to poll their authors
and readers, they would find overwhelming support for such archives. The
strength of this support is demonstrated by the growing list of scientists
who have signed an open letter (3) advocating free and unrestricted
distribution of scientific literature 6 months after publication. We urge
our colleagues, especially students and the younger members of the
scientific community, to make your views heard. If these efforts are
successful, in 10 years, everyone's ability to do science will have been
greatly enriched, and we will all wonder how it was possible to work
without such archives.

References and Notes

1. www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
2. www.biomedcentral.com
3. www.publiclibraryofscience.org

--

R. J. Roberts, New England Biolabs, Beverly, MA 01915, USA. H. E. Varmus,
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10021, USA. M.
Ashburner, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EH, UK, and EMBL-European
Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK. P. O. Brown, Stanford
University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. M. B. Eisen,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, and University
of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. C. Khosla, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA 94305, USA. M. Kirschner, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
02115, USA. R. Nusse and M. Scott, Stanford University School of Medicine,
B. Wold, Biology Division, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
CA 91125, USA.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: roberts@neb.com

Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Available online at URL
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318a>.

********************************************************
2 SCIENCE'S RESPONSE:

Is a Government Archive the Best Option? The Editors

Rich Roberts and his colleagues have constructed a thoughtful argument for
an online archive of published science. A seamless way of getting access
to the scientific literature is an objective many scientists have sought,
and the version outlined in the Roberts piece is being pursued with vigor
and understandable passion by its advocates. We admire the goal, and
suspect that evolutionary forces may be moving us toward it. We have
decided to make our own back research reports and articles freely
available after 12 months--at our own Web site--later this year.

The specific proposal of Roberts et al. goes further. It urges our readers
to sign a petition that "advocates the free and unrestricted distribution
of scientific literature 6 months after publication." Actually, the
petition does quite a bit more than that. It urges an economic boycott:
signers agree not to submit papers to, review for, or subscribe to
journals that do not submit to the petition's proposals. To begin a
conversation among scholars with a threat of economic boycott is
unfortunate.

However, we would rather focus on the qualities that Roberts et al.
believe are essential to the archive they advocate. It should include all
scientific papers and the content should be in a common format that allows
for advanced search capabilities. Content should be free and "open
distribution" should be allowed. PubMed Central (PMC) is given as the
model of an archive that will meet these criteria. We believe other
alternatives exist that can meet most of these goals faster and more
effectively without putting nonprofit scholarly publishing at risk.

There already are multiple-journal sites--for example, the nonprofit
HighWire Press (HWP), which archives over 230 journals, including
biological, physical and interdisciplinary papers. More than 200,000
articles are freely available at this site. By comparison, there are only
about a dozen journals at PMC, limited currently to biology.

Advocates of PMC argue that sites in which each journal is archived
separately are insufficiently integrated. But searching across
multi-journal, full-text repositories is already possible at sites such as
HWP. In addition, 60% of this content is in a common format already. Why
not begin with the already populated venue and add the integration, rather
than the other way around? Why not use taxpayer dollars to promote
innovative search technologies that do not require taking control of
services provided by the private sector?

The proposition of Roberts et al. raises problems for Science, and for
other journals. First, it will reroute an economically important source of
online traffic for journals that offer content and other products on their
sites. Second, unlimited redistribution of content could lead to misuse of
content and loss of quality control. Third, it may expose users to risks
historically associated with monopoly suppliers. For example, recently
PubMed--on which PMC will depend--unexpectedly failed to process new
content for over a month, inconveniencing authors and publishers.

We also wonder whether enough attention has been given to some of the
economic issues. Experience shows that demand for scientific papers drops
to about 1/10th within 4 to 5 months, but then continues at a low level
for years. We plan to track our experience with free back issues
carefully, but in the meanwhile, we take little comfort from the assurance
that "costs of participation in open archives will be minimal."
Subscription and advertising revenue will be at some risk and transferring
primary access to someone else's site may expose us to further losses. The
value we add--through peer review, perspective and context-setting
analysis of research, and good news coverage--requires revenue support
from advertising. Moreover, Science supports other activities of
AAAS--including science and public policy, kindergarten through 12th-
grade education, a career-mentoring Web site for young scientists, and
innovative "knowledge environments." These benefit scientists from all
fields. Posting our back content on a site that primarily serves
biomedical scientists would confer a benefit on one group by taking
benefits away from another--creating, in effect, a transfer payment from
the sciences in general to biology in particular. That bothers us.

We worry, too, about another group of journals that will be entering a
riskier environment. Our association is an umbrella organization,
including many specialized scientific societies as affiliates. Their more
focused journals must remain viable to ensure continued publishing options
in highly specialized fields and for younger scientists. In most cases,
academic library subscriptions provide the economic "floor" that
guarantees financial sustainability. If papers from specialized journals
were to become available on the PMC site, budget-conscious library
directors would be tempted to cancel subscriptions. Some of the signers of
the petition are scientists who belong to those very societies. Have they
considered that their initiative will put PMC in competition with their
own journals? When tax-exempt organizations go into competition with
commercial entities they must pay unrelated-business income tax. When
tax-supported organizations compete with commercial entities and
nonprofits, the public has usually raised strong objections.

There are also questions about whether the proposed location for PMC--the
National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of
Health--is the right one. NIH already sponsors, through its extramural
programs, much of the biomedical research PMC will archive. It regulates
the conduct of that research, controls much of the training of the next
generation of researchers, and archives primary data. It now proposes that
the results of the research it funds be given over by publishers and
authors to a server subject to its exclusive control. The Congress or the
President can eliminate support for certain kinds of science and have done
so in the past. Would PMC then be able to archive papers on those
subjects? Concentrating this kind of womb-to-tomb control in a single
federal agency has risks, and we should ask whether we are entirely
comfortable with a state-run, centrally managed economy in biomedicine.

Proponents of this plan include scientists of high reputation: Nobel
laureates, leaders of institutions, and others whom we all admire.
Nonetheless, we think its potential consequences require careful analysis
and policy debate. We at Science are determined to participate in a
constructive spirit.


Available online at URL
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5512/2318b>

***************************************************
Reference: Additional article re the proposal, published in The Chronicle of
Higher Education.

Olsen, Florence. 2001. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Online
Edition. Monday, March 26, 2001. 'Scholars Urge a Boycott of Journals That
Won't Release Articles to Free Archives' URL:
<http://chronicle.com/free/2001/03/2001032601t.htm>