Re: NEJM editorial on open access

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 21:12:01 EDT liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:
> Two brief comments on John Sack's informative message:
> 
> 1.  I had read the NEJM editorial in the same way, namely that the authors
> were asking for the option to link to NEJM's (or other publishers' sites)
> rather than necessarily posting articles to PubMed Central.  If that is a
> publisher's preference, what would be amiss in permitting it?  In fact, it
> would seem to be an easier solution...

Either option (linking to the article at the publisher's web site or
maintaining a central repository) are not hard to accomplish.  For a
publisher to send an electronic copy to an author to forward to PMC or to
send directly to PMC, is not hard at all; it only takes a few seconds.

Whether a distributed system (using publishers' web sites) would be as
effective depends on such factors as whether the publisher can link
directlly to the article as opposed to the publishers's web site, journal
home page, etc., whether the URL for the article is stable, and whether
the article is archived & preserved at the publisher's own web page, or by
a third party, etc.  If the answers to these questions are different for
different publishers, then, IMHO, it would be more work at the PMC end to
track articles in a distributed system.

The issues are likely to be different with a distributed system based on
the institutional repository approach, as institutional repositories have
been designed with these questions in mind.

best,

Heather Morrison 
Project Coordinator 
BC Electronic Library Network
heatherm@eln.bc.ca