Call for Participation: Biological Research with Open-Access Publications

J.W. Bizzaro • May 26, 2001
Call for Participation: Biological Research with Open-Access Publications
Background:
Copyright on scientific communications (published articles and so forth) belongs to publishing companies and not to authors, for most publications. Scientists wishing to share relevant communications, even their own in some cases, face legal challenges from publishers.

Publishing companies charge expensive subscriptions to access scientific communications. Scientists in developing countries and poorly-endowed institutions, although intellectually on par with their peers, are severely hindered by this.

These two problems have prevented scientists from gaining any access, even for simple searches, to the full text of these communications.

Scientific communications are published in journals segregated by topic. This has resulted in confusion as to the best place to publish, retrieve or extract information (e.g., mathematical biology communications could be published in either a mathematical journal or a biological one).

Communications are also published in journals differing by publisher. This has caused the segregation of communications by the prestige of the journal (e.g., how difficult it is to be published in the journal and the composition of the readership). This has also allowed room for personal politics in scientific communication.

These two problems are compounded by the first two: with a limited budget, to which journals should one subscribe? What we are left with is an artificial selection, by publishers, of which communications are best suited to a scientist's field of study.

This may be the result of a competitive marketplace for readership, but is there an alternative to profit-based publications? Should there be? Can an alternative publication model be profitable for a publisher?

Additionally, even with the advent of computers, databases, and the World Wide Web, scientific communications are published as they were 100 years ago: as linear, printable text. And they are archived this way. While this makes good reading, it is not the best format for information retrieval or extraction.

All of these problems restrict information retrieval, extraction, and scientific inquiry. How do we resolve them? As the ultimate solution, should future communications be published in an "open-access, global knowledge-base"? Before or after information extraction techniques are applied?

Scope:
We are seeking several speakers who can address how the above problems might be solved. Topics may include author-owned copyrights, free or inexpensive subscriptions, uniform and multiple categories for communications, and archival of information in a manner suited for information retrieval and extraction, for example, knowledge bases.

Submission information:

Platform presentations only

Submit abstracts by: June 15, 2001

Decisions by: June 30, 2001

Submissions to: brie-oap-01[at]bioinformatics.org

Acceptable formats: PDF, postscript, RTF, MS Word

Length: one page maximum

PLEASE: include name, contact details, affiliation

Place and time:

Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark
* 9 AM to 5 PM, July 26, 2001

URL

http://bioinformatics.org/bof/brie-oap-01/

URL

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