BMN News: Profit vs. Public Access

J.W. Bizzaro • September 9, 2001

BMN News: Profit vs. Public Access

``Publishers of established scientific journals have thus far resisted demands for freer access. In its campaign to make biomedical research literature available free online, Public Library of Science is now taking a new tack: It hopes to publish peer-reviewed, electronic journals.

```If we really want to change the publication of scientific research, we must do the publishing ourselves,' says an announcement posted Sept. 1 on the group's Web site. `It is time for us to work together to create the journals we have called for.'

``For months, the group has called for journals to support a free, fully searchable archive of all research and scholarly articles in medicine and the life sciences. The most visible aspect of the campaign is a petition: 26,948 scientists from 170 countries have signed an open letter endorsing the central archive and urging publishers to participate.

``According to the letter, signers pledge that beginning September, they will `publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to, only those scholarly and scientific journals' that freely distribute articles to a public repository like PubMed Central within six months of publication.

``That promise will be tough to keep. In response to the campaign, a growing number of journals have begun making articles freely available on the Internet. But only a handful meets all the demands of the open letter. Only one journal, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), is in what the group calls `full compliance.'

```If all 26,000 people were to try to publish their work in PNAS, that obviously wouldn't work,' said Roeland Nusse, professor of developmental biology at Stanford University, and a member of the Public Library of Science open letter advocacy group.
[...]
``The group is currently seeking funds and editorial board members. The venture would operate under a non-profit banner, Public Library of Science Journals. The costs of peer review, editorial oversight and publication would be covered at least partly by charges to authors, approximately $300 per published article, but subsidized for scientists who cannot afford them. The group has negotiated tentative terms of a service contract with an established online publisher and hopes to begin publishing early next year.''

Full story (requires ``free registration''):
http://news.bmn.com/news/story?day=010905&story=2

Public Library of Science:
http://publiclibraryofscience.org

Reference by Snowdeal.org.

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