Www.plos.org Is open access publishing for you? May 16 2008 Gavin Yamey MD MA MRCP Senior Editor,...
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www.plos.org Is open access publishing for you? May 16 2008 Gavin Yamey MD MA MRCP Senior Editor, PLoS Medicine Consulting Editor, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
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Transcript of Www.plos.org Is open access publishing for you? May 16 2008 Gavin Yamey MD MA MRCP Senior Editor,...
www.plos.org
Is open access publishing for you?
May 16 2008
Gavin Yamey MD MA MRCPSenior Editor, PLoS Medicine
Consulting Editor, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
www.plos.org
A depressing story—from Indonesia
A group of junior doctors goes online to search the literature
• Most articles are only available as “pay per view” or via subscription
• The current medical publishing system bars them from access
Ham MF et al. Open-access publishing. Lancet. 2004;364:24-5.
www.plos.org
Another depressing story—from Africa
The WHO asks James Tumwine to investigate an outbreak of “nodding disease” in Sudan
• Literature review: access denied
Yamey G. Africa's visionary editor. BMJ, Oct 2003; 327: 832.
www.plos.org
Another one—from the UK
“Even as an international NGO based in the UK, we don't have enough money in our budget to take subscriptions to all the interesting journals we might wish for”
www.plos.org
And another—from the US
“The ‘unbearable cost’ of accessing journals means that even the world’s richest libraries, such as the Harvard University Libraries, cannot access some of the crucial biomedical literature.”
Yamey G, Excluding the Poor from Accessing the Health Literature: A Rights Violation that Impedes Global Health. Health and Human Rights (in press) www.hhrjournal.org
www.plos.org
Yet another depressing story—UK and Africa
The director of the world's largest medical research charity receives notification from one of his funded investigators in Africa reporting exciting progress toward the development of a malaria vaccine
The work has just been published, so he goes online:
Access Denied
www.plos.org
Perhaps the most depressing story of all…..
“I met a physician from SA, engaged in preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission, whose primary access to information was abstracts online…Based on a single abstract, they had altered their perinatal HIV prevention program from an effective therapy to one with lesser efficacy……… Their decision to alter treatment based solely on the abstract's conclusions may have resulted in increased perinatal HIV transmission.”
www.plos.org
The problem• Biomedical research results—a treasury of
medical knowledge—are privately owned and sold only to those who can afford it
• Publishers make huge profits by restricting access
• I believe medical research results should be considered a global public good (most is funded by the public)
• Access to this knowledge: a global public health crisis
www.plos.org
The solution: make all research results freely available online
“It is now possible to share the results of medical research with anyone, anywhere, who could benefit from it. How could we not do it?”
Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate, PLoS Co-founder
www.plos.org
What I’d like to talk about today
• The current medical/scientific publishing system
• Why that system is broken and unsustainable
• How the system impedes scientific progress and public health
• Open access publishing: ▪ a healthier alternative▪ how we fund it at PLoS
www.plos.org
The private ownership of research results
• You write the research paper
• You give your work to publishers, you hand over copyright to them, they then sell it to wealthy readers
• A high profile drug trialcan earn a journal $1min reprint sales
• The work is subject to extremely tight copyright restrictions
www.plos.org
Medical & scientific publishing is big business
• Worth $5 billion/year
• Reed Elsevier (market leader): profits of $290m/yr
• Massachusetts Medical Society: listed $US 88 million in total publishing revenue for yr ending May 31, 2005
• Fastest growing sub-sector of the media industry for the past 15 years
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Copyright is used to protect profits
• Traditional publishers demand that authors give up ownership of their work
• Publishers sued copy shops for including copies of research articles in student course-packs without paying royalties to the publisher
• These articles were being used for educational purposes!
www.plos.org
Who gets to see the research results?
• Results of billions of dollars of research funding (NIH: $28bn in 2004) may be seen by only a small fraction of the intended audience, because it is published in journals that few individuals or institutions can afford to subscribe to.
• Annual subscription to Brain Research costs $21,269
www.plos.org
The Wellcome Trust’s position
The publishing of scientific research does not operate in the interests of scientists and the public, but is instead dominated by a commercial market intent on improving its market position
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-50
0
50
100
150
200
250
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1986
Journal prices
CPI/inflation
Journalspurchased
Things are getting worse:the “death spiral”
Source: Association of Research Libraries
www.plos.org
Not for public consumptionRestricted access to research funded by NIH
• Depression severity and drug injection HIV risk behaviors. Am J Psychiatry. 2003;160:1659-62
• Taste preferences and body weight changes in an obesity-prone population. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004;79:372-8.
• Structure of West Nile virus. Science. 2003;302:248.
www.plos.org
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Impeding global health
• Health professionals worldwide are starved of information; dangerously rely on abstracts
• Poverty of information hinders health system strengthening
• Impedes health research (we prevent researchers “standing on the shoulders of giants”)
• Impedes global scientific conversations• Subscription-based journals are forced
to ignore the health problems of the poor
www.plos.org
The logical alternative: open access publishing
• Subscription fees made sense before Internet
• Printing, binding, and mailing each additional paper copy cost additional amount
• But what online publishers do has a one time fixed cost (cost of 2 readers = cost of 2000 readers, so why charge all 2000 readers?)
• Recover this fixed cost up front
• Publisher is just a service provider (like a midwife)
www.plos.org
Research Funder
Publisher
Reader
$
How does open access work at PLoS?
Publishing is the final step in a research project
www.plos.org
Oct 2003Oct 2004 The Next
Generation“Open Access 2.0”
2005: Community Journals
www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, unrestricted online access
• Users are licensed to download, print, copy, redistribute, and create derivative works (CC Attribution License)
• Author retains the copyright (not the publisher), i.e. right to be credited
• Papers are deposited immediately in a public database that allows sophisticated searches
www.plos.org
Benefits of open access
• No longer will physicians and policymakers have to base their work on the half truths of abstracts
• For authors, reach and impact of work• For editors, free of space constraints, can
offer greater range of articles• For health/science community: post-
publication peer review, annotation, interaction, searching & mining
www.plos.org
Profound benefits to the public
• Patients and health organizations seeking reliable information
• Teachers looking for classroom materials• Journalists investigating health stories• Lawyers, policymakers, activists searching
for empirical studies that could inform their work on promoting human rights or protecting the environment
www.plos.org
Myths about open access
• MYTH: “Not peer reviewed”• MYTH: “Poor impact factors”• MYTH: “Excludes poorly funded
researchers”
www.plos.org
Who is propagating these myths?
www.plos.org
Once knowledge is truly in the public domain, the only limit
upon its use is our imagination…
www.plos.org
Creative Uses of PLoS Materials
www.plos.org
Creating a derivative work from a PLoS Medicine special issue
www.plos.org
Article on global epidemic of counterfeit drugs translated into Spanish
www.plos.org
Neonatal imitation in rhesus macaquesFerrari et al. PLoS Biol 4(9): e302
www.plos.org
New York Times learning network lesson plan
"Monkey See, Monkey Do" grades 6-8 and 9-12
www.plos.org
Ultrasonic songs of male miceHoly & Guo. PLoS Biol 3(12): e386
www.plos.org
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 8:27 PMTo: PLoSSubject: Thank you
Dear Public Library of Science people, I just listened to a mouse song on line… and I wanted to tell you how gratefulI am for your journal. I am a middle school science teacher. I do not have thefunds to subscribe to the traditional science journals.
Tomorrow my students will hear the same mouse song I listened to and I amsure they will be as enchanted and interested as I am. The idea of openaccess to original research papers is very exciting to someone in my position…
I can assure you that the availability of research papers will benefit the futureof scientific research by providing motivation and stimulation for millions offledgling scientists.
Sincerely, Science Teacher
www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
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What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
www.plos.org
What is open access?
• Free, immediate access online
• Unrestricted use
www.plos.org
A network of literature
Document
www.plos.org
A network of literature and data
Document
Database
www.plos.org
Text mining of full text articles
• The literature is vast
• Machines can be used to discover previously unknown information
www.plos.org
• Inclusive Scopeall of science and medicine
• Open Accessthe right to read, copy, distribute, and share
• High Capacityno length or volume restrictions
• Streamlined Productionacceptance to publication in 3 weeks
• Objective peer-reviewfocusing on scientific rigor
• Post-publication commentaryannotations, discussions, journal clubs, rankings
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PLoS Hubs
• “a window onto content in a specific field”
• PLoS Hubs will collect together OA articles from many journals, and will allow a group of people who are interested in the same subject to share their opinions and knowledge and ultimately to build a dynamic interactive community
www.plos.org
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There are many inequalities in medicine,
science, and health care. But access to the
latest peer-reviewed research results doesn’t
have to be one of them.
Gavin Yamey: [email protected]
