[Rumori] Scientists demand copyright-free research results

[Kembrew McLeod]

Marquee Scientists Challenge
Expensive Medical Journals

By SHARON BEGLEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Thursday, June 26, 2003

In a challenge to the profitable business of science publishing, a 
marquee group of biomedical scientists is trying to move 
peer-reviewed research out of the exclusive world of expensive 
medical journals and make it freely available to everyone.

Hoping to facilitate that effort, Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D., Minn.) 
Thursday is introducing federal legislation that would exclude from 
U.S. copyright protection papers describing any research financed 
largely with federal dollars. Journals such as Cell, Neuron and 
Nature wouldn't own the papers they publish, as is now the case, a 
situation that enables them to charge for access to the documents. 
The bill also would require that all such papers be made available to 
everyone, presumably electronically, at no charge.

The initiative reflects the spreading frustration that papers based 
on some of the $50 billion in scientific and medical research funded 
by U.S. taxpayers every year aren't freely available to the people 
who paid for them. Currently, subscriptions to the journals can run 
into the thousands of dollars.

"It is fundamentally unfair when a breast-cancer patient cannot 
access federally funded research data paid for by her hard-earned tax 
dollars," said Rep. Sabo.

The astronomical costs of many scientific journals have led a growing 
number of universities to reduce the number they subscribe to, 
leaving their researchers without access, and has put them out of 
reach of scientists at cash-strapped institutions and in developing 
countries.

Brain Research, published by a unit of Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed 
Elsevier, can cost institutions $19,971 a year; Journal of 
Comparative Neurology, published by John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J., 
can cost $17,495; Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 
from Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer NV, can cost $7,540.

"The public is disenfranchised, as are scientists at less-wealthy 
institutions," says Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, former director of 
the National Institutes of Health, and current president of Memorial 
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Varmus is co-founder 
of the Public Library of Science, or PLoS, a nonprofit group based in 
San Francisco that is leading the open-access effort. PLoS, which 
also has the support of James Watson, co-discoverer of the famous DNA 
double helix, aims to launch a series of free-to-all, peer-reviewed 
biomedical journals beginning later this year, regardless of what 
happens with Rep. Sabo's legislation.

The for-profit publishers argue that their journals reflect "reader 
demand," Brian Crawford, vice president at John Wiley, says, "and the 
values we add as publisher: peer-review, formatting, marketing and 
distribution."

Some researchers charge that the profits of publishers come at the 
expense of the public. "American taxpayers have been spending 
billions of dollars every year on basic research, and [since journals 
do not pay authors] the results are just given away to publishers who 
have monopoly control over it," says biochemist Patrick Brown of 
Stanford University.

The open-access movement has struggled to gain traction, however. 
Scientists are reluctant to abandon the prestige journals -- 
publication in which is integral to tenure and promotion decisions. 
"You want to be in a journal that scientists read, so the most people 
possible can see and cite your paper," says Jeffrey Drazen, editor of 
the New England Journal of Medicine, available for $139 a year.

The PLoS hopes to clear this cultural hurdle by sheer star power. 
Posters being distributed to leading universities feature Nobel 
laureates and prominent scientists urging researchers to submit their 
"best work" to PLoS Biology, a free-to-all journal being launched in 
October. PLoS Medicine will follow a few months later. And the Howard 
Hughes Medical Institute, a large private supporter of biomedical 
research in the U.S., has agreed to evaluate research, for purposes 
of deciding whom to fund, based on its substance and content, not 
where it is published.

Some of the fairness arguments of the open-access movement have been 
undercut by recent measures. The New England Journal of Medicine is 
available free online to researchers in 120 economically 
disadvantaged countries. And several large publishers have banded 
together to make more than 2,000 journals available at no charge to 
researchers at institutions in developing countries, notes Wiley's 
Mr. Crawford.

Write to Sharon Begley at sharon.begley at wsj.com

Updated June 26, 2003 10:42 a.m.

-- 
Carrie McLaren
Editor, Stay Free!
718.398.9324
www.stayfreemagazine.org
www.illegal-art.org

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University of Iowa

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