Is open access publishing for
you?
May 16 2008
Gavin Yamey MD MA MRCP
Senior 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 trial
can earn a journal $1m
in 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
www.plos.org
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
www.plos.org
Things are getting worse:
the “death spiral”
300
Journal
prices
250
200
150
100
CPI/inflation
50
Journals
purchased
19
86
0
-50
Source: Association of Research Libraries
www.plos.org
Not for public consumption
Restricted 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
www.plos.org
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
How does open access work at
PLoS?
Publishing
is the final
step in a
research
project
Research Funder
$
Publisher
Reader
www.plos.org
Oct 2003
Oct 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: postpublication 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 macaques
Ferrari 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 mice
Holy & Guo. PLoS Biol 3(12): e386
www.plos.org
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 8:27 PM
To: PLoS
Subject: Thank you
Dear Public Library of Science people,
I just listened to a mouse song on line… and I wanted to tell you how grateful
I am for your journal. I am a middle school science teacher. I do not have the
funds to subscribe to the traditional science journals.
Tomorrow my students will hear the same mouse song I listened to and I am
sure they will be as enchanted and interested as I am. The idea of open
access 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 future
of scientific research by providing motivation and stimulation for millions of
fledgling scientists.
Sincerely,
Science Teacher
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
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 Scope
all of science and medicine
•
Open Access
the right to read, copy, distribute, and share
•
High Capacity
no length or volume restrictions
•
Streamlined Production
acceptance to publication in 3 weeks
•
Objective peer-review
focusing on scientific rigor
•
Post-publication commentary
annotations, discussions, journal clubs, rankings
www.plos.org
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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
www.plos.org
www.plos.org
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: gyamey@plos.org
www.plos.org