Free access is not Open Access

There seems to be a general misunderstanding that the aim of the Open Access movement is to make the scientific research literature free online. But there is a difference between "free access" and "open access".

This distinction was part of what motivated the Bethesda definition of Open Access Principles that we published in the first issue of Open Access Now (July 14, 2003). That definition clearly states that access to the information should be free, but in addition the work should be open to re-use and redistribution, and that it should be deposited immediately upon publication in a public online repository (such as PubMed Central).

Publishers who offer free online access on their own websites still have a long way to go before their research articles can be considered Open Access. The benefits and promise of Open Access will only be realized when this distinction is clear in the minds of authors and publishers. Only then can the literature move from being ‘free’ to being truly ‘open’.

Authors who publish in the journal Physiological Genomics can now choose to make their own article freely accessible online from the date of publication by paying a fee of US$1500. Authors who choose this option will ensure that their articles are completely free to any person and any library. The publisher, the American Physiological Society, retains copyright, and the printed article still requires a subscription fee. (Thus the agreement is not true Open Access, as defined by the Bethesda principles - see Open Access Now, July 14, 2003.)

Physiological Genomics publishes research on gene expression and profiling, model genetic organisms, the mapping of complex traits and proteomics; it was launched five years ago and publishes around 80 research articles each year. Physiological Genomics has an impact factor of 4.667.

The "author chooses" optional Open Access strategy (sometimes called IFWA, immediate free web access) was pioneered by some entomology journals. The Entomological Society of America publishes four journals that have offered an IFWA option to authors since 2000. More than half of authors currently opt to pay the fee, which is 75% of the price of 100 paper reprints.

physiolgenomics.physiology.org
www.entsoc.org

PLoS broadens campaign

The Public Library of Science has launched an awareness campaign that includes a 30-second TV ad.

The humorous television spot, called ‘Wings’, features an ordinary-looking man leaving his house on his way to work. A woman’s voice narrates: “In the year 2003 the Public Library of Science made it possible for people all over the world to have access to the latest scientific discoveries,” as the man ties his shoelaces before glancing up at the sky. The voiceover continues: “Shortly afterwards things began to change,” and the man suddenly takes off into the sky like a rocket and flies to work.

The advertisement, produced for Public Library of Science (PLoS) by a Minneapolis-based marketing communications firm, is scheduled for prime-time viewing across the USA. The short film emphasizes the PLoS message that open access to knowledge leads to accelerated progress. "Unlimited access to scientific research will speed discoveries and medical advances," says Harold Varmus, previously Director of the US National Institutes of Health and currently President of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Varmus founded PLoS with Stanford's Patrick O Brown and Berkeley bioinformatician Michael B Eisen.

The TV ad is part of a broad awareness campaign that precedes the launch of the new Open Access journal PLoS Biology in October this year. PLoS Biology will be a peer-reviewed scientific journal that hopes to compete with Nature, Cell and Science as well as BioMed Central's Open Access Journal of Biology. PLoS Biology has recruited an impressive collection of leading scientists to its Editorial Board, to work together with a team of experienced professional editorial staff.

The awareness campaign has been boosted by a bill introduced in the US House of Representatives by Congressman Martin O Sabo, a Democrat from Minnesota. The bill would ensure that all federally funded research is exempt from copyright protection. "It defies logic to collectively pay for our medical research, only to privatize its profitability and availability", says Sabo.

PLoS is also developing a grass-roots campaign across universities and campuses. The San Francisco-based non-profit organisation is encouraging the 33,000 researchers worldwide who signed its earlier petition to download campaign posters and pin them to university and library notice-boards. The PLoS posters feature prominent scientists and Nobel laureates who have pledged support for PLoS and Open Access publishing. A notable example shows Nobel laureate James Watson saying, "If I could do it all over again, I'd publish that paper in PLoS Biology."

www.plos.org

HRT fights its bad publicity
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) could be used to protect younger postmenopausal women from heart disease, according to research published in Lipids in Health and Disease. Researchers from the University of Toronto found that estrogens commonly used in HRT can act as antioxidants, reducing the build up of harmful oxidized low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) by protecting high-density lipoproteins (HDLs).
Lipids in Health and Disease 2003, 2:4.

Catching cancer early
Cancer researchers have created the first comprehensive listing and classification of precancers, drawn from the medical literature. The precancers were organized into groups that share similar biologic profiles and, hopefully, similar treatments. The authors of the article published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making state that “In theory, the successful treatment of precancers would result in the eradication of most human cancers.” Jules Berman of the National Cancer Institute at the NIH, and Donald Henson of George Washington University, Washington D.C., produced the first draft of the classification, designed to be fully searchable and linked to other databases.
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2003, 3:8.

Mutants under stress
Many mutants fare better under stress, according to research published in Journal of Biology. Stanislas Leibler and Roy Kishony of Rockefeller University tested how mutant strains of bacteria respond to different forms of stress, including cold temperature, acid, and inhibition of protein synthesis. The researchers developed a bioluminescence method for measuring bacterial growth rates that is a thousand times more sensitive than previous methods and assessed the ‘fitness’ under normal and stressful conditions of 12 wild-type strains of E. coli and 65 strains carrying individual mutations They found that, on average, stresses alleviate the negative effect of mutations.
Journal of Biology 2003, 2:14.

Paul Spellman, a postdoctoral fellow in Gerald Rubin's lab at the University of California, Berkeley, was co-author of the first article to be published in Journal of Biology last year. The article has been downloaded over 17, 500 times.

What prompted you to submit your article to Journal of Biology?
Two of the founders of the Public Library of Science (my PhD advisor Pat Brown, and my friend Mike Eisen) had convinced me of the importance of Open Access. Given my commitment to publish in Open Access journals we (Gerry Rubin and I) felt that one of the BioMed Central journals would be appropriate. We were grateful that Journal of Biology was created and considered our work of sufficient quality to start the journal.

Were you pleased with the review and publishing process?
The editors at Journal of Biology were wonderful. The turnaround time was just a few weeks; we received thoughtful reviews that made the paper better; and the editor actually edited the manuscript, something that I had never before experienced. I can sincerely recommend Journal of Biology to anyone and everyone.

How well has your paper been received?
I would say that the response has been very positive. Some have questioned why the paper was published in Journal of Biology rather than a more established journal, which has given me a chance to explain the importance of Open Access.

Journal of Biology is published by
BioMed Central

Who, What and Why?

A regular short guide to the players, stakeholders and technical terms relevant to Open Access publishing. ‘WHAT, WHO and WHY’ helps readers to become informed about the world of Open Access.

WHAT is PubMed Central?
PubMed Central is a repository of fulltext, peer-reviewed articles from life science journals. It is not a publisher itself, but instead relies on the willingness of publishers to deposit copies of articles they have published. It is easiest to think of PubMed Central as the equivalent of PubMed, but containing complete articles rather than just abstracts.

Articles in PubMed Central must be free to all users, but not necessarily from the publication date (some publishers have a 6–24 month delay). Currently PubMed Central includes over 150 journals, but the list is growing. Any journal can deposit its articles in PubMed Central as long as at least three members of its editorial board are principal investigators on research grants from major funding agencies.

WHO is behind PubMed Central?
PubMed Central was created in 2000 by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the National Library of Medicine at the US National Institutes of Health. The driving force behind PubMed Central is David Lipman, NCBI’s director. PubMed Central also has a National Advisory Committee, chaired by Joshua Lederberg.

WHY is PubMed Central needed?
Think of how useful PubMed is as a repository of free abstracts. And extrapolate that to free full text. The research community would benefit enormously from having all research articles available in one place and in one format. This would allow rapid searching and text/data mining, and would make it easy to link literature to databases of various kinds.

PubMed Central also serves as a permanent archive of published research articles, safeguarding against the possibility that they are no longer available from the original source. PubMed Central has undertaken to complete the archive by scanning back issues. This project began with the 1990s literature and will proceed backwards a decade at a time.

The combination of permanent archiving, continuous unrestricted availability and full-text searching make PubMed Central a fundamental component of the Open Access future of the biomedical research literature.

www.pubmedcentral.gov