Posted on 01/27/2007 1:44:03 AM PST by neverdem
Advocates of open access to scientific research may find themselves under fire from high-profile public relations flaks and high-powered lobbying groups.
The battle over public access to scientific literature stretches back to the late 1990s when Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus began plans for PubMed Central--a repository for all research resulting from National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding--and, a few years later, launched the Public Library of Science (PLoS). These easily accessible journals and repositories have struck fear into the hearts of traditional publishers, who have enlisted the "pit bull" of public relations to fight back, reports news@nature. The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers hired Eric Dezenhall, head of Dezenhall Resources, a PR firm that specializes in "high stakes communications and marketplace defense," to address some of its members this past summer and potentially craft a media strategy. Dezenhall declined to comment for this article, citing "our longstanding policy due to strict confidentiality agreements neither to identify our clients nor comment on the work we do for them," in an email response to a request for an interview. But "nobody disagrees on the goals of high-stakes communications--sell a controversial product, win an election, defuse conflict and so forth," Dezenhall notes in the "manifesto" on the firm's website. "The life-or-death public relations struggles facing businesses today are not about information they are about power." In this case, the struggle is over access to scientific information.
Specifically, according to Dezenhall's suggestions in a memo, the publishers should "develop simple messages (e.g., Public access equals government censorship; Scientific journals preserve the quality/pedigree of science; government seeking to nationalize science and be a publisher) for use by Coalition members." In addition, Dezenhall suggests "bypassing mass 'consumer' audiences in favor of reaching a more elite group of decision makers," including journalists and regulators. This tack is necessary, he writes, because: "it's hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information." Finally, Dezenhall suggests joining forces with think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and National Consumers League in an attempt to persuade key players of the potential risks of unfiltered access. "Paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles," he adds.
Of course, open access does not mean no peer review. While the NIH is not in the business of peer review, according to Dr. Norka Ruiz Bravo, NIH's deputy director for extramural research, the entirety of PLoS journals are peer-reviewed. "Open access journals are peer-reviewed to the same standards," notes Mark Patterson, PLoS's director of publishing. "We wanted to provide an open access alternative to the best journals to allow the very best work to be made publicly available."
To do that, PLoS shifted from the old model of subscribers paying to read content to an author payment business model, in which scientific researchers pay the costs (from $1,250 o $2,500 depending on the journal) of immediately publishing their work, Patterson says. "The flagship journals PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine are more expensive to run than the journals that are run by the community," he adds.
The American Association of Publishers declined to comment on Dezenhall's advice, but said in a statement: "Some commentators have expressed surprise that the publishing industry is making its case about an important issue that could affect the future of research and science. We believe it's important to be clear about serious unintended consequences of government mandated open access. ... Legislation that would undermine the quality, sustainability and independence of science would have consequences on all those who rely on sound science."
One such piece of legislation was introduced in the Senate last year by Senators Joseph Liebermann, I-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas that would require any published paper derived from U.S.-government-backed research to be published online within six months. PubMed Central, published by NIH--a federal institution--has come under especially intense fire. Their efforts have been dubbed "socialized science," by Rudy Baum, editor in chief of the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Chemical and Engineering News. "Open access, in fact, equates with socialized science," he wrote in a 2004 editorial. "I find it incredible that a Republican Administration would institute a policy that will have the long-term effect of shifting responsibility for communicating scientific research and maintaining the archive of science, technology, and medical (STM) literature from the private sector to the federal government."
In fact, the ACS paid lobbying firm Hicks Partners LLC at least $100,000 in 2005 to try to persuade congressional members, NIH, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that a "PubChem Project" would be a bad idea, according to public lobbying disclosures, and paid an additional $180,000 to the Wexler & Walker Public Policy Association to promote the "use of commercial database." It also spent a chunk of its 2005 $280,000 internal lobbying budget as well as part of its $270,000 lobbying budget last year to push the issue, according to disclosure documents. The ACS publishes more than 30 journals covering all aspects of chemistry, and the organization did not return phone calls for comment.
Efforts for a PubChem Central have come to naught thus far and the NIH's efforts with PubMed Central have met with limited success. Of the as many as 65,000 articles derived from NIH funded research, only 10,000 or so are available at PubMed Central. "We have authors sending in 4 percent of articles," Dr. Neil Thakur, Ruiz Bravo's special assistant. "An additional 10 to 12 percent are submitted by publications."
"Having been at a research institution, if something is not mandatory for me and I'm a scientist and I'm focused on the science, then doing something like this is not something that I am going to pay attention to," Ruiz Bravo adds. "We could go to a mandatory policy with a six month deadline. We've been considering that."
The open access movement is not confined to the U.S., of course. The Wellcome Trust in the U.K. has begun providing funds to its researchers explicitly to cover the costs of publishing in open access journals. And the NIH has signed agreements with international repositories to make its publicly available material available there.
This open access groundswell, ranging from the physics community pre-print arXiv to centralized, post-print PubMed Central, seemingly threatens traditional publishers, though the most prestigious journals, such as the weekly Nature appear unconcerned. Nature declined to comment for this story. Rather, it is the more niche publishers who may have the most to lose. "If you are published in a journal that publishes every other month or quarterly and there is mandatory open access in six months, then, as a librarian, you are going to cancel it," notes Martin Frank, executive director of the Amercian Physiological Society (APS), which publishes 14 journals, including the American Journal of Physiology since 1898. "We consider ourselves a delayed open access journal."
The APS makes all of its content free after 12 months or asks authors to pay for immediate free publication online, an opportunity 18 percent of authors have taken, Frank says. Frank also leads the Washington D.C. Principles for Free Access to Science group, a coalition of not-for-profit publishers advocating such a middle way. "The author pays business model has yet to be demonstrated to be viable," he notes. "Something can only be eclipsed if something else has been demonstrated that is better than it."
"I agree with public access, but it doesn't have to be immediate," he adds. "If it's immediate, it has to be paid for."
For example, NIH could pay for publication as the Wellcome Trust does. At $3,000 per article that translates to roughly $200 million a year. "That's not a lot of money compared to $28 billion," the NIH budget in fiscal year 2006, Frank notes, "but that represents 100 research grants." Dezenhall expressed a similar sentiment in his memo to publishers: "In theory, this may provide free taxpayer access to research that they fund, but they will pay eventually with substandard articles and their money being used to develop and maintain an electronic article depot rather than to fund new research."
Regardless of the "attack dogs" hired by traditional publishers to craft their message, public access advocates remain undeterred. "We've got the technology to make this happen with the internet. The only thing that's holding it back is this adherence to an old business model, which made sense in the world of print, but no longer makes sense," PLoS's Patterson says. "It's great for authors: anyone with an interest in their work can access it."
"There are some folks who feel very threatened by PubMed Central," NIH's Ruiz Bravo adds. "We really are committed to having an archive. We will do everything we can to make this a successful endeavor."
"Change is in the wind, and change is hard," she continues. "I think this is inevitable."
Not counting DaVinci in the 15th Century.
Well, one usually can get any open literature [even if with a delay in interlibrary loan]. The trouble lies more in comprehending and filtering the information [for most of it is irrelevant garbage], than in getting access to it. As a Chinese prince said some 3 millenia ago to one of his councillors, "to understand this", he said with a sigh, "is not given to you". And the struggle against the limits of one's own understanding is much harder than against any imperfect library system.
This is one of those issues that will receive proportionally less attention than it deserves. It brings up broader important issues, too. For example, what's the role of public funding for science?
Although a kneejerk reaction might be that science should be privately funded, a moment's consideration shows how important public funding has been at providing a balance to biased study as well as funding basic research that's not immediately patentable or profitable. The unintended consequences loom large on this issue.
But I would have to wonder how much unintentional duplicate research this would cut down on. Uncle Sam doles out with a sloppy hand, if he can't even tell who was actually in the Katrina flood vs. who is a crafty grifter, how is he going to tell if 10 scientists paid from the public purse are doing the exact same thing one after the other in ignorance of one another. In the end it's the golden rule: whoever passes out the gold makes the rules.
" public funding has been at providing a balance to biased study "
Would that 'twere so!!
Biased gummint-funded "research" has been handed down as gospel - and been the basis for a lot of bad legislation - on subjects such as "global warming", "secondhand smoke", and virtually every sociological/psychological "study" in the past 50 years.
Sorry -- public funding of research has no better track record, in the realm of 'bias', than any other source of funding.
Sorry, but you're using poor logic.
I stated that it has provided a balance to biased study (e.g., pharmaceuticals)... I never stated that it will do so in all cases. That's part of my point of why it's easy to kneejerk the opposite way--there are examples of very poor uses of public fnding. Same goes for public funding of art--we hear lots of horror stories, but (like with Iraq) there are many "silent successes."
The real question is how to set up a system that allocates public funding in the best interest of the public...and since the public's "best interest" is disparate by nature, this is not simple. Personally, I would like to see the rest of the world pick up more of the burden of basic research to allow more of American funding to go toward development-phase work.
Interesting that the news headline I saw just before reading this article was...
Intel, IBM separately reveal transistor breakthrough
Sometimes duplicate research is a good thing, though...e.g., it can provide confirmation of a principle, or it can provide a different solution approach to the same problem.
" Sorry, but you're using poor logic. "
I'm not going to get into a personal-attack-flame-battle with you...
You apparently believe that government is benevolent and even-handed. (And that 'private' is not)
I don't....
I'm willing to agree to disagree....
SHARING WITH THE CHINESE
Like Hillery Clinton said:" It takes a Village!"
America is at an economic disadvantage with China, and now we soon will be at a military disadvantage.
Open Access to Science is just another liberal whacko scheme to destroy the military industrial complex of the West, so we can live in peace in a little Utopia doomed to sure failure.
Result: The West Coast will be the New Peoples Republic of China, and the Eastt Coast will be the New England Caliphate of Al Ramana.
Liberal socialist scientists make me puke, always have.
Even The Weather Channel's Dr Heidi Felice wants to expel members who disagree with her about global warming.
.
Its like you say, there is a gauze of ignorance over the realities of many, realities in which empirical data which does not fit with ones paradigm are censored.Global Warming advocates do not exercise science, they exercise religion.
Scientists think they can exist without being political, which means their findings are open to totalitarian governments.
The world has become a very strange place. I am digging a cave in my back yard, hoping it all blows over. I believe this ignorance is a sign of the Baby Boomer liberals wanting to live forever but realizing that in their later years they need to make their heaven here on earth, any way they can. A spiritually and politically bankrupt generation.
Like the old joke says"... we've already determined what you are, now we're just negotiating on the price." If the government is funding the research it is already socialized science. If you want to keep your research private or limit its release, then privately fund it yourself or come to a contract with a private grantor or investor. If you want to research on the public dime, then that research (and the patents associated with it) should be freely released. Don't make me pay for it and then expect to privately profit from it.
Malarkey. Science only works because of its relative "open-ness". Without publication and later duplication by other workers of scientific experiments, science simply will not progress. We tried the "non-open" system back in the days of the alchemists--and it was a disaster. Results kept secret died with the originators unless passed on to an apprentice. This is also the reason for the existence of the patent and copyright processes.
I think the "Amazon model" would work for ALL scientific publication. Accept the paper after editorial review (NOT, note, "peer review"), invite a couple of anonymous reviewers, post the paper AND the anonymous reviews on "journal website", and then let ANYONE post further "reviews" (sort of analogous to the existing Free Republic process with the addition of the "official" anonymous reviews).
Pay for it with Google-style advertising links.
Well said. You are absolutely right.
Researchers and publishers cannot reasonably insist that government funding of research is necessary for the public good, then turn around and charge the public high prices for access to the fruits of that research.
I like the idea.
Especially intriguing is your suggestion of dispensing with prepublication peer review. I have seen too many cases where peer review has been used to stifle competition, whether it be in the granting of funds or in the selection of papers for publication. In government-funded science, it matters very much who you are, where you work, and whom you know.
Well, it would still get "peer-reviewed"--but that would happen post-publication, and by a far wider range of viewers with a correspondingly wide range of expertise, so the scientific integrity of the overall process would remain at least as good as it is now (and probably be FAR better).
It WOULD curtail the use of peer review as a "gateway" process by jealous colleagues and/or competitors, as you so rightly mention. The editor could still get away with it, but nobody else.
"In government-funded science, it matters very much who you are, where you work, and whom you know."
Oh, brother--ain't THAT the truth.
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