TY - JOUR
T1 - The Open Access initiative in scientific and biomedical publishing
T2 - Fourth in the series on editorship
AU - Liesegang, Thomas J.
AU - Schachat, Andrew P.
AU - Albert, Daniel M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The Open Access concept is not without precedent. With the advent of the Internet, relationships for the dissemination of scientific information developed in several fields of science. Anton recounts a successful form of alternative scientific communication in the physics e-print archive. 1 This archive was created as an experiment among high-energy particle physicists in order to circumvent perceived problems of publishing in research journals. The concept became the primary means of distributing research in physics, pure mathematics, and nonlinear sciences. The physics e-print archive serves as a model of exchange of scientific information, receiving two million visits each week (most from outside the United States). The archive is supported by half a million dollars each year from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and Cornell University. Access to the server is free and includes the full text of e-prints, reports of the most recent developments, and research in these fields. Submissions are processed, archived, indexed automatically, and made available by e-mail and through the Internet. Subscribers are automatically e-mailed abstracts of new submissions through an unstaffed, unsupported system. Earlier drafts of submissions are usually replaced by edited versions. In this model, the electronic e-prints represent the “raw literature” (First Publication) and final publication of articles provides the value-added services (Definitive Publication). 6 Physicists readily accepted this model because they had been distributing preprints in paper format for years and electronic distribution made the process much more efficient.
Funding Information:
On the basis of an economic analysis, the United Kingdom’s leading biomedical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, concluded that open access publishing would better serve the interests of scientists and the public. 37 However, a Morgan Stanley financial report also acknowledged that the publishers with the biggest online portfolios may drive many of the smaller commercial and society publishers out of business. 33,38 Morgan Stanley’s report suggested that publishers are crafting licensing agreements that lock libraries into subscriptions to lower-use, more marginal titles in order to ensure access to prestigious, high-use titles. Two of the largest science, technology, and medicine publishers account for 60 percent of the University of California’s shared digital journals but only 33 percent of e-journal use. 39 This portfolio pricing obscures journal prices and reduces competition among individual titles from different publishers, contributing to the monopolistic trend of the market. The open access model shifts the high costs of publishing to researchers and research grant money. Open access has, in essence, been accepted and adopted by funding bodies as diverse as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society, the German Research Council (DFG), the French Scientific Research Council (CNRS), the French National Medical Research Institute (INSERM), and the NIH. Some 2000 Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) publishers annually produce and circulate 1.2 million peer-reviewed articles selected for their quality. Publishers organize, establish, manage, produce and disseminate journals; define new disciplines; and establish and actively manage editorial boards while investing in new technologies to make research more accessible. The substantial investments that STM publishers have made in electronic technologies continue to deliver productivity improvements. More users than ever gain quicker and easier access to more content at lower per-article costs for the institutions that serve them. In a document submitted to the hearings of United Kingdom House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology in February 2004, Elsevier, the publisher of hundreds of journals including both Ophthalmology and the American Journal of Ophthalmology, articulated the publisher’s viewpoint about the successes of the traditional publishing models in the United Kingdom. 40,41 Other publishers, including Blackwell Publishing, Taylor & Francis, and Nature Publishing Group, also made reports to the committee expressing the publisher’s perspective.
PY - 2005/1
Y1 - 2005/1
N2 - To provide basic information about the Open Access concept and its historical development, define the benefits and challenges inherent in this new model, and identify the value of the traditional print model and its movement towards more open access. Review of current information on the subject from numerous sources. Medline search and Internet search engines on the topic of Open Access Publishing. The Open Access initiative derives from several premises: medical libraries can no longer afford journal subscriptions; society benefits from the open exchange of ideas; society has in large part already paid for this research; the Internet provides an available venue. The traditional journal publishers model, however, has functioned well over many years with a robust peer review system and increasing Internet digital components permitting search and cross referencing, including elements of the Open Access model. It will be difficult to maintain the costs of both the traditional journal system and the fully implemented Open Access model. Any decisions that are made must ensure that the archive of prior medical knowledge is not lost, that financial barriers do not restrict publication, and that research continues to be available to those who need it, in the media that they prefer.
AB - To provide basic information about the Open Access concept and its historical development, define the benefits and challenges inherent in this new model, and identify the value of the traditional print model and its movement towards more open access. Review of current information on the subject from numerous sources. Medline search and Internet search engines on the topic of Open Access Publishing. The Open Access initiative derives from several premises: medical libraries can no longer afford journal subscriptions; society benefits from the open exchange of ideas; society has in large part already paid for this research; the Internet provides an available venue. The traditional journal publishers model, however, has functioned well over many years with a robust peer review system and increasing Internet digital components permitting search and cross referencing, including elements of the Open Access model. It will be difficult to maintain the costs of both the traditional journal system and the fully implemented Open Access model. Any decisions that are made must ensure that the archive of prior medical knowledge is not lost, that financial barriers do not restrict publication, and that research continues to be available to those who need it, in the media that they prefer.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ajo.2004.10.010
DO - 10.1016/j.ajo.2004.10.010
M3 - Editorial
C2 - 15652842
AN - SCOPUS:11844256415
SN - 0002-9394
VL - 139
SP - 156
EP - 167
JO - American journal of ophthalmology
JF - American journal of ophthalmology
IS - 1
ER -