OPEN ACCESS NEWS 2004

Doping Journal 'Open Access' section alerts readers about the latest non-profit development on Open Access (OA), that is the online access to scientific scholar journal literature, free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

Doping Journal (DJ) concept is that OA can benefit the Society as a non-profit model for cost-effective independent scholar journals with no publication charge. DJ takes the advantage of an irreversible Internet and desktop publishing technology development and their end user availability at almost no cost.

While wider adoption of Open Access depends on educating the scientific community about its benefits, the wider dissemination of independent publishing in a DJ way depends on still missing academic education about the technology and its' end-user friendly capabilities. The commercial publishers (both traditional and Open Access) are not interested in educating the academic world about the ease of the modern electronic publishing.

To facilitate the deveopment of new independent Open Access scholar publications Doping Journal provides related Open Access development news (at length of this page) and necessary advisory for quality editorial groups willing to establish and independently run OA scientific journals.

The reference to each news story may be accompanied by the referee name (a member of the Doping Journal editorial board or a journal reader), the authors' key note comments, the date of the news alert, and links to related articles (if any).

Please note that 'Open Access' section of the Doping Journal does not make a claim to being most comprehensive and does not aim to substitute other news collections on Open Access (such as Open Access News Blog, for example). We may inadvertently omit certain articles due to a lack of information. If you notice an omission, please contribute your own selection.

We welcome readers to actively participate in the discussion of any article about OA by publishing in DJ letters to editor. To submit letter click here.

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Open Access page readership will be disclosed when statistics become available

Trust gives warm welcome to open access. Wellcome Trust endorses public archive for biomedical research.
Giles, Jim
Nature (11 Nov 2004) 432: 134 (doi:10.1038/432134a)
[FullText]

Leading text: "The Wellcome Trust, Europe's largest research charity, has become the latest grant-giving body to throw down the gauntlet to academic publishers in the debate over open-access literature. All papers reporting the results of research funded by the trust will in future have to be placed in a central public archive within six months of publication, the organization said on 4 November. The move could bring the trust into conflict with publishers, who often hold exclusive rights on the use of such material. This in turn could restrict researchers' choices about which journals they publish in..."

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Alliance for Taxpayer Access: Who Really Owns Publicly-Funded Medical Research?
Wysocki, Bernard
U.S. Newswire (9 Nov 2004)
[FullText] [Contact]

Leading text: "This year, an unprecedented coalition of U.S. public interest leaders urged the National Institutes of Health to ensure that peer-reviewed articles on taxpayer-funded research at NIH become fully accessible and available on line at no extra cost to the American public. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now looking deeply at taxpayer access. On September 3, 2004, they published a proposal, Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information, NOT-OD-04-064, in their online Guide for Grants and Contracts, that makes NIH research available online, within six months of publication, for no extra charge to the American public. The NIH proposal is found at http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice- files/NOT-OD-04-064.html . Patient advocates and public interest groups are increasingly concerned that their voices are being left out of this critical dialogue between government and giant publishing interests at the sacrifice of legitimate citizen input, public health priorities and the urgency to advance the discoveries of biomedical research. This briefing will highlight the stories, concerns and needs of patient advocates and public interest groups in this important science dialogue..."

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Publishers Oppose Plan For Free Access To Scientific Research
Wysocki, Bernard
The Wall Street Journal (28 October 2004) p. B.1
[FullText]

Excerpt: "A fight is brewing in the scientific world over whether articles published in expensive scholarly journals ought to be widely available for free on the Internet. The National Institutes for Health has proposed that any scientist whose work is funded by NIH research-grant money and later published should make it available on a public NIH-sponsored Internet site....Today, several publishers are scheduled to meet privately with NIH Director Elias Zerhouni to urge him to proceed slowly on the proposal... The NIH can issue an order putting the plan into effect, although it could be blocked if opponents muster enough support within Congress against the measure... The publishers also fear that if the plan goes into effect, other federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation will require sponsored scientists to put their work online for free. As global businesses, they see movements toward open access publishing gathering steam overseas, especially in the United Kingdom..."

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Scientists publish medical journal online at no charge
iHealthBeat.org. 28 October 2004.
[Free FullText]

Leading text: "A group of scientists this month launched PLoS Medicine, an online medical journal published by the Public Library of Science that will be available at no cost to physicians, patients, scientists and all those with Internet access, AP/USA Today reports (Kertesz, AP/USA Today, 10/27). Instead of subscriptions, scientists will pay a $1,500 fee per article to publish their work, which will be peer-reviewed by other scientists. The publication initially will be funded by grants from organizations such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. PLoS Executive Director Vivian Siegel said the publication will be self-sufficient in five years' time (AP/USA Today, 10/27)..."

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Scientific publishing is having to change rapidly to respond to growing pressure for free access to published research
The Economist 5 August 2004
[Free FullText]

Article quote: "At the moment, the entire open access literature is tinyless than 1% of what is published according to the Public Library of Science. But if governments were to insist that the results of research they fund must be published in an open-access way, that would change completely. The days of huge profits would then be numbered. Prestige has its usesand the open-access journals will, no doubt, establish a pecking-order among themselves fairly quickly. But for prestige at any price, time is probably up..."

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Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?
Park P, Penick EC, Edwards JG, Kauer JA, Ehlers MD
College and Research Libraries Sept 2004 65(5) Journal FileID=31968
[Abstract] [Free FullText (.PDF)] [Related article 1 | OA News ] [Author contact]

Abstract: "Although many authors believe that their work has a greater research impact if it is freely available, studies to demonstrate that impact are few. This study looks at articles in four disciplines at varying stages of adoption of open access --philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering and mathematics-- to see whether they have a greater impact as measured by citations in the ISI Web of Science database when their authors make them freely available on the Internet. The finding is that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices and being rewarded for it."

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Scientists, consider where you publish
Seringhaus, Michael
Yale Daily News. 8 September 2004.
[FullText] [FullText at the Neurobiol Lipids]

Leading text: "For scientists, publishing a paper in a respected peer-reviewed journal marks the culmination of successful research. But some of the most prestigious and sought-after journals are so costly to access that a growing number of academic libraries can't afford to subscribe. Before submitting your next manuscript, consider a journal's access policy alongside its prestige -- and weigh the implications of publishing in such costly periodicals..."

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Public letter to Elias A. Zerhouni, Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH) by the leadership of the US Library Associations
Prudence S. Adler, Association of Research Libraries, Miriam Nisbert, American Library Association; Mary Alice Baish, American Association of Law Libraries; Doug Newcomb, Special Libraries Assosiation
ARL web site. Info on Open Access. 31 August 2004.
[Acrobat .PDF FullText] [NIH notice and call for comments] [FullText at the Neurobiol Lipids]

Representative text: "...Our organizations believe that the NIH proposal balances the public interest in having enhanced access to federally- funded NIH research while allowing publishers sufficient market protections and time to implement new economic publishing models. In addition, this initiative is consonant with the market models that many publishers have adopted that place short- term embargoes on access to scientific literature.

Timely access to the results of NIH- funded research is critical to maintaining the vitality of our Nation's investment in research and education. Such access is also critically important to taxpayers seeking needed information -- information that they have supported through their tax dollars -- concerning their health and welfare. We applaud your leadership and look forward to working with you as the initiative is implemented."

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PoliSci: NIH proposes free research access
Dee Ann Divis
United Press Inter. 6 September 2004.
[FullText] [NIH notice and call for comments] [Author contact]

Leading text: "...With two ill children facing blindness and early death from a rare genetic disorder, Sharon Terry needed information -- information her doctor could not provide her.

Information on the disease was available, much of it paid for by federal research dollars, but it was out of reach in expensive, specialized medical journals. The journals had become so costly, closely held or difficult to access that the Terrys -- like many others desperately researching their family's health problems -- ended up using other peoples' passwords and getting students to obtain the material for them.

"Here I had two kids suddenly with a very serious disease," Terry told United Press International. "I found no clinician that understood this disease and then on top of that I couldn't get access to information that had been already gathered and published by federal tax dollars. I couldn't get that information..."

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Notice: Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information
National Institutes of Health. 3 September 2004.
[FullText] [Open Access News Blog] [Related News: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4][NIH comment form] [comment via e.mail]

Representative text: "...This notice is to announce and to seek public comments regarding NIH’s plans to facilitate enhanced public access to NIH health related research information. NIH intends to request that its grantees and supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding. This would include all research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, as well as National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowships. We define final manuscript as the author’s version resulting after all modifications due to the peer review process. Submission of the final manuscript will provide NIH supported investigators with an alternate means by which they will meet and fulfill the requirement of the provision of one copy of each publication in the annual or final progress reports. Submission of the electronic versions of final manuscripts will be monitored as part of the annual grant progress review and close-out process..."

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Open Access, a breakthrough for science that every neuroscientist should know about
Koudinov AR, Suber P
Soc Neurosci Abstracts online. 27 August 2004.
[Abstract at ScholarOne] [Invited Lay Article] [Authors contact]

Presented October 23-27, 2004 at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2004, San Diego Convention Center

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An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Signed by 25 Nobel Prize Winners
Peter Agre, Sidney Altman, Paul Berg, Michael Bishop, Baruch Blumberg, Gunter Blobel, Paul Boyer, Sydney Brenner, Johann Deisenhofer, Edmond Fischer, Paul Greengard, Leland Hartwell, Robert Horvitz, Eric Kandel, Arthur Kornberg, Roderick MacKinnon, Kary Mullis, Ferid Murad, Joseph Murray, Marshall Nirenberg, Stanley Prusiner, Richard Roberts, Hamilton Smith, Harold Varmus, James Watson.
SPARC Open Access Discussion Forum 26 Aug 2004
[FullText] [Letter Summary] [Authors contact]

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White paper: Publishing Open Access Journals
PLoS Biology 25 February 2004
[Acrobat .PDF FullText] [Article Gateway Page] [PLoS contact]

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NIH research to be open access. Publishers and editors meet Zerhouni plans for publicly available papers with exasperation
Park, Paula
The Scientist Daily News 29 July 2004
[FullText] [Author contact]

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Electronic journal publication: A new library contribution to scholarly communication
Roel, Eulalia
College & Research Libraries News 5 January 2004
[FullText] [Related Correspondence: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4] [Author contact]

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What you can do to help the cause of open access
Suber, Peter
Peter Suber Web Resources on Open Access 2004
[FullText] [Author contact]

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