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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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"Minimal refereeing" -- and maximal quality measurement
- Peter Singer (16 March 2001)
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Two questions: Revenue models and Creativity
- Indranil Mallick (17 March 2001)
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$$, time, and access
- Matt Doogue (17 March 2001)
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Could the "Napster model" be the answer?
- Julio Bonis Sanz (19 March 2001)
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Support independent journals
- Juliet Richters (19 March 2001)
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Alternative publishing venues
- Alison Buckholtz (20 March 2001)
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Don't forget books while waiting for the revolution.
- Alex Bienkowski (21 March 2001)
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BioMed Central does much more than "minimal refereeing"
- Fiona Godlee (23 March 2001)
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Usability considerations
- Christina S Morris (5 April 2001)
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Could not agree more
- Philippe Jeanty (16 April 2001)
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Leap frogging the Digital Divide
- Ze Shubnikov, Sekikawa, Furuse, Lee, LaPorte (17 April 2001)
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Peter Singer, Sun Life Chair and Director University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics
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The comment attributed to Shulenberger that "minimal refereeing services" like Biomedcentral "may not get far because some scientific communities, particularly medicine, are nervous of minimal refereeing" is pivotal. Minimal refereeing is only half the story. The other half is improving measures of quality of published articles. At the moment, our primary measure of quality is the brand name of the journal in which an article is published. This is fraught with problems of validity, but also permits some top brand name journals to persist with restrictive policies on prior publication and copyright that block open access to primary research. (BMJ is the chief counterexample among the top brand name medical journals because of its innovative approach to open access, open peer review, prior publication, copyright, and membership in PubMedCentral; CMAJ is also a counterexample because of its policy on open access and membership in Pubmedcentral.) This "information blockade" deserves close ethical scrutiny because, among other things, it impedes access to health information for health care workers in developing countries. The inequities in global health represent the greatest ethical challenge in the world today. Underlying these inequities in health are inequities in health information. The combination of minimal refereeing with maximal quality measurement is a way to break the "information blockade." It decouples quality measurement of an article from the brand name of the journal in which it is published. This sets the stage for freeing the literature by changing the incentive structures of medicine and science to reward faculty not on the basis of the brand name of the journal in which they publish but rather on the basis of the quality of the work itself (a radical concept!). "Minimal referring services" like BioMedCentral -- because they potentially surface a large population of scholarly articles -- are the environment in which innovations in quality measurement will occur. (For a conceptual framework to guide this quality research, and a better developed version of the incentives argument, see http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-02/singer.html) "Minimal refereeing", coupled with innovation in quality measures and advocacy around incentive structures, represent one path to a future of global health information equity. Conflict of interest: PAS is a member of the BMJ ethics committee, a subject advisor for Biomedcentral Medical Ethics, and Associate Editor of CMAJ. |
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Indranil Mallick, Rotating Houseman Medical College, Calcutta
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Doctors in developing countries are becoming as aware of the possibilities of electronic publishing and reading as their counterparts in the developed world. As one of them, I feel that two issues that have been touched upon in the article need to be emphasized: 1. It defies comprehension why online access to most journals is linked to subscription to the print edition (at the same or an increased cost to the subscriber). Publishers incur hardly any extra cost if there is an increase in the number of online readers, and therefore they can (if they desire) allow online access to more people at a reduced price. It would lead to a huge increase in the subscriber base due to the reduced price and might offset any potential losses due to a decline in print subscription. But the publishers seem to be more interested in their 'name' than in any useful dissemination of information. Sadly, because the price of electronic information is driving away doctors in developing countries from the electronic media, they are also becoming less likely to share information from their countries with others. How far can medical research progress by leaving out the majority of the world population? 2. Even if we were to accept the bullying of the leading publishers as as something that we have to live with, it is strange how, in spite of their experience in publishing, they are so lacking in creativity when it comes to transferring their products to the electronic medium. It is sad that even today nearly all of the medical information on the internet is just line after line of text. Electronic publishing has not even come close to living up to its name. There is little that an online journal or textbook prvides that its print version does not. Multimedia is not just for the entertainment of the casual surfer, its a different way of communication. Are the great publishers listening? (I declare that I have no competing interests in this matter.) |
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Matt Doogue, Medical Registrar Christchurch Hospital
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As authors we want our work to be read by and ifluence many. As readers we want to access the best quality information as quickly as possible. The two barriers to this are $$ cost and time cost. Electronic searches (eg medline, mdconsult, uptodate) are rapidly replacing manual searches (current contents, textbook indexes). Most of us read specificly via searches and sensitively by browsing favorite journals. This latter activity is also becoming electronic via emailed contents or topic lists. I do some of my reading at work and some at home. It takes me five minutes to walk from my office to a well stocked library and another five minutes to find a journal and copy the article or have it issued. If an article is available in full text from my search engine (eg anything available on PubMedCentral) I am more likely to read it. The time cost of this information is so much cheaper and I rely on my searching and critical skills for quality control. As an author I will publish first where my work will be read which will be in those journals available in full text on-line to all. The $$ cost of information published electronically is much cheaper than paper. This is reflected in my personnal expenditure which has been transfered from traditional journals to electronic based value added publications. Finally as a referee I give my time for free, I will be much happier adding value (quality) to papers made more widely available. Publishing is changing forever. As an author I will continue to try and answer questions, gathering high quality data, and reducing that into digestable bites (papers). By making that available free on line I hope others will build on it. As a reader I will expect to access such data for free. I will pay for those who gather that data together in the way textbooks have in the past. Conflict of interest: MD is a member of the editorial board of the NZMJ |
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Julio Bonis Sanz ULPGC, Spain
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If Napster model, and its sons Gnutella and Napigator, had worked on broke the music market... could we apply this idea to the unlimited interchange of biomedical literature? I think is time to see outside the hospitals and look for the common Internet users' ideas. |
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Juliet Richters, Honorary Co-Editor Venereology: The Interdisciplinary, International Journal of Sexual Health
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There are still journals that are not published by commercial publishers, often by professional organisations or medical colleges. Venereology is one. We do this deliberately to keep costs down so that individuals and resource-poor organisations, especially in the Asia- Pacific region, can afford to subscribe - even though it means more work for us. Authors should consider readership and subscription price as well as 'name' when choosing a journal to publish their work. Competing interests: obvious self-interest for Venereology |
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Alison Buckholtz, Assistant Director, Communications SPARC -- The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
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Dear Sir, Your editorial summarizes the dilemma facing researchers in exactly the right terms, and your focus on groups of scientist-authors acting as a body to "take back" scientific publishing is well-timed. May I also suggest that individual researchers themselves have a role to play in exercising their responsibility toward the system of scholarly publishing. As peer reviewers, as authors, as editorial board members and as journal editors, each scientist can make a choice about the kind of publication they wish to contribute to -- the kind of publication that will best benefit their community. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has published a guide for researchers curious about whether or not their journal does serve its community, and if not, what alternative publishing options are available to them. "Declaring Independence: A Guide to Creating Community-Controlled Science Journals" is available online at: http://www.arl.org/sparc/DI and copies can be ordered, free of charge, by emailing pubs@arl.org. SPARC ( http://www.arl.org/sparc) is a nonprofit international alliance of libraries which is building a more competitive scholarly communication marketplace as a means of addressing serious problems caused by the soaring cost of information. Best wishes,
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Alex Bienkowski, Reference Librarian Moody Medical Library, UTMB, Galveston, TX. USA
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Congratulations and thanks to Richard Smith for his piece on the state of electronic publishing. For a librarian especially, it is hard to disagree with his remarks. I feel obliged to add however, that in our concern over the health of the scientific journal, we may be overlooking the fact that one casualty of the crisis in learned publication has been the scholarly monograph. In an effort to cope with constantly rising journal subscription prices, many libraries have reduced their allocation of funds for buying books. Since libraries form the major market for scholarly monographs, shrinking book budgets must affect this form of learned publication adversely. The journal literature is a science's announcement medium for new findings, but books are the medium used to organize, synthesize, interpret and teach. I should probably add, "criticize". If authors won't write such works, because libraries can't buy them, the loss to scholarship is very great. In disciplines other than the natural sciences, the book is the principal vehicle in which scholars share the results of their reflections and research. Libraries must have money to acquire these items also. So it seems to me that the publishing crisis and its possible solutions must be attacked from a perspective broader than mere consideration of the journal or its successors. There is more at issue than that. |
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Fiona Godlee, Editorial Director (Medicine) BioMed Central
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William Shulenberger is not accurate in describing BioMed Central and PubMed Central as "minimal refereeing services." The 60 or so on line, open access journals within BioMed Central are all fully peer reviewed. Articles are screened before being sent to two or more reviewers, including methodology reviewers when appropriate. Authors are then asked to revise their work in the light of reviewers' comments. Following initiatives developed at the BMJ, medical articles submitted to BioMed Central are reviewed openly, in that reviewers are asked to sign their reports and if the article is published, the signed report is posted on the website as part of the prepublication history. Articles are rejected only if they are deemed by peer review to be scientifically unsound. BioMed Central is able to provide rapid peer review and publication (the average time from submission to publication is 53 days) because it uses online submission and peer review, and because the lack of space constraints means that time is not spent weighing up the relative merits of one article against another. The rejection rate is currently running at about 50%. As for PubMed Central, it provides no peer review, minimal or otherwise. PubMed Central is creating a fully searchable depository of peer reviewed articles published by journals that have agreed to join. All articles published in BioMed Central are posted without delay on PubMed Central, and are indexed in PubMed. |
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Christina S Morris, Research Contractor Institute of Simulation and Training ; Laboratory for the Advancement of Sensory Engagement Research
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I think "Julio Bonis Sanz's" concept of using the Napster model would be most efficient at this stage in electronic publishing for many reasons. First there are dramatic differences is individuals' ability to even use the current electronic journals and the functions within them. Additionally, most users develop intense frusteration when attempting to find or locate relevant e-journals and articles. The internet in this day and age has great advantages for researchers, however, limited to more junior level researchers than senior. Usability research shows that individuals tend to view the internet as a large, unbearable, collection of reference which produces a state of cognitive overload. In addition, users of all ages lack the ability to form mental maps of site structures causing them to navigate "in the moment". The Napster model, similar to current electronic databases, show some promise in eliminating these issues. As research is advancing in more multidisciplinary efforts, the concept of one large collection of articles personally collected by researchers across disciplines would be most effective and user friendly. Therefore, I think efforts should be devoted toward a single, easy to use, database of research articles instead of thousands of "online" journals with differing website designs, structures, and addresses. |
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Philippe Jeanty, Chief Fetustician Womens Health Alliance
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I was involved in an editorial for the March issue of the International Journal of Obstetric and Gynecology Ultrasound (Blackwell Scientific) on Web education and publishing. We reached some strikingly similar conclusions. |
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Ze Shubnikov, Sekikawa, Furuse, Lee, LaPorte, professor beijing hospita.
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The Grand Challenge of the Human Genome has been solved. A fantastic accomplishment. Been there, done it, time to move on. Science has a short attention span. A Grand Challenge for the 21st century has emerged. This universal access to the Internet; Globalization of the world of Science and Health. There were great hopes in the 1990s, the Internet would bring researchers closer together; translation from the laboratory to the community would be fast and ubiquitous. However, now we see large gaps of information access between the scientifically rich and scientifically poor countries. There is the fear that the poor countries will fall further behind as the science and health information gulf has gone from a small creek to the Pacific; an insurmountable task. Global universal Internet with access in every house is often cited as a goal. The reality is that this will not occur even for the richest countries, let alone Zambia, Bolivia or Vietnam. Having Internet in every house is like chasing windmills; noble, impossible and probably not needed to obtain scientific information. What is important is access to scientific information, internet is essential, but not AOL in bed. We can learn about global information delivery from history. In 1800 to transport mail from a developed country (NYC) to a developing country (California) took 3 months and cost $5.00 (now $500). Mail would be send by ship around South America to Ca. In 1860 the Pony Express reduced time, only 6 weeks to cross the country, but the cost was high, $5.00. In 1868 the transcontinental railway whisked mail cross-country in 5 days and costs plummeted to $0.03/letter with universal delivery to all in the west. This phenomenal change occurred only in months. The important lesson for the digital divide is that the logarithmic increase in speed, and reduction in cost occurred when the railway connected < 2% of the communities. Thus despite individual connectivity being so low, there was such an enormous effect upon speed of mail dissemination. The reason was that the railway was the backbone, delivering mail to information hubs where traditional means of distribution lead to rapid delivery. What might this mean for the digital divide? Perhaps instead of trying to achieve universal Internet access, countries should view the Internet as a backbone linking to networks of inexpensive hubs. Ideally all physicians and scientists in Western Kenya would be on the web, but this is impossible. We can close the divide by bringing the Internet to knowledge distribution hubs in Nairobi where intelligent agents search the information, and then content is delivered using traditional means of information distribution already in place such as teaching, libraries, fax and photo copies, reproduction in local publications, lectures, and word of mouth. Examples of such brokers in the non-profit sector already exist (e.g. SatelLife, International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), HealthLink Worldwide, WomenAction, Women Ink, to name some). A new world wide trade of “information brokers” who would access hubs, and facilitate free access to or sell scientific and health information to people who need and want it should be supported. These brokers may be the key to leapfrogging the digital divide. Yang Ze, Beijing Hospital Eugene Shubnikov, Sabianet, Russia Benjamin Acosta, MOH Mexico Akira Sekikawa, University of Pittsburgh Nobuhiro Furuse, Mitsubishi, Japan Virginia Lee, World Bank, US Ronald LaPorte, University of Pittsburgh, US |
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