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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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Open access or not ?
- Gilles Beauchamp (1 April 2005)
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Free Full-Text BMJ; World's Only---An Error?
- Jay Ilangaratne (1 April 2005)
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Open Access - is it really needed ?
- Shoaib Ahmad (1 April 2005)
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Not entirely free access or as zealous as the Public Library of Science
- susanne mccabe (2 April 2005)
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Potential Pitfalls to Open Access
- Jill C. Feig (2 April 2005)
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HE WHO HATH SHALL BE GIVEN-THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH!
- BM Hegde (2 April 2005)
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Open access or not?
- Peter Richardson (2 April 2005)
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Open access benefits all
- Mike Daube (4 April 2005)
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Restore true open access to bmj.com
- Iain Chalmers (4 April 2005)
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Haves and the have -nots
- Rakesh Bhargava (5 April 2005)
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Authors of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your impact factors (and them only for a while)
- Richard Smith (5 April 2005)
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Attempt to dispel some confusion about terminology
- Tony Delamothe (11 April 2005)
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False advertising indeed
- Shabbir M.H. Alibhai (4 May 2005)
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Gilles Beauchamp, community organiser Montréal, Canada H1V 1K2
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Did I miss something ? I thought the online BMJ was to become a subscribed access site, from January 2005 ?
In fact I subscribed and paid, last december, 20 GBP for the complete access to the BMJ site.
So, when you say the BMJ is the "only major general medical journal to provide immediate free access to the full text of all research articles", what do I get for my subscription, beside the moral satisfaction of giving this great journal a little support ?
Thanks for the clarification and for your Open access !
Competing interests: None declared |
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Jay Ilangaratne, Medical-Journals.com Founder
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The Editor says "the BMJ is the world's only major general medical journal to provide immediate free access to the full text of all research articles"[1]. I am aware today is the 1st of April. However, taking the Editor's remarks in a serious context, I wonder how correct she is. There are number of other medical journals which provide free full-text research articles--eg.Journal of Clinical Investigation, Australian Medical Journal etc. and acesss is not restricted to those journals.It is well known that access is indeed restricted to the current BMJ. In fact, the number of free full-text journals have been increasing over the last few years.Further,among others, www.medical-journals.com had been encouraging publishers to provide free full-text articles since year 2000. Hence, the Editor's remarks are rather confusing,if not incorrect.Perhaps, a clarification is due. References [1]Fiona Godlee. Open access, and proud of it BMJ 2005; 330: 0-g Competing interests: Founder-www.medical-journals.com |
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Shoaib Ahmad, Lecturer Faculty of Pharmacy, Hamdard University, New Delhi 110062 India
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Open access seems to be a fairly good idea. Article by Godlee (2005) has added many facts in this regard to my limited knowledge. The idea of open access may have its takers. It is not free from misuse for commercial interest and otherwise. However, I personally feel that regulated access system should be promoted instead of open access system. In regulated access system, the free full text access should be granted to the academicians and the researchers in the academic setups (only when they are accessing the articles through their institutional web servers). The personnel from the commercial companies and research institutes may be given access to the full-text on pay-per-view / periodic usage basis as available on date for some journals. The abstracts; however; must be freely accessible for all users. This proposed system will also ensure that the beneficiaries (e.g. commercial companies) who want to get monetary benefits from the usage of a research article also pay the price for the key input for research i.e. scientific literature. If adopted, this system will keep the economic burden of making article openly accessible off the heads of authors; and also the academic users (especially in the developing countries) who, in most of the cases, may not have commercial interests. It will indirectly serve a noble cause - that of bringing the scientific research or atleast, knowledge in developing countries at par with its counterpart in developed countries. Reference: 1. Fiona Godlee (2005). Open access, and proud of it, BMJ 330: 0-g. Shoaib Ahmad sahmad_ph@jamiahamdard.ac.in Competing interests: Pharmacy teaching and authorship in various journal articles |
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susanne mccabe, retired cf24 3pf
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The BMJ has done a great job in enabling a wide debate on issues especially via rapid responses. But it is not quite right to describe the BMJ as a free access journal any longer, as the many letters asking for it to be made so again, confirm. It does bar many people from accessing information and argument in ways which are quite unnecesary eg a respondent may make a valuable contribution to an article published two weeks ago but the thread is broken when access longer than one week ago is barred.That seems perverse and actually hinders critical debate and development of knowledge. Reference; PLoS Medicine, and other PLoS Journals free online. (Thank you to BMJ Editor for the tips). Competing interests: Occasional contributor to PLoS but no competing interest |
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Jill C. Feig, Preventive Medicine Consultant US Air Force Population Health Support Division, San Antonio, TX 78235 USA
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One of the potential pitfalls to the open access format is misinterpretation of published research by media, lay people, and even some medical professionals who do not have adequate education in critical literature review or sufficient understanding of medical and statistical terminology. It is all too common for US television and paper media to misrepresent a study, or for a patient to assume a statistically significant outcome has true clinical significance, for example. Despite these limitations, the many positives of open access literature outweigh this risk. However, we have a continued obligation to educate other consumers and our customers about proper interpretations of published results. Competing interests: None declared |
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BM Hegde, Retd. Vice Chancellor Mangalore-575004, India
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Dear editor, BMJ has been one of the very few journals that has been both free for the authors and, at the same time, open access, although it marginally changed its policy recently. From your editorial it looks like it is going to change further and might charge the authors in future. That would indeed be a sad day for the developing countries where authors will not be able to pay for their publications unless they work in corporate set up. Most teaching hospitals in those countries do not/ can not support this kind of activity, anyway. At the same time one must remember that we, in the developing countries, have enormous clinical load of patients that makes for good observational studies on the bedside. The latter may not make for Nobel stuff but, that is the kind of refutative clinical research that will take medical science forwards. I have one more nagging doubt. How does the peer review system, however tight it might be, detect fraud in research? One of the previous editors, I think it was Richard-could be Steve, who wrote; “if I were to swap my reject file for the accept file, the quality of my journal would remain unchanged!” How true? I wonder how does a good editor encourage negative research? Today many of our conclusions are drawn from looking at multiple studies retrospectively, called meta-analysis, where only positive studies are taken into account! How could such conclusions be authentic? When will unconventional studies see the light of the day in this milieu? I have no answers myself. I am posing these open questions to encourage a debate based on reason. Thank you for a very thought provoking editorial. Yours ever, bmhegde Competing interests: I come from a developing country. |
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Peter Richardson, Managing Director, Royal Society of Medicine Press Royal Society of Medicine W1G 0AE
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I think that Fiona Godlee has been slightly economical with the truth, and hence the puzzlement felt by Gilles Beauchamp and probably many other readers. The BMJ is now only making research papers open access. As the BMJ website makes clear: "The full text of all other articles appearing in the print journal (eg editorials, educational articles, and reviews) will be free for the first week after publication and then under access controls for the next 51 weeks. After one year, access controls will be lifted, and all content will once again be free." At the Royal Society of Medicine we too have recently upgraded our subscription to regain full access to the online BMJ, not least because the articles now behind access controls after the first week are precisely those which tend to be most read by clinicians. The BMJ deserves full credit for bravely pioneering full open access and making the online version completely free until the start of this year. Unlike the majority of other medical journals, they were able to do this because of other sources of revenue, notably classified advertising. However it seems that economic reality has now caught up with them, and they have understandably (at least to this medical publisher) had to revert to the subscription business model. Publishing medical journals costs money, and in the case of excellent journals like the BMJ, a lot of money. It has to come from somewhere. Competing interests: Managing Director, Royal Society of Medicine Press, who publish medical journals |
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Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia 6845
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The BMJ has a distinguished record of leadership in communicating with both the medical community and the wider public. Open access is a further step in making research as widely available as possible, and should be welcomed by all who have an interest in ensuring a well-informed society. Your policy puts the BMJ in a different league from its peers, and vastly increases its impact. Rather than being available only to subscribers or those with library access, research published in the BMJ instantly becomes accessible to an enormous range of organizations and people, including not only scientists but journalists and decision-makers, who may use the information for purposes ranging from public education to policy development. Aronson’s comparison with “100% oxygen” is ill-founded. Access to published information is so different from treatment of premature babies that it borders on the absurd to argue against open access on the basis that paediatricians made some inappropriate clinical decisions in the 1950s. The BMJ is now accessible to a vast readership, far beyond the conventional reach of a medical journal. Surely it is beneficial that the research published in the Journal should be open to all, rather then effectively subjected to a form of censorship? This must apply all the more to disadvantaged communities and developing countries, where access is already hard enough. Of course there must be safeguards (for example, as your editorial indicates, in an “author pays” system to protect the interests of authors without funding support), but that is not an insuperable obstacle. Half a century ago BBC Television started the equivalent of open access television with a series entitled “Your Life in Their Hands”, presented by an eminent physician, Charles Fletcher. The BBC – and Charles Fletcher – were excoriated by Luddites in the medical profession (including, ironically, the BMJ itself) on the basis that it was harmful to give patients too much information about disease. We have learned since then that it is in all our interests to make medical and scientific information as widely available as possible. Open access is another important step down this path. Competing interests: None declared |
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Iain Chalmers, Editor, James Lind Library Summertown Pavilion, Middle Way, Oxford OX2 7LG
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It was several years after qualifying as a doctor that I first joined the BMA. I was prompted to do so when the Association ran a principled campaign in opposition to Margaret Thatcher's proposals for 'reforming' the NHS. There have been other occasions since I became a member when I have felt proud of the Association's public stance. Recently, for example, a BMA spokesman took a principled stand when speaking on the BBC Today Programme about the scandalous acquiescence in NHS recruitment of staff whose training has been paid for by some very poor countries. There have also been occasions when I have felt very disappointed with the Association. One of these was when it decided to restrict access to bmj.com. I was one of several people who supported motions opposing this decision, which were selected for but not debated at last year's Annual Representative Meeting. Several of us have submitted similar motions this year in the hope that this issue will be debated at this year's ARM, and I urge other BMA members to do likewise if their local BMA Division has not yet finalised which motions it will forward for consideration. I regard the creation of a fully open access bmj.com as the most important single advance in medical publishing during my professional lifetime. Not only did it bring research, news and views to a very wide readership at no cost to readers, it developed into a unique forum for lively debate, engaging a very wide variety of individuals and constituencies. Beyond this, however, I believe that the fully open access bmj.com reflected creditably on an Association of well paid professionals for making this undoubtedly valuable resource available to the world without charge. At a time when the reputation of the medical profession is taking some knocking, this could have been hightlighted by the Association as a genuinely generous-spirited gift to the public. When the BMA decided for financial reasons that it could not continue to subsidize open access to bmj.com, I suspect that insufficiently serious consideration was given to this professional image-enhancing aspect of free access to bmj.com. Those responsible for the decision may also not have considered that authors now have a growing number of open access general and specialist journals to which they can submit their work - notably PLoS Medicine and the Biomed Central journals. As someone who has been treated very generously by successive editors of the BMJ since 1975, I feel sad that I find myself inclined now to urge authors to submit their best work to truly open access journals. However, the fact is that bmj.com is not now what it used to be. In the past - as an author and reader - I accessed it more frequently than Medline. Now that the site demands passwords from me I am very unlikely to visit it as frequently as I have done over recent years. I hope that the Association will reconsider a decision which I believe has tarnished a profesional image which had been enhanced by the creation of a truly open access bmj.com. Yours sincerely Iain Chalmers Competing interests: None declared |
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Rakesh Bhargava, Professor of Orthopaedics,SMS Medical college,Jaipur Jaipur 302017,India
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Ask those who do not have access to journals.The costs are prohibitive when converted to local currencies.They have no access at the libraries as the libraries have no funds.The funds they do have get depleted even as the dollar or pound or euro appreciates.Who better than those from developing countries to appreciate "open access".Ask them the benefits.We pray that Gods grace and the industry's fund befall those journals who contemplate open access, especially the specialities journals.That day will dawn some day, we hope. Competing interests: None declared |
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Richard Smith, Board member Public Library of Science, CB10 1SD
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I am a zealot for open access, and I'd like to share with readers of the BMJ an email that I've sent to my closest 2000 friends. Some responded with enthusiasm, most didn't respond, and one responded with fury (so much so that I now have only 1999 close friends). I should make clear that the BMJ is an open access journal when it comes to research articles. So my encouragement of minor insurrection doesn't apply to the BMJ. Dear Friend, I'm sending you this email wearing my hat as a board member of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and I must confess right away that it's a round robin (only without anything about my holidays or the remarkable achievements of my children). The email is aimed primarily at those of you who read medical journals and submit articles to them. If you don't do either then you could stop reading now, although you might be pleased to know that I'm still alive and flourishing. If you want to send me a billet doux (or find out what a billet doux is) then you could either simply respond to this email and my friends at PLoS will forward it-or you could email me directly at richardswsmith@yahoo.co.uk. I have three simple messages: Firstly, you should read PLoS Medicine. It's a tremendous journal full of interesting material-particularly for those who are globally and laterally minded. (I can say this because I'm nothing to do with the editorial side of the journal, although I have submitted material-and had some of it rejected.) All the content is free and can be accessed at http://medicine.plosjournals.org Secondly, you might want to find out more about the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which is a non-profit organisation of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource. I believe passionately that all medical research, most of which is funded with public money, should be available free to everybody everywhere. The great thing about the ideas contained in research is that they will lead to new ideas. Restricting access seems to be almost immoral and is certainly anti-intellectual. The PloS site is www.plos.org Thirdly, if you are a researcher I would urge you to submit your work to an open access journal (and why not PloS Medicine?) so that it can be accessed by everybody for free. And even if you decide to submit to a journal that is not open access (which is still sadly most journals) why not send a copy at the same time to Pubmed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/), where it can be made available free to everybody? You could ask the permission of the journal to do this, but I suggest you simply tell them. I am here encouraging insurrection, but I think that you will quickly discover that journals (even the arrogant ones) need authors more than authors need them. Best wishes Richard Smith Competing interests: I'm a board member of the Public Library of Science, which promotes open access to research. I don't get paid. I used to be the editor of the BMJ for which I did get paid, although in retrospect I'd have done it for nothing. |
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Tony Delamothe, web editor BMJ, BMA House
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Some respondents are obviously confused about Fiona Godlee's statement that the BMJ is providing "free access to the full text of all research articles" at the same time as we've begun to charge for access to bmj.com. "Open access," as the term is generally used, means the free provision of electronic versions of *original research articles* - which is what we're providing on bmj.com. Articles not directly reporting original research (editorials, educational articles, reviews, letters etc) are the ones that have gone behind access controls. For a more detailed description of our current subscription model, see: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7478/DC1 Competing interests: I am bmj.com's web editor. |
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Shabbir M.H. Alibhai, Staff Physician University Health Network, Toronto, Canada, M5G 2C4
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While other readers have mentioned a number of important and entertaining points, no one has reminded the editors that the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is also an open access, electronically freely and fully accessible general medical journal. BMJ is certainly not alone in this regard. Competing interests: None declared |
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