E-Letter responses to:

viewpoints: Richard J. Roberts, Harold E. Varmus, Michael Ashburner, Patrick O. Brown, Michael B. Eisen, Chaitan Khosla, Marc Kirschner, Roel Nusse, Matthew Scott, and Barbara Wold INFORMATION ACCESS: Building A "GenBank" of the Published Literature Science 2001; 291: 2318a-2319a [Summary] [Full text]

E-Letters: Submit a response to this article

Published E-Letter responses:

Journal Profits

Diane Lester   (4 May 2001)

A central repository requires grassroots participation

Michael Mauws   (4 May 2001)

Fee or Free?

Johannes Velterop   (4 May 2001)

Parallel Debate in Nature

Stevan Harnad   (4 May 2001)

A Look Libraries

Albert Henderson   (16 April 2001)

Sharing Personal Libraries

Chris Seidel   (13 April 2001)

No Literature GenBank Now

Alex Bienkowski   (11 April 2001)

Central Archives at Individual Institutions

Joan Green   (11 April 2001)

"Public Domain Knowledge," not a Private Property Right

Sterling Stoudenmire   (9 April 2001)

A European Perspective

John Sack   (29 March 2001)

Redundancy of Scientific Literature

Frank Edgcombe   (29 March 2001)

Journal Profits 4 May 2001
Diane Lester, Scientist SLU Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Journal Profits	What concerns me about this issue is that many scientists are unaware of the fact that publishing research is a highly profitable business. I was stunned when I learnt this fact a short while ago. Perhaps I was naïve but its something that you just don’t expect and, I suspect, most researchers don’t think about. Since then I have become aware that certain journals are not totally open about this fact and even try to hide it. There was great protest at the fact that one had to have a subscription to use Celera’s genome data. Yet the most extreme views on this were published in commercial journals. These journals are profiting from the control of access to publicly funded research with international significance. At the very least commercial journals should be required to declare the fact they are profit-making enterprises so researchers can take this into consideration when deciding where they will submit their work.
A central repository requires grassroots participation 4 May 2001
Michael Mauws, Professor University of ALberta Respond to this E-Letter: Re: A central repository requires grassroots participation	The idea of having a central repository is indeed a good, but the level of cooperation it would require on the part of the publishers makes it unlikely that such a repository will ever arise if it is left up to the publishers within the current business model. However, the beauty of the internet is the possibilities it provides to harness the collective efforts of (hundreds of) thousands of individual researchers and, thus, it provides the perfect platform to build such a repository. One such model is reflected in a site (www.getCITED.org) on which a few colleagues and I have been working. This site allows researchers to enter in the citation details of all the items on their CVs into an easily searchable database, and to then make links between each of those items and the items in their bibliographies. In addition to being able to inform others of less easily found research papers (e.g., book chapters, working papers, etc.), the site allows researchers to collaboratively build bibliographies on topics of interest. The obvious shortcoming of this site, as those who visit it will soon discover, is that it does not provide access to the full text of publications. Nevertheless, it is possible to include an URL with the publication if the full text is available elsewhere. getCITED is very much in work in progress and, because it lacks the sort of commercial hardware that a true central repository would require, it may be fated for obscurity. In any case, what seems obvious to my colleagues and I is that, a central repository, in whatever form it emerges, will require the ongoing involvement of the entire academic community and will not come into being without it.
Fee or Free? 4 May 2001
Johannes Velterop, consultant Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Fee or Free?	It now looks as though it was a historical mistake in science publishing to move from a paradigm where authors contributed a major portion of the cost of publishing, to one where the reader (or rather, the library) bears the cost. Were author contributions the prevailing model – arguably authors benefit most from publication – the current situation with restrictive practices and slow, tortuous migration from paper to web would never have arisen. Fees of less than $500 per article could enable outfits (which we’d call publishers, I suppose) to undertake the organisation of peer review, technical standardisation and safeguarding of the works’ integrity, mounting on databases, and the like. The articles could then be made available electronically to the world at large, without restrictions beyond the obligation to acknowledge the authors and cite the original source, and opportunities for redundant archiving would abound. Where desired, even print copies could be made and stored by anyone prepared to do the work. Is the ‘free market’ with its competitive mechanisms holding us back? The BioMed Central model is one that seems to be developing in this direction and it will be very interesting to see how it fares. Competing interests: currently advising BioMed Central, among others.
Parallel Debate in Nature 4 May 2001
Stevan Harnad, Professor of Cognitive Science Southampton University Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Parallel Debate in Nature	Science Readers may also wish to look at the complementary discussion on this same topic that is currently taking place in Nature WebDebates, including a commentary by myself on Roberts et al. in: http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/index.html An article on the Self-Archiving Initiative will also appear in the print version of Nature (April 26, Volume 410, pp. 1024/1025). NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org
A Look Libraries 16 April 2001
Albert Henderson, Former Editor, Publishing Research Quarterly (1994-2000) Respond to this E-Letter: Re: A Look Libraries	With stunning innocence, the proposal to build a government archive to distribute the published literature "free" rationalizes a utopian government program with the Alexandrine ideal of comprehensive bibliographic access, as Roberts et al. envision. The lessons of history teach us the frailty of such a simplistic solution. The library at Alexandria may have been wonderful. Unfortunately, it vanished rather quickly. Similarly, the idealized programs of Soviet science dissemination of the 1950s soon fell by the wayside. If such examples are not sufficiently convincing, consider the record of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The 20,169 articles covered by Index Medicus in 1879 "represented essentially the totality of the biomedical literature, whereas the 217,485 in 1973 were published in only 12 percent of the world's biomedical literature," according to the library's own estimation (1). In 1961, the NLM discontinued its monumental Index Catalogue after 65 years when its managers decided that the keeping pace with growth of the medical literature was too costly. Surpassing these spectacular defeats of Alexandrine goals, the NLM also managed to devalue the very information it claims to hold in high esteem! Its well-intentioned cheap and free delivery forestalled investments in the sort of competitive activities that have developed innovation elsewhere. Today, Amazon.com offers far more detailed information about nearly any book than the primitive cataloging of NLM or any science library. Rather than pursue unrealistic dreams of government largess, why not support science libraries as a part of science, rather than as an unrelated activity? Research library growth has not kept pace with spending on R&D since the 1960s (2). If it had, the spending power of libraries would drive competition and excellence in dissemination in ways that could never be conceived by a handful of bureaucrats. Moreover, private efforts to succeed would create a richer diversity of media tailored to the needs of authors and their readers, as they have in the past. References and Notes 1. M. E. Corning and M. M. Cummings, "Biomedical Communication. Advances in American Medicine," J. Z. Bowers and E. F. Purcell, Eds. (New York: Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, New York, 1976), vol. 2. 2. A. Henderson, Science 289, 243 (2000).
Sharing Personal Libraries 13 April 2001
Chris Seidel, Graduate Student Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Univ. of California, Berkeley Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Sharing Personal Libraries	The benefits of a unified database for scientific literature have been eloquently stated by Roberts et al. However, one thing scientists can do now to facilitate unimpeded access to information is to work proactively with existing technology to share their own libraries. Every scientist spends time building his or her own library. These days with many people accessing journals on-line this means hard drives filling up with PDF files, abstracts, etc. Creating a Web-accessible database of these files is easy to do (http://www.phageT4.org/MyLib/) and offers several benefits. Your library is accessible to you from any computer. You can refer to records in your library with a simple URL, thus making it easy to footnote Web pages and e-mail, and making sure everyone has access to a paper you might be presenting for journal club. You can make your library searchable. Just as it is natural and simple for journals to make their content available online, so too is it natural and simple for scientists to use the network and make their own libraries available to themselves, and thus to others with whom they wish to share. Although the task of organizing and serving one's own library would be easier with a commercial software product, commonly available Web publishing software tools can also be used for this purpose.
No Literature GenBank Now 11 April 2001
Alex Bienkowski, Medical Librarian University of Texas Medical Branch Respond to this E-Letter: Re: No Literature GenBank Now	Roberts and co-authors seem to ignore the determination of publishers to use current law and new technology in controling access to the content of their publications and in maximizing the revenue such content affords. I think this determination will remain, no matter what open letters and readership polls might reveal. Moreover, scientists who urge generous surrender of property rights for others for the sake of scientific progress are at a moral and practical disadvantage if their colleagues are seen to be quite careful in securing and exploiting their own intellectual property. Scientific publishing is being consolidated into a very few outlets, and among these I think there is small chance of finding the cooperative attitude our authors desire. This trend in publishing affects scientists directly, and they should inform themselves about it and about other options for sharing their results.
Central Archives at Individual Institutions 11 April 2001
Joan Green, Librarian Sanger Centre, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SA, UK Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Central Archives at Individual Institutions	There is another aspect to electronic storage of scientific papers that I have not seen mentioned in the debate so far, and this is the sometimes stringent regulation of the use that can be made of the electronic version of papers. Sanger Centre scientists want to rid themselves of the onerous task of maintaining reprint collections and the recording work associated with these. They also find that trying to access papers from publishers' Web sites can be time-consuming and frustrating -- publisher's Web site down, long downloading times, etc. We are planning a central electronic archive of papers that have been found useful, that will be wanted again and will be cited in our own research papers. This archive will be solely for internal use by our own scientists but having the advantages of central storage combined with instant personal access. No commercial aspects are involved nor any intention of reducing our journal subscriptions. In fact, citation ratings for journals should be helped if details of their papers can be checked easily for inclusion in reference lists. However, a small core of important publishers specifically exclude permanent storage of papers in electronic form, even for purely academic purposes, as a part of their license agreement. One leading scientific publisher, when approached, required full details of each paper to be archived. It seems that there are a few publishers who are deliberately, and unreasonably, holding up a logical advance in the working methods of researchers.
"Public Domain Knowledge," not a Private Property Right 9 April 2001
Sterling Stoudenmire, Investigator WDRC, Inc. Respond to this E-Letter: Re: "Public Domain Knowledge," not a Private Property Right	I commend the effort. If an author (investigator) seeks to publish the results of work funded from public funds or funds derived from institutions that enjoy tax-free benefits (such as 501 exemptions from taxation, or if one or more of the authors was educated at any time by public funds, such as at a public school, university, or research agency that is a government or that enjoys 501 exemptions), then the knowledge generated, and any expression or derivative of it, should be "property" that is a derivative or expression of "public knowledge." Works generated from public knowledge should not generate enforceable, intangible private property rights such as copyright, patent, or intangible [private] property claims. Nothing should prevent a creator of a work from claiming the invention, publication, or creation, but nothing in the claim should bestowe "private property rights" in the claimant or his/her assignee.
A European Perspective 29 March 2001
John Sack, Director Stanford University, HighWire Press Respond to this E-Letter: Re: A European Perspective	Readers of this Viewpoint piece might also want to read Frank Gannon's editorial on the EMBO perspective on this topic in a recent issue of "EMBO Reports"; the editorial is entitled "Boycott!": http://www.embo-reports.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/2/3/163 [Competing interests: I am Director of Stanford's HighWire Press, the organization that produces online journal sites for Science and 250 other journals, more than 80 of which make back content free to the public.]
Redundancy of Scientific Literature 29 March 2001
Frank Edgcombe, Reference Librarian Hampton University Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Redundancy of Scientific Literature	I commend the original Viewpoint and the editorial response. Anything that can be done to reduce the cost of escalating journal subscriptions is appreciated both by libraries and educational institutions. JSTOR is another model. It is one of the more heavily used depositories of scholarly literature for our students and faculty; it provides great access to such literature and now is adding some scientific literature to its collection. Another comment, if I may. In the past libraries have, by their individual collections of print or microform, provided redundancy to guard against a specific collection being lost through disaster, lack of funding, etc., at another library. Such redundancy should continue, with multiple depositories providing access should any one library close.