Scientists Demand Free Journal Access

Over 15,000 scientists are up in arms because of an Internet revolution that never happened. They call themselves the Public Library of Science (PLS) and in a massive statement, many of the world's top scientists have vowed not to publish or review articles in any scientific journal that denies free electronic access to all users.

The Public Library of Science has two aims. It wants free access to back issues of scientific journals and an Internet search engine uniting information from all journals.

The push for the free distribution of scientific findings is the brainchild of acclaimed researcher at the Sloane-Kettering Institute Harold E. Varmus, who was also a candidate for the Harvard presidency. Helping to organize Varmus' effort are head of Harvard's Department of Cell Biology Marc W. Kirschner and Stanford Professor Patrick Brown.

"The Public Library of Science is a political movement determined to make scientific literature readily available and take advantage of a powerful weapon," Varmus said.

The weapon Varmus speaks of is the Internet, which scientists once lauded for its promise of inexpensive and instantaneous information transfer, creating a digital scientific community. Now, they say access to information is rigidly controlled and constrained by the publishers of scientific journals.

The majority of important scientific findings are currently published by a few major companies that hold a monopoly in the industry. With little market pressure, libraries pay high prices for subscriptions in print and online. And scientists do not have quick and easy access to the information that might spur their research.

"Scientific publishing is radically different from other fields," Varmes said.

Scientists must pay to have their articles printed in the most prestigious journals where their work will be peer-reviewed by experts in the field.

"These publishing firms are jerking us around, we do all the reviewing for them and we pay money to have them published. Then we pay high subscription rates to read the articles," Varmus said.

The Public Library of Science is asking scientific journals to make their material free and fully searchable within six months. The group plans to use Pub-Med Central, a website run by the National Library of Medicine as the home for the search engine.

"There is a philosophical problem when scientific publishers own as private property what amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars of publicly funded research," Kirschner said. "They restrict access and the result is a loss in the potential for scientific research."

In The Libraries

Even at Harvard, where a $19 billion dollar endowment might be thought to shield the University from financial strain, the libraries have been hurt by mounting costs of science journals. In late February, Harvard canceled its licensing agreements with the electronic publisher of Nature Online, citing cost concerns and

"lack of perpetual access" online to magazine content.

The web page notes that Nature Online costs nearly twice the price of its counterpart, Science Online.

Though Harvard University says Science Online offers "full and timely content," these cost-based decisions made by universities concern the leaders of the Public Library of Science.

Brown, at Stanford, said it is unlikely such library decisions will have any significant effect on the price of the most prestigious scientific journals, since scientist demand the peer-review process that these journals provide.

Kirschner said the only effective way to insure that scientists have inexpensive access to the most respected sources of information is through the Public Library of Science's campaign.

"Because the scientists provide 99 percent of the raw materials that are actually involved in the journal publication process, they really do have a huge amount of power in the free market," Kirschner said. "The one thing they have lacked is the ability to act in a concerted way to make their wants heard and taken seriously."

The campaign seems to be provoking some response from the publishing world, Stanford Professor Patrick Brown said. And he says the scheduled boycott on publishing might not occur if journals continue to respond.

"We don't want to cripple the whole process, " Brown said. "We are now seeing some response and with these small concessions we are reconsidering what position we should take."

The Reaction

Some journals see the rationale for free access to archives but do not want to be part of the fully-searchable web engine, which as of now would be run off of a U.S. government site through the National Library of Medicine.

According to the managing editor of the Journal of Cell Biology, the magazine is not averse to allowing free content through its website but does not want to be searchable through Pub-Med central.

"We have made our content free after six months on our own website but we don't want to give the content to the proposed government site," Michael Rossner, Managing Editor of the Journal of Cell Biology said.

Science Magazine has also published manifestos against the proposed government site, though it too has granted free access to back issues six months after their publication date.

However, Kirschner said the resistance to a government-run search engine was unfounded. There would be no direct oversight of journal content, and the search engine would simply be based around an already well-known scientific resource, Pub-Med Central.

"Basically the response has been to characterize this as a 'Do you trust the government with running this repository?'" Kirschner said. "We are not saying [journals] can't have their separate sites, but that their information be connected to the National Library of Medicine."

Kirschner, Brown and others are drafting a response to the latest Science Magazine editorial against the search engine but they note that many journals have moved more content online, proving their point that journals will not be hurt by free archival access.

"Making information available for free to the world should not undermine a journal's economic integrity," Kirschner said.