SCN: Re: various (+ open access initiative) (fwd)

[Doug Schuler]

FYI...

(We're hoping to have Darius and company at DIAC-02 this May...)

-- Doug

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 18:34:24 +0100
From: Darius Cuplinskas <cuplinsk at osi.hu>


United Press International

February 14, 2002, Thursday 07:49 AM Eastern Time

HEADLINE: Soros backs academic rebels


An international group of scientists and academics, supported by
Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, is calling on scholars around
the world to free their research from the control of for-profit, printed
journals.

The so-called "Budapest Open Access Initiative" calls on scholars to post
their work on the Internet and to create alternative, Web-based journals
available for free to all researchers.

Backing from Soros's Open Society Institute will amount to $1 million a
year for three years, Darius Cuplinskas, society spokesman, said. The
money will be used to find new ways of publishing scholarly literature
while maintaining its quality and making it freely available to all, he
added.

"Having something like the Soros Foundation backing us says to the world
this is real, this is not just a bunch of idealistic, naive scientists
running around," said University of California genomics professor Michael
Eisen.

Eisen is one of the founders of the Public Library of Science, a group
trying to start Web-based, free journals dealing with the life sciences.
Under their plan, the costs of reviewing, formatting and posting a paper
would be borne by the author, as one of the costs of doing research. The
cost per published paper would probably be roughly $300, Eisen said.

Currently, most research appears in printed journals, many privately owned
and available only by subscription. The cost of such journals, Eisen said,
creates "an impediment to the free and open exchange of ideas."

Universities and other research institutions currently can afford only a
fraction of the roughly 20,000 scholarly journals published around the
world every year, said philosopher Peter Suber, one of the architects of
the Budapest plan and a professor at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind.

Unlike most writers, researchers are not paid for published work, Suber
said, and neither are the academic reviewers -- dubbed "peer reviewers" --
who must approve manuscripts for publication.

"A lot of people are donating their labor and their intellectual
property," he said, "but the readers aren't getting it for free."

Aside from creating Web-based journals, the Budapest plan calls for
academics to "self-archive" their work, according to cognitive scientist
Stevan Harnad of the University of Quebec in Montreal, who is the main
proponent of the idea. Under that system, researchers would submit their
work to journals as usual, but as well they would post the peer-reviewed
final version on special university-run Websites. "That would give open
access right away," Harnad said.

While some journals are relatively inexpensive, the cost and number have
steadily been rising, according to Graham Bradshaw of the University of
Toronto library. One of the most expensive, he said, is Brain Research,
from the Dutch publishing house of Elsevier Science -- a 2002 subscription
costs libraries $18,578.

Despite spending nearly $5 million a year on journals, "we haven't been
able to acquire all of the things we should have," Bradshaw said.

It's possible for journals to keep costs down, said Jeffrey Drazen, editor
of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, which costs $140 a
year but is free to physicians and researchers in the Third World.

Drazen said his journal offers a valuable service to readers, sorting
through thousands of research submissions, professional editors work with
academic reviewers to make sure the published papers are accurate and
valuable.

"We don't just take what the author sends us," he said. Subscribers "pay
us to filter out what is important," Drazen said. >


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