BioMed Central Edinburgh, UKSG, April 9, 2003 Public funding Public knowledge Public domain Publishing Jan Velterop

Edinburgh, UKSG, April 9, 2003BioMed Central

Public funding Public knowledge

Public domainPublishing

Jan Velterop


Is any publicly funded research public knowledge?

The CIA and MI5 are publicly funded. Is the knowledge they gather public knowledge?

That’s why it is not published.


What about science?

Isn’t scientific research funded and carried out in order to be published?


Open source software

Isn’t science‘open source knowledge’?


And isn’t science communication the connective

tissue between the world’s inquisitive minds?


Much of science is no good unless it is public knowledge


Functions of publishing

Registration (record, priority claim)Certification (quality, relevance judgement)Dissemination (circulation, visibility)Preservation (secure archiving)

Derivative function:

‘Rewardification’ (recognition, acknowledgement)


Societal benefits

Registration (record, priority claim)Certification (quality, relevance judgement)Dissemination (circulation, visibility)Preservation (secure archiving)

Derivative function:

‘Rewardification’ (recognition, acknowledgement)


These societal benefits are the reason why research is funded

with public money


The main point of publishing science is the dissemination of

research results


Isn’t it logical and appropriate then that research results be in

the public domain?


Publishing costs money, and society pays for it from public

money


But what should public money pay for?

To have research results placed in the public domain?

Or to give access only to some (not all) scientists and relinquish the right for taxpayers to have access to published research results?


Publishing can be paid for by society

in two ways:

1) By giving a publisher the exclusive rights to the published research and allow him to sell it as part of the facilitation of research

2) By paying for the service of publishing as part of the cost of research


PastPast

msms ©

jnl

Publisher

FutureFuture

msms €

jnl

Publisher


What’s wrong with selling research?

Nothing if selling research results as part of research facilitation would really deliver the ‘goods’, i.e. access to everybody

The problem is, it doesn’t

Giving a third party the exclusive rights to exploit the published research is like giving somebody your watch and then paying to see what time it is

But the watch is a public clock which is there to make sure everybody can see what time it is


What’s ‘wrong’ with paying for the service?

It allows full and universal Open Access with maximum dissemination

It allows cost reduction


Cost

A cost reduction from 3% to 1% of the research budget is not such a

big deal

It’s a much bigger dealto unlock its circulation, which is

now severely limited


A perspective (2001)

Number ofArticles*

Research Budget (est.)

Journals Budget*

Cornell 3900 $195 million $5.6 million

Dartmouth 1200 $60 million $3.2 million

Princeton 2500 $125 million $4.7 million

Yale 3600 $180 million $6.4 million

*Source: David Goodman, Princeton, personal communication


Cost Proportion

0 50 100 150 200

Cornell

Dartmouth

Princeton

Yale

Open Access Budgetneeded

Journals Budget

Research Budget


Circulation

A recent ScienceDirect advertisement goes like this:

“…9 million researchers have access to ScienceDirect.Are you one of them?”

~

Over 650 million* people have access to Open Access research literature. You are one of them!

*end 2002


From ‘if’ to ‘how’

At the ALPSP seminar on ‘who pays’ for the free lunch’ in London last week it became clear to me that we are beyond ‘if’

Most of the discussion was concerned with:

‘How do we make the transition’


Help is at hand


40%of the 97 journals now published by

BioMed Central are for independent

editorial groups


http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/newjournals#new


Submissions from the beginning


Average per day since January 2002

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Submissions


Access statistics, last 30 daysAccesses 4842 Adolescent diet and risk of breast cancerA Lindsay Frazier, CatherineTomeo Ryan, Helaine Rockett, Walter C Willett, Graham A ColditzBreast Cancer Res 2003, 5:R59-R64 (21 February 2003)

Accesses 4420 Combined optical trapping and single-molecule fluorescenceMatthew J Lang, Polly M Fordyce, Steven M BlockJournal of Biology 2003, 2:6 (24 February 2003)

Accesses 2816 Reducing mortality in sepsis: new directionsJean-Louis Vincent, Edward Abraham, Djillali Annane, Gordon Bernard, Emanuel Rivers, Greet Van den BergheCritical Care 2002, 6:S1-S18 (5 December 2002)

Accesses 2634 Overview of the voltage-gated sodium channel familyFrank H Yu, William A CatterallGenome Biology 2003, 4:207 (24 February 2003)

Accesses 2532 Statistical tests for differential expression in cDNA microarray experimentsXiangqin Cui, Gary A ChurchillGenome Biology 2003, 4:210 (17 March 2003)

Accesses 2528 The utilisation of health research in policy-making: concepts, examples and methods of assessmentStephen R Hanney, Miguel A Gonzalez-Block, Martin J Buxton, Maurice KoganHealth Research Policy and Systems 2003, 1:2 (13 January 2003)

Accesses 2262 Selective decontamination of the digestive tract reduces mortality in critically ill patientsMarcus J Schultz, Evert de Jonge, Jozef KeseciogluCritical Care 2003, 7:107-110 (24 January 2003)

Accesses 1859 Characterizing the stress/defense transcriptome of ArabidopsisRamamurthy Mahalingam, AnaMaria Gomez-Buitrago, Nancy Eckardt, Nigam Shah, Angel Guevara-Garcia, Philip Day, Ramesh Raina, Nina V FedoroffGenome Biology 2003, 4:R20 (18 February 2003)

Accesses 1754 Algorithms for computing parsimonious evolutionary scenarios for genome evolution, the last universal common ancestor and dominance of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of prokaryotesBoris G Mirkin, Trevor I Fenner, Michael Y Galperin, Eugene V KooninBMC Evolutionary Biology 2003, 3:2 (6 January 2003)


www.biomedcentral.com

[email protected]

Documents

BioMed Central Edinburgh, UKSG, April 9, 2003 Public funding Public knowledge Public domain Publishing Jan Velterop