One of the greatest public goods our taxpayers fund is biomedical research.
Findings from NIH-funded research are used day-in and day-out to help doctors make treatment and diagnosis decisions, to help health departments better allocate their resources to promote health and prevent disease, and to inspire new ideas for the next generation of medical breakthroughs.
That's not just here in America, but all over the world.
Compared to all of the direct foreign aid our government disburses and all the flag-waving it does in an effort to improve our image on the global market, freely available NIH-funded research is among the best displays of goodwill we put forth. Consider, for example, a recent conversation I shared in an Alexandria hospital with Dr. Salah, an Egyptian surgeon. When he found out I was American he proclaimed "God bless America for Pubmed" -- the National Library of Medicine's online search engine for health research.
But that may soon come to an end. A recent bill, the "Research Works Act", proposed under pressure from the Association of American Publishers, threatens to strangle access to health research to protect the interests of a few greedy corporations -- it would keep crucial, life-saving information from doctors and scientists who use it to take care of people and contribute to knowledge.
You see, almost all high-quality health research is submitted for publication in academic journals -- journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), or the New England Journal of Medicine. They serve the purpose of coordinating peer-review, organizing the health literature, and benchmarking high quality research. Peer-review is the process by which research articles are sent out to other scientists who read and evaluate them for rigor, clarity, and importance. Reviewers score articles and then recommend them for publication, revision and resubmission, or rejection.
Reviewers aren't paid for their services, and in most cases, neither are editorial board members who shoulder the actual responsibilities of coordinating peer-review. But as you can imagine, these journals are a lucrative business.
Then who sees the money?
Publishers do: companies like Elsevier and Wiley. The fact that you've probably never heard these names before should tell you just how (un)important they really are in the whole process.
As it stands, publishers are allowed to restrict NIH-funded research by subscription for one year. At that point, the NIH requires that all funded research be released to the public and made easily accessible via Pubmed -- where people all over the world, like Dr. Salah, can then use it to inform diagnostic and treatment decisions or guide future research.
This bill would make it illegal for the NIH to mandate unrestricted access to published NIH-funded material -- choking this crucial information off from health providers and researchers who are unable to pay.
This bill is one last plea for protection from a dying industry -- a result of the changing scientific publishing market.
Not only are there more journals than ever before, but traditional heavy-hitters are facing new competitors. For example, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) flagship journal PLoS Medicine is now regarded almost as highly as JAMA. What's more, newer journals, like the PLoS brand are adopting an open-access model, where researchers are charged publication fees, but access to their work is never restricted. Like email did to snail-mail, these newer journals are outpacing their out-of-date, out-of-touch counterparts.
This bill would force taxpayers -- who pay for NIH-funded research in the first place -- to pay publishers for the right to access the science they've paid to have done.
What's worse, the heaviest burden of this insidious bill, if passed, would fall on the poor and underserved.
At home, it would keep crucial medical information from doctors who serve low-income patients and who can't afford the steep subscription costs. In low-income countries abroad, it would choke off doctors and scientists who rely on NIH-funded research to improve the lives and wellbeing of billions of people.
Unfortunately, the world of scientific publishing isn't as big as, well, the entire Internet -- so the word's not getting out. But this bill is arguably just as dangerous -- if not more dangerous -- than SOPA.
Access to crucial scientific knowledge is at stake. Help kill this bill and save lives by contacting your representatives and expressing your indignation today.
Follow Abdulrahman El-Sayed on Twitter: www.twitter.com/elabdul
Remember autocorrect seems to have a problem with "they're", "their", and "there". (Sorry, Pet peeve.)
When those forms are signed for submission, not all journals are the same. Some give the authors no rights or very little rights over the manuscript they're having published. Most authors tend to think that, at worst, their fate lies in the hands of the editors with regard to future use of the material; but it's the publishers that hold the rights when rights are granted.
But, again, there is nothing to stop the community from establishing new channels of publishing. Science publishers, just like book publishers and record producers are a remnant of the times when the physical publishing process was technically hard and expensive. Both considerations have seized to exist about two decades ago.
I'm an author. I appreciate copyright. What's more, I appreciate it's purpose. Originally, the purpose was so that artists could make money off their works so that they could make more works, rather than having to hold down other paying jobs. That's good for a country, good for the artist, good for art, and I fully agree. But I feel it's been prostituted. We have grandchildren of artists still mooching off the copyright of their grandfather. Money from their work, what they earned, and so forth...that makes perfect sense. But the copyright? Who does that serve? It doesn't serve the artist. Their dead. It doesn't serve the country. The kid's producing nothing. It doesn't serve art. Again, the kid's producing nothing.
It's just been stretched too far beyond the life of the artist and does not exist for art anymore, just for corporate interests trying to ensure they can profit from IP 90 years later.
My rant is over.
Your other points are correct. If only we could get academics to actually start doing something about it.
You can read it, think about it and then ask the author to send you a real pre-print of the actual journal article for free.
At present rate of progress in biomedical research, especially in cancer research, it is unacceptable to limit access to the results of tax-payer’s sponsored research even for one year.
Present publishing system must adapt to the new reality. And this will happen with or without Congress intervention, in spite of any bills like SOPA.
As for an online signature, here's one: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/207/support-the-open-access-movement-stop-the-research-works-act/
Elsevier is a giant in that regard. Many journals are optionally open-access : authors can pay no fee, and not have their articles open-access. Or they can pay a fee, and the article will be free. But that fee is quite high : 3000-5000$ for a single paper. That is over the monthly budget of my own lab, but if we were a NIH-funded lab, we would be forced to pay it, perhaps making the lab unable to hire a new student (such a requirement was turned down in Canada's version of NIH, CIHR, because of exactly that). Ridiculously, with the almost disappearance of paper versions for most journals, fees for colour (2000$ per figure) can also be charged. When you do imagery, that can hurt your bottom line.
A big thanks for this article.
Tax Dollars are what makes this to some degree public domain if for no other reason than accountability for starters.
This sounds a lot like the Haliburton Loophole. I think I would be looking for other players in this mess, perhaps chemical companies for starters? Big Polluters? Because right now---these past decade has seen an unprecedented amount of research showing serious, long term health effects due to toxins in food, water, and soil via pesticides, plastics, petroleum processing, and the like. Things like organophosphates tied directly to Parkinsons, Diabetes, and ADHD for starters. BPA to PCOS, as well as to reproductive problems in fetal and infant development.
Great article. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!