Here is the current draft of what I intend to send Varmus. Any comments? ------------------ Your E-biomed proposal will help the biomedical community understand the advantages of barrier-free Web access to the refereed journal literature. Once biomedical researchers understand the advantages, they will no longer tolerate the status quo and will promote E-biomed.
However, the change will be slowed if commercial publishers and some scientific societies retain the hope that they can continue to generate most of their revenues by charging researchers and research libraries for access to the journal literature. This hope will cause them to actively oppose E-biomed. You can quicken the shift to free access by requiring NIH-supported researchers to post their manuscripts on E-biomed at the time they submit them to the journals they choose and by requiring that the refereed version be made publicly Web-accessible on E-biomed within one year of publication. The precedent for requiring that publicly supported research be publicly accessible is clear. Articles published by federally employed researchers remain in the public domain by law. The reason for giving a one-year grace period before the refereed versions must be freely Web accessible is twofold. (1) It allows publishers to maintain or greatly slow the loss of subscription revenue so long as paper remains the archived format. Subscriptions will continue because researchers want the refereed versions of articles as soon as possible and research libraries will continue to provide such access. (2) It offers publishers a means to smooth the transition from the present users-pay system to a future authors-pay system. The permitted delay of a year allows publishers to charge authors for immediate posting to E-biomed. Many NIH-sponsored researchers would pay the charge because it would make the formatted, refereed, archived version of their articles freely Web accessible at least a year sooner than otherwise, and it would save them the trouble of complying with NIH's requirement to post the refereed version in some other fashion. Publishers could charge for this service what the market would bear, but, until their subscription revenues are threatened by all or nearly all authors paying for immediate free access, they will likely keep the price modest. A modest price will entice more authors to pay for a service that costs publishers next to nothing to implement. The price of immediate free Web access to the refereed version will eventually influence which journals authors choose for their manuscripts. If subscriptions to a journal decline because all or nearly all authors started buying immediate free access, the publisher would have to raise the price for such access, or cut costs. Those of us who predict free access to the journal literature after paper publication stops see competition in the status of journals and in the prices of their services (largely refereeing?) as the way to an efficient system for certifying published research results. In summary, your proposal that authors retain the copyright to their articles is the wedge that should convince all parties that Web access to research literature will become barrier free. By allowing NIH authors to delay a year before posting their refereed versions on E-biomed, you will give publishers more time to adjust to the fact that E-biomed will revolutionize the biomedical journal literature and the roles of publishers and libraries in providing access to it. --------------- ========================================================================= Thomas J. Walker Department of Entomology & Nematology University of Florida, PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620 E-mail: [email protected] FAX: (352)392-0190 Web: http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/tjwbib/walker.htm =========================================================================
