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The Real Stakes of Virtual Publishing: The Transformation of E-Biomed into PubMed Central Rob Kling*, Joanna Fortuna and Adam King Center for Social Informatics SLIS Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 at: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/csi/WP/wp01-03B.html Abstract: ABSTRACT In 1999, NIH Director Harold Varmus proposed a national biomedical literature server called E-Biomed. E-Biomed reflected the visions of scholarly electronic publishing advocates: it would be fully searchable, free to access, and contain full text versions of both pre-print and post- publication biomedical research articles. However, in less than a year, the E-Biomed proposal was radically transformed, eliminating the pre-print section, instituting delays between article publication and posting to the archive, and changing the name to PubMed Central. This article examines the remarkable transformation of the E-Biomed proposal to PubMed Central by analyzing posts to an online E-Biomed discussion forum created by the U.S. governments NIH, and other forums where E-Biomed deliberations took place. We find that the transformation of the E-Biomed proposal into PubMed Central was the result of highly visible and highly influential statements made by publishers and scientific societies against the proposal. We conclude that: 1) scientific societies and the individual scientists they represent do not always have identical interests, especially in regards to scientific e-publishing; 2) stakeholder politics and personal interests reign supreme in policy debates, even in a supposedly status-free online discussion forum; 3) multiple communication forums must be considered in examinations of public policy deliberations. ---- Rob Kling http://www.slis.indiana.edu/kling The Information Society (journal) http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS Center for Social Informatics http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI SLIS - IU's Information Science School http://www.slis.indiana.edu/MIS and http://www.slis.indiana.edu/Degrees/phd/ Indiana University 10th & Jordan, LI Room 005C Bloomington, IN 47405-1801 812-855-9763 // Fax: 855-6166 Read & contribute to the .... Social Informatics Home Page --> http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI a resource about research, teaching, conferences & journals If you're interested in scholarly communication and the Internet, check out the SCIT Project at: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SCIT
