The inception of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ("Journal goes public," ScienceScope, 20 Dec., p. 2307) has raised some interesting debates among academics as well as the general public. One such debate recently appeared in the New York Times (1); this article attempted to present a balanced view but omitted the large role of scientific societies in the publication process. Many of the numerous scientific societies were established with a primary purpose of disseminating scientific information, and they are responsible for a good percentage of the published literature. Adhering to their not-for-profit philosophy, the societies meet the expenses of producing quality journals by charging the authors a nonmandatory fee for publication amounting to a fraction of what the newly proposed Public Library of Sciences would charge ($1500 per paper); these fees are seldom honored by authors from poor countries.The proponents of the Public Library of Sciences claim that the new system, which would be available at no cost to the public, would benefit doctors and scientists in poor countries, scientists at budget-conscious institutions, high school students, cancer patients, and anyone else who cannot afford subscriptions to journals (1). However, mechanisms, albeit not so straightforward, do currently exist for nonsubscribers to view the results of scientific research. The New England Journal of Medicine provides free access of its online version to users from more than 150 low per capita income countries, recognizing them automatically by the IP addresses (2). High school students preparing their class projects usually base their reports on information gleaned from newspaper articles, and the bibliographic needs of more serious students are often taken care of by their scientific mentors (I passed on my copy card to the students I mentored in the 1990s for their Westinghouse projects). The highly visible and freely accessible MEDLINE system, supported by government funds, provides summarized information on almost all material published in the medical and biological journals. A similar bibliographic search tool has recently become available for the physical sciences and engineering publications (3). Although the content of these search tools is limited (the users can only gain access to the summary or abstract of the published research material), the information is often sufficient for nonscientists.
The vision of the new project's founders--the sprouting of a kind of cyber neural network, where all of scientific knowledge can be searched, sorted, and grafted with a fluidity that will speed discovery--is highly laudable, and these goals can be achieved by new technologies, Web-based tools with the ability to combine the existing bibliographic databases, or Web-based portals. Money is better spent in developing such new technologies, building a consortium of scientific publishers, providing financial support to high school and community libraries to acquire the basic scientific journals, and educating the public in exploiting the existing technologies to access scientific information.
Aravind B. Akella*
21 Yorktown Road,
Dix Hills, NY 11746,
USA.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*The author works in publishing technology at the American Institute of Physics, Melville, New York.
References
"New premise in science: get the word out quickly online," N.Y. Times, 17 December 2002, p. F1.
See www.nejm.org/custserv/lowinc.asp.
See www.aip.org/press_release/free_search.html.
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