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Editor's Notebook |
rstanley{at}ajroffice.org
Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, cofounder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit open-access publisher, regards the cost of public dissemination of research supported by government funding to be an integral part of the cost of doing the research. While acknowledging that there is a finite cost to peer-review, edit, and produce quality print and electronic versions of a study and post it online, he and fellow supporters of the concept regard this as a one-time cost per accepted research article that should be covered by the submitting researchers or their institutions. It is assumed that once available online, the article can be repeatedly accessed and used without increasing its cost.
Although the concept of freely sharing scientific and medical knowledge with everyone globally has merit, it does not appear to work well for all providers of scholarly publications. Educational, not-for-profit societies, such as the ARRS, would soon see open access turn to no access because the free dissemination of the material in their medical journals would be financially unsustainable. Free access to the journal would eliminate the incentive for some current members to remain members of the ARRS.
For most of the radiology research published in the AJR, government support is nonexistent. Expecting our contributing authors or their institutions to cover the cost of publishing accepted manuscripts is not realistic. Last year 56% of our published manuscripts were from countries outside North America. Obligating international authors to pay the costs, regardless of their ability, is a pathway I do not want to follow.
Dr. Varmus and his PLoS colleagues project an average charge of $1,500 per accepted manuscript. However, others believe that this estimate would not come close to covering the actual total production costs. The PLoS is presently being sustained by grant support.
Quite understandably, the powerful and formidable commercial publishers, such as Reed Elsevier and Springer-Kluwer, are closely monitoring this movement. They control access to a large percentage of the major scientific journals and have reported a healthy profit on sales and subscriptions in the past decade. University librarians—with budgets that have been trimmed in this same time frame—must choose between print and online subscriptions, and the number of titles and books available to the faculty has been reduced overall. The major commercial publishers offer the "big deal," large bundled packages of titles, rather than smaller, individualized lists of preferred journals. Until recently librarians had to accept the inflexible terms offered rather than incur the wrath of "deprived" faculty. However, recent well-publicized revolts by major research-oriented universities have resulted in some surprising subscription concessions, and I am sure that other universities will follow the lead. The new thinking has led some publishers to offer open access to articles in their online journals 6–12 months after the publication date.
How does this issue relate to our journal, the AJR? We offer print and electronic versions for members of the ARRS and nonmember subscribers. The costs are covered by membership dues and subscriptions. Any surplus revenue generated is used to support the other educational and scholarly programs, such as the annual meeting, the Figley and Rogers Fellowships, and the ARRS Scholar program.
The ARRS is one of the 48 cosigners of the Washington, DC, Principles for Free Access to Science [1], whereby free access to the scientific literature is promised to individuals who are disadvantaged or living in less developed countries.
Within this framework, the ARRS provides the AJR, both in print and online, on a case-by-case basis, to numerous radiologists worldwide. Although the concept of open access is appealing and its implementation may gain a foothold in the basic sciences, it will not for the foreseeable future widely occur with journals produced by not-for-profit clinical medical societies. However, the information contained in the current and back issues of these journals is unquestionably becoming easier to access thanks to the widespread use of the Internet.
For those interested in exploring this topic further, the references [2–8] can lead to an extensive network of publications, seminars, and debates that address the open access initiative.
References
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