Open access

Author charges Reverse the business model, from output- paid, to input-paid Paid on acceptance/publication Reflect prestige of journals and service to authors May be a range of charges for different levels of service Ideally, not paid by individual authors but by their institution or funding agency Waived for authors who are unable to pay

Open access : finance Costs cut Paper, printing Distribution, warehousing Maintaining subscriptions –Marketing, Sales, Admin Protecting content, copyright Costs left Ensuring and organising rapid peer review Electronic (XML) mark-up Quality Control Web site Customer services

Does open access mean no peer review?

What does open access mean?

An open access publication is one that meets the following two conditions: The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual (for the lifetime of the applicable copyright) right of access to, and a licence to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

Bethesda statement: notes An open access publication is a property of individual works, not necessarily of journals or of publishers. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

Support for open access

Wellcome Trust report “Journal subscriptions are a significant financial burden on institutional libraries and individual researchers, and present a major obstacle to the timely and comprehensive sharing and use of scientific information.” –Economic analysis of scientific research publishing. The Wellcome Trust, 2003

Specifically, the Trust welcomes the establishment of free-access, high-quality scientific journals available via the Internet; will encourage and support the formation of such journals and/or free-access repositories for research papers; will meet the cost of publication charges including those for online-only journals for Trust-funded research by permitting Trust researchers to use contingency funds for this purpose;

What’s the BMJ doing? bmj.com has been completely free access since its launch in 1995 From 2005, user charges will be in place All content will be free for all for a week After which “value added” content will be available to subscribers only Original research may be charged for...

“one last big kick…” But who from, and where?

Who are the stakeholders in clinical research?

Future patients Present patients Clinicians Research participants Purchasers of health care Sponsors of research Health research institutions Individual researchers –Evans and Evans, 1996

Who are the stakeholders in clinical research? No mention of… Publishers Journal editors Industry

“one last big kick…” Here’s a job for the Funders’ Forum

Thank you