Comments on: Richard Smith: A bad bad week for access

By: William park

William park — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:49:00 +0000

This frustration is a growing trend as the world becomes flatter and scholarly needs are expanding beyond the walls of western academia to developing countries and businesses of all sizes. Disclosure: I am the CEO of DeepDyve (http://www.deepdyve.com), a Silicon Valley startup that has partnered with most of the major publishers, including Nature Publishing Group, to provide simple and affordable access to authoritative research articles via our “rental” service. Our users can rent and view-only an article via our cloud-based service for as little as $0.99 (users can also print and download articles for the same prices as offered by publishers).

By: JLarkin

JLarkin — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Medical publishing has always treated it’s authors badly, so fair enough it now treats it’s readers the same. They have always insisted on entire transfer of copyright (recent improvements) to “protect the authors” (tosh). They can then sell reprints to drug companies for pots of money for something they did not produce. Indeed, as mentioned above, for something the author had to produce to survive.
JL

By: A. Papagiannis

A. Papagiannis — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:49:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I had a letter published in a scholarly journal in my specialty. I requested a pdf of the relevant page for my records, and I was denied that as I was not a subscriber to the journal. I am old-fashioned enough to lament the day when paper journals will go the way of the dinosaurs, but this is evolution. Scientific publishers will have to open the gates to free access of ALL their contents, or else be prepared to be replaced by bloggers.
In praise of librarians, I can mention one such brave lady who found an article for me even though I had given her the wrong title, author, volume and page number. My only correct piece of data was the name of the publication.
A. Papagiannis, respiratory physician
Thessaloniki, Greece

By: Alissa

Alissa — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:38:00 +0000

Imagine researchers from developing countries who have neither the access or necessary contacts…

By: Joseph Ana

Joseph Ana — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:11:00 +0000

Eloquently put as usual by Richard Smith. As I read his blog I just wondered why it is that Publishers like The Times pay the writers/authors of what they publish and sell, but scientific publishers charge researches / authors before they carry their writing / research, and they take over ownership Rights for the authors(s) work, plus. Until HINARI came along and Open Access publishers who waive fees for authors i the third world, traditional publishing model meant that practitioners in the third world were mostly deprived of access to essential literature. That patient care suffered cannot be in doubt, leading to the creation of such groups as HIFA2015 forum ( Health Information for All by 2015).

Perhaps one hope that there is, is that such exploitation of science authors / researchers may not last another ten years that Richard fears, considering what is happening to the Open Access movement in the last few years. Open Access may not be galloping, but it has taken root and the branches are in bloom. Little wonder the very big traditional publishers are themselves launching into open access!. That.s the future.

Joseph Ana
Editor, BMJ West Africa Edition.

By: Madeleine D

Madeleine D — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:26:00 +0000

http://jeps.efpsa.org/index.php/jeps Fighting for open, free access to peer-reviewed psychology articles.

By: Harry Palmer

Harry Palmer — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:08:00 +0000

Content costs.

By: Scholastica

Scholastica — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:05:00 +0000

There are now services like Scholastica (www.scholasticahq.com) that allow scholars to manage and publish their own journals. If an editor wishes, they can publish their journal Open Access.

By: Harry Palmer

Harry Palmer — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:00:00 +0000

So publishers don’t have international marketing and sales teams working to ensure a global audience?
Content creators are recompensed by having their articles published, meaning they get more funding and are gainfully employed (and paid). If you don’t publish, you don’t survive very long in academia.

By: Ali TT

Ali TT — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:56:00 +0000

In my field, chemistry, the highest impact journals all belong to restricted access publishers (NPG, Science, ACS, RSC, Wiley, Elsevier mostly). How does the discipline move from this system to one of open-access? Who budges first?

Is it the onus of the individual academic to publish open-access? If so, will he or she risk their future career in a funding environment that demands high impact publications?
Do the publishers move to a pay-to-publish policy? Does this risk creating monopolies with publishers of the biggest journals charging extortionate rates?
What about funders/governments insisting that research resulting from their money is published open-access? If, for example, the UK did this but other countries did not, would it weaken our competitiveness in comparison to nations where research was still published through the traditional routes?

By: Chriskeene

Chriskeene — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:37:00 +0000

The last time I checked, The Times pays for most of the content it publishes?

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:07:00 +0000

Restricting access to the scientific literature is a dangerous thing. Science flourished on free access and sharing of results. Now we could see access restricted to those in institutions prepared to pay the subscriptions to journals. OK the publishers have to make money, but not in this way.

By: Oflynns63

Oflynns63 — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 08:34:00 +0000

Wonderful description of the real frustrations that happen when the rights of one group (publishers) have been allowed too much sway in the research system.
Thank you also for your kind comments about Librarians; a couple of comments occur to me as a librarian working in healthcare. Even where researchers are entitled to access journals (because they are staff or employees of a subscribing organisation) they are often unaware or unable to avail of this access, this seems to be largely because Publishers have seen protection of their rights as trumping the practical need for simple routes of access. Increasing complexity imposed by publishers (registering of this, monitoring of that, password protecting the other) has been either accepted or resented by librarians but somehow we’ve not been able to mount an effective challenge. Librarians have opted to work ever harder to stay on the right side of the law (and Publishers) while paddling like fury to help people understand and avail of access to ejournals.
It seems that we can never do enough to bridge the widening gap between Publishers rights and scholars needs and your references to using Google as your search tool seems to illustrate this. Librarians would be hoping to hear mention of other search tools like PubMed or TRIP; using them won’t solve access problems but could be a more reliable indicator of how much you are missing!

By: Hemant Shah

Hemant Shah — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:11:00 +0000

Nothing wrong in being able to see the situation from both sides of the table. Richard Smith was a wonderful editor for BMJ, and now he is highlighting a problem that needs to be put to bed. I believe as a first step the government funding agencies should start insisting that all papers on research funded by them should be freely available

By: Joeboxer

Joeboxer — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:48:00 +0000

Please, spare us the fake outrage. If you had half an ounce of initiative you’d get the articles legitimately. +Doesn’t
United Health Group provide journal access for its employees?

By: A_spurrier

A_spurrier — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:57:00 +0000

I dont think Chief exec of The BMJ publishing group equals very large salary, and wanting to access scientific research funded by British tax payers is hardly the same as watching a film on your iPad.

By: Zed

Zed — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:33:00 +0000

The comparison is inapt. Publishers of newspaper articles, films and books: a) are still (mostly) holding up their end of the bargain in providing a larger audience than the author can do alone, and b) recompensing the content creators. Neither of those things are true for subscription journal publishers.

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 10:50:00 +0000

Richard Smith wants free access. Who wouldn’t? The question is: who pays for delivering this free access? Let market forces decide.

By: Harry Palmer

Harry Palmer — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Oh no! Former Chief Executive of a publishing company who was paid a very large salary to ensure subscriptions to scientific articles were behind a pay wall now moans that he can’t get access to lots of free material. Karma? Let’s hope he doesn’t want to read an article in the Times online either, or watch a new film on his iPad, or read a new book on his Kindle…

By: Alison Spurrier

Alison Spurrier — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:32:00 +0000

Shocked but not surprised.

By: Notactualsize

Notactualsize — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:51:00 +0000

You are, of course, right to be angry. It’s a ridiculous and indefensible situation – for so many reasons.