Comments on: Richard Lehman’s journal review – 10 September 2012

By: rpg

rpg — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:09:00 +0000

I’m with you now. It’s an open access issue you’re flagging up.

By: Richard Lehman

Richard Lehman — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:17:00 +0000

It’s not quite as simple as that, unfortunately. You could trawl the piece for information, certainly, but you would have to be wary of copyright if you started cutting and pasting into Wikipedia. And often the most valuable features of these Clinical Reviews are their tables (certainly in this one) and illustrations, which are under copyright. Personally I would like to see these articles come out from behind the paywall, and for authors to be asked in advance if they would agree to their contents being used in Wikipedia – which is by far the most consulted source of medical information by patients and health professionals.

By: Richard P Grant

Richard P Grant — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:41:00 +0000

” it’s a shame it can’t go straight into Wikipedia.” — of course, it can, if someone with full-text access to the BMJ has the time to edit the appropriate Wikipedia article. While I’m reasonably proficient at editing Wikipedia, I don’t have full text access to the BMJ…