PerspectivesAre you interested in submitting a Perspective Article? Be sure to read The Science Advisory Board's Editorial Guides for Perspective Articles. Click here. The Science Library of the 21st Century by Wim D’Haeze, Ph.D. Almost nostalgically, many of us remember a visit once in a while to the major scientific library of our scientific institution. Collecting all the materials required to perform an in-depth literature study for a review article or a grant proposal, or keeping up with the recently published literature was still cumbersome a decade ago. Copying a couple of hundreds of articles demanded a lot of time to locate the appropriate volumes in the library (sometimes tall ladders were needed to get the desired journal volume covered with a two millimeter layer of dust). Not uncommonly, a wanted journal issue was borrowed by someone else right at the time we needed it, which made a second trip to the library necessary, or that particular issue was simply never delivered to the library or lost. Not to mention the numerous hours spent just to copy all those articles of putative interest for our review or grant proposal. Indeed, a tremendous loss of valuable time. A promising step in the right direction was the introduction of the electronic version of scientific journals published online, pioneered by journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and accessible for individuals and/or institutions with a paid subscription. Compared to the several hours required to get the article copied in the library, the electronic version of the article is a few mouse clicks away, thus allowing more time to write and try to understand the research presented in the respective article. To date, virtually all scientific journals have their online version and articles published several decades ago are now accessible via their respective websites for those who have or are affiliated with an institution that has a subscription to the journal. In fact, the latter is rather discriminative for individuals (scientists and non-scientists) who do not have a subscription to this particular scientific journal. For instance, if a well-developed and curious but financially poor individual is diagnosed with the onset of a severe disease, one may want to collect some in-depth and detailed scientific background information presented in a review article in a medical journal. However, most likely, the individual will not have a subscription to the journal and may also not be affiliated with a scientific institution that has a subscription. Is it right to deny the access to important scientific information to an individual who would like to study and learn more or to charge this person before he may read a single article of interest? Of course, one may argue that a labor intensive editorial process is required to publish a scientific article and, thus, if one wants to access its content, one needs to pay for it, even so it is discriminative and against the philosophy that everyone should have the chance to enrich his or her own knowledge. Fortunately, three forefront pioneers with a clear vision on the future of scientific publishing founded a new nonprofit scientific publisher named the Public Library of Science (PLoS) which started to publish its premier scientific journal in October 2004. Briefly, everything published by PLoS is immediately available online, free of charge, with no restrictions on access or use. The so called “open access” phenomena was born. Ever since, the PLoS is expanding, publishing many more open access scientific journals, illustrating its success, and other journals are now undergoing considerable facelifts and are performing premature experiments in order to free part of their content and make it available to the public at no charge. Consequently, the open access movement implies that neither individuals nor libraries need to pay to receive the journal through subscriptions. However, producing a journal requires money for editing, graphics, and production, a cost that the PLoS obtains from the authors of articles, who are charged a fee of $1,500. This author-pays model sounds feasible but may be accompanied by some growing pains in the long run. The success of PLoS rapidly increases which undoubtedly requires an increased rejection rate in order to assure that only the best manuscripts are published. However, rejecting a manuscript in a fair and motivated manner costs money as well. In addition, one may question whether the editorial independence will be guaranteed in a context in which the author pays a considerable amount of money to get a manuscript published. Of course, a professional editorial team and a mature and open-minded peer-review process should ensure that manuscripts are handled as they should. Furthermore, it is remarkable that the cost to protect a journal’s website against visitors who want to access the content without paying a subscription is considerable. This cost, for instance, is not applicable anymore in the open access era and consequently, this money can be used for other more appropriate purposes. Obviously, the open access-type of scientific publishing as pioneered and practiced by the PLoS is the future of scientific publishing, and it is my opinion that all (scientific) journals should uniformly and collectively follow the example of the PLoS in a relatively short period of time. The open access system will not entail additional expenses, nor should it place a financial burden on the authors. The governmental and private institutions that finance the research already pay most of the costs of scientific publishing indirectly through the funds they provide to research libraries. These institutions would accomplish far more with the same money by phasing out expensive subscription payments to restricted-access journals and, instead, paying for open-access publication of the research they support. Funding organizations and universities provide money to their libraries in order to pay the high institutional subscription rates. Open access publishing omits those costs and the money spent for subscriptions can be used by authors to cover the cost of open access publishing. In this way, journals and editorial teams still obtain the money they need in order to publish manuscripts with high quality and professionalism online. In contrast to what many may think, open access publishing will not negatively influence the quality of a particular journal, because the peer-review system to judge the quality and scientific merit of a manuscript basically does not alter and is independent of the way how a paper is published (online or in print with restricted or open access). Editors of top journals and their editorial boards will still be able to screen for the best manuscripts representing novel and top quality research. In fact, this issue is demonstrated by the several PLoS journals. Making all (scientific) publishing freely accessible will not only be beneficial for the scientific professional but also for uncountable others worldwide. Even so many may argue that open access publishing will not be sustainable in the long run from an economic point of view, it is clear that the open access system will be the basis of the science library of the 21st century, which I envision as follows. All scientific articles are freely accessible from the respective journal’s website, including those published several decades ago. Frankly, print versions of any scientific journal are absolutely unnecessary and superfluous if all articles are freely accessible and published online. Producing a hard copy of a journal is a time consuming and costly process that is in fact a pure waste of time, money, labor, and paper. Why do we need a hard copy of a journal if we are able to print each and every article from the journal’s website? The hard copy provides us with articles that we will never read; clearly a waste. Hard copies of journals occupy a tremendous building space which can be used for other, more interesting and desirable purposes. Commonly, “going to the library to copy an article” will be past tense because our entire library will be on the web. Google- and Yahoo-type search engines specialized and focused to identify the desired article(s) will help one to identify the literature we need or to stay updated. And every article we would like to download, print and read will be immediately accessible, even so it is in press, was published a couple of days ago, or published hundred years ago. All articles will be accessible by the public, and the cost for the peer-review process, the online publication and editing will be charged to the authors, who are subsidized by their governmental and/or private funding agencies. In this way, libraries as we know them now will not be necessary anymore and at least part of the space should be used to install computers and printers that are freely accessible by the public (for instance by individuals that do not have a personal computer but need to access the content of an article). Discriminative issues regarding the accessibility of a particular part of the literature that are apparent and practiced to date will be faded away which will be beneficial for our society. ### To discuss the pros and cons of Open Access, please visit The Science Advisory Board's discussion thread on this topic. Wim D’Haeze is Bio-Engineer in Chemistry and received his Ph.D. in Biotechnology at the Ghent University (Belgium) in June 2001. His doctoral thesis work was focused on the understanding of several early steps of the symbiotic interaction between the Gram-negative soil bacterium Azorhizobium caulinodans and the tropical legume Sesbania rostrata. The initial steps require the production of bacterial compounds including signal molecules and complex surface polysaccharides, that are pivotal for invasion of the plant tissue and the formation of new organ tissues. In the three subsequent years, he performed post-doctoral research at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA) dealing in part with the structural and functional characterization of azorhizobial extracellular polysaccharides. Currently, Wim D’Haeze is employed at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA) as Science Writer and focuses on a new horizon regarding the molecular basis of devastative neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, in order to screen for and develop new therapeutics. He has been a member and active contributor to The Science Advisory Board since November 2002. ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Perspectives ] |
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