|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 04/04
Set My Research Free
Jennifer Kuo*
Keeping up with cutting-edge medical research can be costly for doctors and hospitals in developing countries. An annual subscription to, say, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology—Parts A, B and C costs about $12,360. The online open-access movement, however, hopes to smack down big-dollar medical publishing. By focusing on electronic editions and alternative funding sources beyond advertising and subscription fees—such as charging authors a small fee to publish—open-access journals use the Web to provide readers with groundbreaking medical research free of charge. Open-access journals have existed for several years; the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), for instance, was a pioneer in the late 1990s. But the movement gained momentum with the 2000 creation of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), an open-access organization run by top scientists, including Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health.
In October 2003, PLOS launched PLoS Biology in both paid print and free online formats; PLoS Medicine is scheduled to appear in mid-2004. To compete in the broader scientific-publishing industry, and to be useful for doctors in rich and poor countries, PLOS must convince researchers to risk publishing their work in a new journal. PLOS must also pull readers away from traditional scientific heavyweights such as Science, Nature, and Cell.
Though readers downloaded the first issue of PLoS Biology more than 100,000 times, some experts worry that online open-access publishers don't meet the immediate needs of developing nations. Barbara Aronson, a librarian at the World Health Organization (WHO) says, "the problem is not open access for developing countries, the problem is simply access."
So the WHO is pursuing a more pragmatic approach through its Health InterNetwork, which offers doctors in poor countries free or reduced-price access to 2,000 scientific journals online, together with computer and Internet hardware. For instance, the WHO is supplying medical libraries in Iraq with satellite receivers, PCs, and generators, along with access to Health InterNetwork. In other cases, Health InterNetwork is used to leverage aid from outside organizations. The Laliput Nursing Campus in Nepal, for instance, secured access to Health InterNetwork in 2002 using computer equipment provided by the Latter Day Saints Charities.
Notes
Note *: Jennifer Kuo is a research assistant at RAND. Back