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PUBLISHING
Experts Debate Open-access Publishing OptionTime-honored prestige may still mean more than a potentially wider audience to junior biomedical scientists trying to choose where to publish their papers. But it soon may be just as important to have a subsequent paper accepted by a high-profile journal dedicated to providing free online access for readers.These are the conclusions of two young cell biologists who helped organize and moderate last month's debate on open-access publishing held in the New Research Building auditorium at HMS. Editors from top biomedical journals gathered for a sometimes contentious discussion about how to expand online access while sustaining a successful long-term publishing enterprise.
Open-access advocates argue that subscription costs--which have almost tripled in the last 10 years--interfere with the flow of scientific information and ultimately with scientific progress. "It doesn't mean that the costs are unreasonable, but it's a problem because journal subscriptions are declining at research libraries," said Marc Kirschner, head of the Department of Systems Biology at HMS and a member of the PLoS board of directors and editorial board. Several editors argued that subscription-based scientific literature reaches more people at a lower per-person cost than ever in history and questioned whether the open-access business model was sustainable. "Financial stability gives you the ability to grow and produce an excellent service for customers," said Charles Jennings, executive editor of the Nature Publishing Group. The new publishing model for open access charges authors and lets readers view for free. Authors pay $1,500 per paper to publish on PLoS and the most select journals on BioMed Central, but they pay $500 or $1,000 for other BioMed journals, except for about 10 percent of authors from low-income countries, said deputy editorial director Theodora Bloom. So far, the BioMed journals have rejected 2,000 papers and published 2,000 others, she said. In contrast, Bloom said, almost half of the $4,500 it costs Elsevier to publish the average paper in its journals goes to marketing and access controls, print and distribution, and subscription agents--all unnecessary expenses for open-access publishers. For Elsevier, production costs are about 20 percent, and another 35 to 40 percent is profit, Bloom said. Many reader-pay journals grant free online access six months after publication, including The New England Journal of Medicine, which allows immediate free online access to articles of special importance to public health, such as those on the SARS epidemic or recent advances in HIV or breast cancer therapy, said NEJM executive editor Gregory Curfman. Authors and institutions also can post any of their articles on their websites as soon as they are published. The biggest marketing problem for the new open-access journals is to convince students, postdocs, and junior faculty that papers appearing there will be accorded scientific significance on a par with print publications when the young scientists compete for jobs, grants, and fellowships, Kirschner said. After the debate, Michael Boyce, a Medical School graduate student in cell biology, said he believes in the spirit of open access, but would probably take the conservative route and choose an established journal for his first publication. HMS instructor in cell biology Or Gozani hopes the different publishing models will evolve together to best serve the scientific community. After establishing his credentials with a paper in the July issue of Cell, he is considering submitting his next paper to PLoS Biology. "Most people like the idea of PLoS being another high-profile publishing option in addition to Cell, Nature, and Science," he said. --Carol Cruzan Morton |
