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From: " ilena rose " <ilena@...>

Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2001 12:16 PM

Subject: Scientists threaten journal protest ~ BBC

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1296000/1296750.stm

>

>

> Thursday, 26 April, 2001, 14:38 GMT 15:38 UK

> Scientists threaten journal protest

>

> Scientists want research results to be widely available

>

> By BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward

>

> Scientists around the world are preparing to boycott scientific journals

> unless they make old research papers available for free.

>

> This movement is not going to stop no matter how much the publishers

scream

>

> Dr Ashburner, Plos group The strike has been called as part of a

> larger plan to establish a vast online library of scientific research

> material, much of which is currently in the hands of the journals rather

> than the scientists who did the work.

>

> The researchers behind the boycott say the library is needed to preserve

> academic freedom, stimulate study and creativity and ensure that science

> stays free of commercial pressures.

>

> But the call to set up the library is meeting resistance from publishers

> and academic associations, which are keen to protect their copyright on

> scientific papers.

>

> In September this year, many scientists could stop sending in papers to

> journals and refuse to renew subscriptions to them in support of a plan to

> create a huge Public Library of Science (Plos) on the internet.

>

> New technology

>

> In an open letter, campaigners said: " this public library would vastly

> increase the accessibility and utility of the scientific literature,

> enhance scientific productivity, and catalyse integration of the disparate

> communities of knowledge and ideas in biomedical sciences. "

>

> So far over 17,000 scientists around the world, including some Nobel

> Laureates, have signed the letter calling for the establishment of the

> library. Numbers are growing at a rate of several hundred per day.

>

> " I've never known a movement like this, " said Ashburner, a member

> of the advocacy group for the Plos and a geneticist at Cambridge

> University, UK.

>

> Dr Ashburner said the online library was essential if scientists were to

> keep up with developments in their field.

>

> He said the amount of scientific literature in genetics alone doubles

every

> 10 years, and scientists needed sophisticated databases that could search

> the full text of papers to aid their work.

>

> DNA example

>

> The Plos group wants the library to act like the GenBank repository which

> makes DNA sequence information freely available.

>

> The idea for freely available repositories of papers was started at the

Los

> Alamos Laboratory by Ginsparg, who in 1994 set up a the e-Print

> Archive to host reprints of physics and mathematics papers. Now, the idea

> is spreading to the biomedical community and beyond.

>

>

> The big journals are deciding how to respond

>

> To fill the library, the Plos group is asking scientific journals to make

> the full text of the papers they publish freely available in the library

> only six months after they have been first printed.

>

> They hope that the six-month delay will mollify those journals which fear

> they will lose subscribers if the papers they publish are available on the

> web too soon.

>

> Some journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

> and the British Medical Journal, have already signed up to the project,

and

> declared their willingness to put papers into the library.

>

> Peer review

>

> The group wants to set up the library to hold the papers, believing it is

> better to have a single reference point rather than let them sit on the

> websites of hundreds of individual journals that have widely different

> policies of giving access to the papers.

>

> To achieve their aims, the group behind the Public Library of Science are

> calling for a boycott of those publications that refuse to support the

> library.

>

> The boycott is due to start in September and asks those who signed the

> letter to refuse to renew subscriptions, and to refuse to submit or review

> papers for journals.

>

> " The quality of the journals absolutely depends on the peer review

> process, " said Dr Ashburner. " If the journals lose that it will kill

them. "

> He said the Plos group had not ruled out setting up its own journal to

> publish the papers not being submitted to journals.

>

> Linking compromise

>

> But the idea is not winning everyone over. Only seven journals have signed

> up, and some scientific societies that publish specialist journals have

> declared their opposition.

>

> The American Society for Microbiology has said it finds the aims of the

> public library group " too extreme and unrealistic for ASM to support " .

>

> Some fear that younger scientists will be unwilling to put their name to

> the letter or take part in the boycott for fear of limiting their career.

>

> The two most prestigious research journals, Nature and Science, are

> currently debating what action to take. However, Science has said it is

> willing to support a compromise which puts a searchable version of a paper

> into the library, but the links to copies lead back to the website of the

> journal that originally published it.

>

> " [The library] may not happen this year but it is going to happen because

> the technology is there and scientists will demand it, " said Dr Ashburner.

> " This movement is not going to stop no matter how much the publishers

> scream. "

>

>

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