Quality in Primary Care 2006;14:55–8 # 2006 Radcliffe Publishing Knowledgeshare Web alert: opening up access to journal articles online Ben Skinner BSc (Hons) MA Evidence-Based/Knowledge Management Librarian, KnowledgeShare, The Library, Audrey Emerton Building, Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, UK Research information online: free and fee Rather than relying solely on instinct, experience, purchase a title, recent issues are often embargoed, advice and outdated training, professionals in the NHS and an Athens password is usually required for access, are expected to base their decisions, where possible, on which some staff can find off-putting. (As an aside, it the best available evidence from systematic research. could hardly be easier for NHS staff to get an Athens At the moment, much of the high-quality, pre-appraised password. Just go to www.athens.nhs.uk, click ‘Self- research information, which is needed to support this registration’ and fill in an online form to get access to model, is available via the internet to health workers in many full-text journals and books as well as databases England without the need for passwords or payments. of images and abstracts.) Either because they are provided free of charge, or Following the research literature could be a lot because the NHS pays for access at a national level, easier and a lot less restricted, and many people believe resources such as the Cochrane Database of Systematic that it will be, if the concept of open access publishing Reviews, national guidelines, and evidence digests in- gains acceptance. cluding Clinical Evidence and Bandolier are all easily accessible online. A well-conducted search for healthcare information Open access publishing should almost always start with these resources, but sadly, it will not often end with them. Such ‘evidence- based’ research is often time consuming to produce, Open access (OA) is a new model for scholarly pub- and requires that sufficient primary research has been lishing that may come to revolutionise the way that published from which to draw a conclusion. Conse- authors, publishers and readers relate to one another. quently there are countless clinical and managerial In the current system most publishers make their money questions that these resources cannot answer, making through reader subscriptions; they publish articles, it necessary to consult the original journal literature. and add value by ensuring peer review, proofreading, This is where we run into problems. and recommending improvements, without charging Although the Medline database of journal article the author. In return for this they receive permanent abstracts is also freely available, via PubMed, the full and exclusive rights to the content. Open access turns texts of the journals it references are not. Although this idea on its head. more and more publishers of periodicals are making In order to publish in an open access journal, the electronic versions of their journal content available, author pays (out of their research budget). They pay these are almost always hidden behind password pro- the publisher for the costly peer-review process that tection, and a subscription is necessary in order to gain adds considerable weight to their findings, they pay for access. Research-active universities tend to purchase the typesetting and proofreading, and they pay to electronic versions of most available journals, but as maintain the website on which the journal is hosted. subscription rates rise (by more than 200% in the last Among other things, this means that the publisher no ten years), many library services, particularly in the longer retains control over the right to make and NHS, are finding themselves unable to find the funds distribute copies of the article, and neither does the for key publications.1 Even where the NHS does author. Articles from open access journals can be 56 B Skinner copied and made available to anyone who wants to fee-based material includes commissioned reviews and use them, for any purpose, so long as the author is commentaries. attributed. And most importantly as far as the reader is Open access publishers such as BioMed Central are, concerned, there is no subscription fee. High-quality, in addition to making research more accessible, also peer-reviewed, current research can be downloaded making full use of web technology to enhance their from open access publishers without restriction. content. Registering with the site allows users to search The proposal of such a radical disruption of the the full text of BMC journals, either using the ‘Quick publishing industry is, not surprisingly, causing rather search’ in the top-left corner, or clicking on ‘Advanced a heated debate. The proponents argue that journal search’ to restrict by date or publication type or to publishing is not just about generating money, but combine search terms. You can also save searches and about distributing knowledge, and that medical know- come backto them at a later date to see what else has ledge should be available to everybody, not just to the been published. RSS feeds are available for those who privileged few who can afford the rising journal costs.2 wish to have new content fed directly to their news- The publishers, perhaps concerned about a potential reader (see my article in the December 2004 issue of loss of profits, have made a number of arguments this journal for more information on how to receive against the new model. Amongst other things, they such updates).6 ThesiteisinterlinkedwiththePubMed raise concerns about whether researchers will be able database (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez), and allows to afford the cost of having their workpublished, and the user to linkdirectly to a set of related medical whether it is right that patients should have access to research abstracts or follow up references seamlessly. scholarly medical information without the skills to The Open Access model also allows more transparency correctly interpret it. Their arguments have been con- as BMC is able to provide the pre-publication history vincingly debunked.3 for its articles, including the original submission and For the reader of medical research, one of the most the reports from peer reviewers. important issues surrounding open access will be Other interesting facilities include the ability to whether or not OA articles carry the same weight as view the most popular articles from the last 30 days, research published in the traditional academic press. It or since the launch of BioMed Central, and to down- has been suggested that open access threatens scien- load newly published articles to a handheld computer. tific integrity because of a conflict of interest resulting Their site also includes a list of externally produced from charging authors. However, the journal impact databases of biomedical information, which are mostly factors produced by the Institute of Scientific Infor- free to access and can be searched centrally. Plus, there mation have put paid to these fears. The impact factors are additional subscription-based resources available of OA journals, which give a measure of how often from BMC, like Faculty of 1000 which comprehensively articles from a particular journal are being cited by highlights and reviews the most interesting papers other authors, compare well with equivalent subscrip- published in the academic literature, based on the tion titles and are improving every year.4 In fact there recommendations of over 1000 leading researchers. is evidence to suggest that when articles are made open For authors who are considering where to submit access it increases their impact factor, and the impact their recent research articles, it is worth noting that factor of the journal in which they are published.5 NHS England is now an institutional member, and so staff in England can publish in any of the BMC journals without incurring the author’s fee. BioMed Central: www.biomedcentral.com Public Library of Science: BioMed Central (BMC) publishes over 140 open access www.plos.org journals covering all areas of biology and medicine. There are general journals such as BMC Medicine The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is an organis- which publishes research articles and technical advances ation that, like BioMed Central, aims to provide im- of special importance or general interest, and others mediate unrestricted access to medical research. They covering more specific disease areas. Clickon the are a not-for-profit group and the costs of publication ‘Subject areas’ linkto browse the available journals, are met partly through sponsorship and partly through under headings such as ‘Cancer’, ‘Cardiovascular’, payments from authors (although this fee is waived for and ‘Complementary and alternative medicine’. There authors with insufficient funds). PLoS Biology (http:// is also content for staff working in different roles, biology.plosjournals.org) was launched in 2003, including general practitioners, nurses and healthcare followed by PLoS Medicine (http://medicine.plosjournals. managers. All the original research is free to access and org in 2004, and a number of more specialised titles in free to distribute, although some journals have add- 2005. itional content which does require a subscription. This Opening up access to journal articles online 57 PLoS Medicine is a multidisciplinary medical journal recent postings looked at the boost OA is giving to in which you will find case reports, epidemiology and cancer research, a new source of open access books, clinical trials, as well as debates, reports from under- and a position statement from the Royal Society. represented groups, and policy forums. There are also Unfortunately, the individual postings have not sections highlighting neglected diseases and looking at been organised into subjects or categories, which the translation of research into practice. As with BMC, would make it easier to browse the site, however, there content alerts are available via email or RSS, and whole are a number of stand-alone pages which are worth issues are available to be downloaded to a PDA.