"Serendipity in Research: Let's Not Leave It to Chance" (E-Content)

E-CONTENT [All Things Digital]

Serendipity in Research: Let’s Not Leave It to Chance

here has always been something serendipitous sixteen academic disciplines in which the average price for an about the progress of research—the right person ISI-indexed journal was more than $1,000 per year.5 coming into contact with the right ideas under We have become accustomed to hitting paywalls. Instead of the right circumstances. Earlier this year, I was questioning these barriers when we encounter them, we now lucky enough to meet Jack Andraka, perhaps the either move on immediately or go through the time-consuming Tmost exciting example recently of the right person connecting process of getting around the paywall—by e-mailing the author, with the right idea. by submitting an interlibrary loan (ILL) request, or, perhaps Jack’s revelation came during his freshman biology class. most creatively, by tweeting the article’s author and title or its A family friend had recently passed away from pancreatic can- DOI (digital object identifier) with the hashtag #icanhazPDF. cer, instilling in Jack a desire to improve the chances of those Workarounds have become so commonplace that we hardly affected by the deadly disease. While his teacher lectured on even notice we’re using them. antibodies, Jack covertly read a scientific journal article on The problem is that these workarounds, even when they’re the practical application of carbon nanotubes. The teacher successful, introduce a significant amount of friction to the ended up catching Jack and confiscating the article; however, research process. Researchers bother to e-mail the author or Jack had already made the connection between nanotubes submit an ILL request only if they feel the result will be worth the and cancer detection—a connection that would seed his future hassle. Often, however, an article that does not immediately seem breakthrough. to be the most promising turns out to be the one that ultimately Jack would go on to invent a novel diagnostic for pancreatic has the largest impact for the research. It’s impossible to say how cancer, winning last year’s Intel International Science and Engi- often this friction comes between researchers and an article that neering Fair at the age of fifteen. Jack’s diagnostic uses carbon could have productively influenced their work or even led to a nanotubes to detect the overexpression of a certain protein major breakthrough. The official version of the paper that Jack that is used as a biomarker for pancreatic cancer. The test takes was secretly reading in his biology class—“Carbon Nanotubes: only 5 minutes and costs about three cents, making it 168 times The Route toward Applications”—still requires a subscription to faster, 400 times more sensitive, and 26,667 times cheaper than access.6 Luckily, Jack’s Google search revealed a number of cop- ELISA, the current diagnostic. His test is so sensitive that some ies posted in full online. What if they hadn’t been posted? What if in the field speculate it could save thousands of lives each year Jack had just moved on? In a guest blog post on the White House by detecting pancreatic cancer at its earliest stages, when the website, Jack addresses this point directly: “When I was work- disease is much more treatable.1 ing on a diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer, there was one key Jack’s story is a vivid illustration of what can happen when paper . . . but imagine if I didn’t have access to that paper. I might we empower anyone with drive, curiosity, and an Internet con- never have had the idea that led to my success. That to me, that is nection to cutting-edge research publications.2 Yet Jack was the fundamental problem with scientific journals: they prevent fortunate to be able to get access to the full text of the articles the democratization of innovation.”7 he needed. Without a college or university to pay for the often- Even though he has yet to publish his first peer-reviewed expensive journal subscriptions on his behalf, Jack was left paper, Jack is speaking out in support of open access, of the to build from those articles that he could find freely available idea that all research articles should be made freely available online, which he said he used “religiously.” 3 I can’t help but online immediately upon publication, with full reuse rights. wonder how his story may have ended if a few critical articles Quoted in the Vancouver Observer, Jack said: “My research should had eluded him behind a paywall. serve as a testament to free online research (...) It was hard to get In his difficulty accessing research, Jack’s story is not unique. what I needed without the costs. People should take note and In fact, it’s all too common. A survey by the Research Informa- because of this project, we should make a move toward more tion Network in 2009 found that over 40 percent of researchers inexpensive or free Online research.”8 In June of this year, Jack in the United Kingdom could not readily access the licensed was recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change resources in their own libraries—particularly academic jour- for Open Science for his breakthrough cancer diagnostic. At nals—on at least a weekly basis.4 With the ever-rising expense of the award ceremony, Jack announced his plan to continue journal subscriptions, this result is hardly surprising. The 2013 pushing for free, online access to the research literature and to Periodicals Price Survey conducted by Library Journal found engage his fellow students in doing so.

As a student advocating for open access, Jack is far from change-cancer-treatment/. alone. In 2009, a group of six student organizations came 2. For more on the role that open access played in Jack’s discovery and that it can play in advancing research more broadly, see the June 2013 interview of Jack together to form the Right to Research Coalition (R2RC) to Andraka by Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health: represent the student voice in the discussion around the future http://youtu.be/G55hlnSD1Ys. of scholarly communication. Today, the R2RC (http://www 3. Quoted in Massoud Hayoun, “How Aaron Swartz Paved Way for Jack Andraka’s Revolutionary Cancer Test,” Vancouver Observer, January 29, 2013, .righttoresearch.org/) comprises 70 student organizations, rep- http://www.vancouverobserver.com/world/how-aaron-swartz-paved-way- resenting nearly 7 million students in more than 100 countries jack-andrakas-revolutionary-cancer-test. around the world. Its members have already made a tangible 4. Research Information Network, “Overcoming Barriers: Access to Research Information Content,” December 2009, http://www.publishingresearch.net/ impact on policy discussions related to open access, advocating documents/RINOvercoming-barriers-report-Dec09.pdf. for policies that will unlock the world’s scientific and scholarly 5. Stephen Bosch and Kittie Henderson, “The Winds of Change: Periodicals Price output for anyone to read and build upon. Students, as the next Survey 2013,” Library Journal, April 25, 2013, table 4, http://lj.libraryjournal .com/2013/04/publishing/the-winds-of-change-periodicals-price- generation of scholars and researchers, are playing a larger and survey-2013/. larger role in shaping the future of the system of scholarly com- 6. Ray H. Baughman, Anvar A. Zakhidov, and Walt A. de Heer, “Carbon munication they will inherit. Nanotubes: The Route toward Applications,” Science, vol. 297, no. 5582 (August 2, 2002), pp. 787–92, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5582/787.short. Together with librarians, researchers, progressive policy- 7. Jack Andraka, “Open Access: The Pathway to Innovation,” White House makers, and countless others, Jack and students like him all Champions of Change Blog, June 20, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/ around the world are creating real change. Serendipity is good, 2013/06/20/open-access-pathway-innovation. 8. Hayoun, “How Aaron Swartz Paved Way for Jack Andraka’s Revolutionary n but we’re determined not to leave research to chance. Cancer Test.”

Notes Nick Shockey ([email protected]) is Director of the Right to Research Coalition. 1. Bruce Upbin, “Wait, Did This 15-Year-Old from Maryland Just Change Cancer Treatment?” Forbes, June 18, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ © 2013 Nick Shockey. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 bruceupbin/2012/06/18/wait-did-this-15-year-old-from-maryland-just- Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).