February 9, 2004

Science and Technology Committee House of Commons 7 Millbank London SW1P 3JA UNITED KINGDOM

Dear Dr Gibson and Members of the Science and Technology Committee:

On behalf of the Public Library of Science, I am pleased to submit the following written evidence to the Science and Technology Committee's inquiry into scientific publication practices. I congratulate you and your colleagues for your initiative and leadership in pursuing this timely and important inquiry.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a grassroots, world-wide, not-for-profit organization of scientists, physicians, and members of the public working to make the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available resource, easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, with an Internet connection through open, online public libraries. The deepening crisis in scientific publishing as journal prices continue to escalate will restrict comprehensive access to the scientific literature to a dwindling elite at a handful of wealthy research institutions in the advanced economies.

While action to reduce subscription costs would be welcome, it will ultimately be necessary for the scientific community to abandon the unstable, outdated, restrictive and fundamentally anti- competitive fee-for-access publication system. Only when we transition to an open access system - in which publishers are paid a fair price for the services they provide to the scientific community, and all reports become immediately freely available online - will we have a sustainable and equitable system for publishing science that serves the interests of the public, the public institutions that support scientific research, and scientists themselves.

My colleagues and I at PLoS have been advocating for open access for over five years. Last year we joined London's BioMed Central as an operating open access publisher with the prominent launch of our journal PLoS Biology. We are encouraged by the recent momentum towards open access, highlighted last year by support from the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and many other important funding agencies, widespread favorable accounts of our movement in the international press, and enormous enthusiasm within the scientific community.

I would like to request the opportunity to present oral evidence to the committee. I and the members the PLoS board and staff would be happy to answer your questions about the principles and practice of open access publication and share our experience as scientists advocating and carrying out open access.

In my capacities as a scientist, educator, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I wholeheartedly support your inquiry into scientific publishing and trust that you will agree with PLoS about the extraordinary possibilities afforded by open access.

Sincerely,

Harold E. Varmus, M.D. Chair, Board of Directors, and co-Founder, Public Library of Science President and CEO, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology

Science and Technology Committee – Inquiry into Scientific Publications

Evidence from the Public Library of Science

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Executive Summary

2. Scientific Publishing and its Stakeholders

3. What is Wrong with the Existing System of Scholarly Publishing?

4. The Open Access Business Model

5. Why is Open Access Important?

6. Who Pays for Open Access?

7. The Transition to Open Access

8. Common Concerns about Open Access

9. Recommendations and Actions

10. Supporting Documents • Appendix A. About the Public Library of Science • Appendix B. “Why PloS Became a Publisher” • Appendix C. Statements of support for open access • Appendix D. The PLoS UK Editorial Board • Appendix E. List of UK Signatories • Appendix F. Press Articles on Open Access

Executive Summary “I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdoms." Sir Antonio Panizzi, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, 1836

1.1 What was an impossible ideal in 1836 — making humanity’s treasury of scientific and medical knowledge freely available to all – is today within our reach. We now have the means to create an online public library containing the collected published work of every scientist and physician, to scientists, teachers, students, physicians and the public around the world. 1.2 This could be accomplished without sacrificing the essential services provided by scientific publishers and without spending any more money than we currently spend to buy a small academic elite limited access to the research literature. We need only replace the outdated, inefficient and unsustainable fee-for-access business model with a new “open access” model supported by a growing international coalition of scientists, funding agencies and publishers. 1.3 The traditional fee-for-access model is a vestige of an era when printing articles in paper journals was the most efficient way to disseminate new scientific discoveries and ideas. When each copy of a journal represented a significant cost for printing and distribution, it made sense for recipients to pay for each copy delivered. 1.4 With the Internet now the most effective and widely used medium for communicating the results of scientific research, charging for use is now economically irrational and limiting access to subscribers is needlessly restrictive. 1.5 Instead of allowing publishers to recover the costs of online publication (peer review, expert editing, production and archiving) by taking ownership of the articles and charging the readers and their agents for access, published scientific works could be made freely available to all simply by paying the costs related to each article at the time of its publication. 1.6 Open access publishing will not involve new expenses, nor will it place a financial burden on individual researchers. Under the fee-for-access system, the governments, funding agencies, universities and other organizations that sponsor scientific research pay virtually all of the costs of scientific publishing through the funds indirectly provided to research libraries. In an open access system, these same parties would pay, but they would get far more for their money. 1.7 This simple change in the way we pay for publication would involve no compromise of the traditional values of scientific publication. The essential role that scientific journals play in orchestrating peer-review, editing, and stratification of research articles is independent of the way costs are recovered. We can maintain a vibrant scientific publishing industry by paying publishers a fair price for the service they provide the scientific community, while providing comprehensive, universal access to the scientific literature. 1.8 The fee-for-access system is anti-competitive. Scientific papers are not interchangeable, and every journal has a monopoly on the papers that scientists have chosen to publish in it. These monopolies over an essential commodity prevent market forces from keeping subscription costs rational, leading to the current unsustainable serials crisis. 1.9 By shifting from a monopolistic market on scientific knowledge, to a free-market for publishing services, open access will restore market efficiencies to scientific publishing. By treating the costs of publication as costs of research and including funds in research grants, monies available for publication will scale with publication expenses. Thus, open access is intrinsically sustainable, whereas the current system clearly is not. 1.10 Scientific knowledge was never meant to be a commodity – it is an invaluable public good. Publications describing publicly funded research belong in the public domain, where they can do the greatest good for science and humanity.

Recommendations

The UK government – acting in the public interest and as the major sponsor of scientific research in the UK – should act decisively to remedy the current crisis in scientific publishing and catalyze the transition to open access by:

1.11 Establishing a UK national (or Commonwealth) online public library for research literature. This library would work in collaboration with the US National Library of Medicine and other national libraries to ensure that every published research article – especially those arising from publicly funded research – are securely archived in perpetuity and are freely and readily available to, and useable by, the public.

1.12 Asserting that restrictions on the distribution and use of research articles describing publicly funded research are inconsistent with the goals of the government in funding research.

1.13 Mandating (following a suitable transition period) that all research articles arising from publicly-funded research be made immediately and permanently available to the public by open access publication and deposition in a suitable public repository at the time of publication.

1.14 Designating a portion of university funding for the support of open access publication charges to provide the means for faculty and researchers (particularly those without specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.

1.15 Designating a portion of NHS funding for the support of open access publication charges to provide the means for clinicians and researchers (particularly those without specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals

1.16 Including reasonable (and ring-fenced) funds to cover the costs of open access publication in all Research Council grants to encourage grantees to publish their work in open access journals

1.17 Requiring universities and granting agencies (including the Research Assessment Exercise) to consider the intrinsic merits of a published article, rather than the impact factor of the journal in which the article is published, in promotion and funding decisions, recognizing that the canonization of journal impact factors inhibits the development and growth of new publishing endeavors.

1.18 Establishing a temporary ‘open access transition fund’ to which publishers can apply for funding to facilitate the transition from subscription-based journals to open access publishing.

2. Scientific Publishing and its Stakeholders

The purpose of scholarly publishing

2.1 Publishing research is an essential part of the scientific process. Research papers are the formal means of communication between scientists and their communities. Papers published in scholarly journals are a source of research findings validated by peer review, establish the precedence of one piece of work over another and provide the means by which new ideas, methods and techniques can be disseminated and built upon. Scientists also depend on publishing to build their reputation and careers. Hiring, grants and promotion are based, in part, on publication records.

2.2 Publishing is carried out by commercial and not-for-profit publishing organizations, many of whom have a long and successful history in scientific publishing.

The publishing process

2.3 Research papers are taken through the following steps before they are published, although the details involved vary from journal to journal:

• Submission of a manuscript to the journal – usually done online • Peer review – the process whereby experts (usually scientists volunteering their time as part of their commitment to the community) assess the validity and significance of the research in a manuscript • Revision – by the author in response to peer review • Acceptance for publication – dependent on meeting the requirements of the peer reviewers • Production – involving copy-editing, layout, graphics processing, proofing, and finally distribution in print and online

2.4 Peer review is a key step in this process. Although it is not a perfect system, peer review helps to eliminate mistakes and enhances the value of the publication to readers. Peer review is normally done for free by academics who are selected by the Editor of the journal.

Stakeholders

Researchers as authors

2.7 For authors, papers provide two crucial functions: (1) dissemination of their research and (2) career advancement. Authors therefore choose the journal in which to publish their work on the basis of criteria that will help fulfill these functions: the prestige of the journal; the impact factor (the average number of times a paper in that journal is cited in other articles); the target audience; and the speed of publication.

2.8 In general authors want to publish in the ‘best’ journal they can, so that their work is noticed, read and cited. If their work cannot reach all of the intended audience, authors lose impact. Ideally, they would like everyone with an interest in their work to be able to access it and use it.

Researchers as readers and teachers

2.9 For readers, papers are a crucial source of information for their own research and teaching. Keeping up-to-date with the literature enables them to gain new ideas, learn new techniques

and avoid duplication – in short, to build on the work of others. Papers themselves can even form the basis of research, for example via meta-analyses of published data.

2.10 Science has become both more specialised and more interdisciplinary, which means researchers need to be able to assimilate information from many different sources. It’s no longer sufficient to browse through a small selection of journals as it was 20 years ago. Researchers as readers value the quality control provided by peer-review, the journal name as an indicator of the perceived importance of a paper, currency of information and unfettered access. Ideally, readers want access to all of the literature, and the online searching tools that will allow them to find and to mine the information that is relevant to their work

2.11 Keeping up-to-date with the current literature is also essential for any teacher involved in tertiary education. Academics at Universities and teaching colleges often require students to read research papers during their courses and exam questions are commonly based on data from published research findings. This teaches students to critically evaluate complex data and ideas and provides them with appropriate skills not only for a career in research but for many other professions.

Scholarly societies

2.12 Many scholarly societies make important contributions to their field, by helping to maintain the communication between scientists in that discipline (via publishing journals and organizing scholarly meetings), and by promoting the science of their members not only to the broader scientific community but also to policy makers, governments and the general public. Many societies currently rely on the profits of their journals to carry out useful works to further the aims of the society and their members. At the heart of the mission of many scholarly societies is the aim to promote and disseminate the science of its members to as broad an audience as possible.

Research funding agencies

2.13 For funding agencies, research publications are the means by which they can measure the return on their research investment. They are a measure of the research output of individual academics and help to determine who should receive future grant awards. Given that others can then build on published research findings, it is in the interests of funding agencies that the published research results reach as large an audience as possible. Research publications are also a measure of the research output of institutes and universities, which has an important influence on the direct funding to institutions in the Research Assessment Exercise.

The public

2.14 Much of the funding that supports scientific and medical research derives from public money, and yet the general public does not have ready access to the published products of this research. An individual seeking peer-reviewed and published scientific information on the Internet might pay as much as £10-30 to view a single article, without knowing whether or not the information would be useful before committing to pay to view.

3. What is wrong with the existing system of scholarly publication?

3.1 Scientists have historically relied on paper publication as the most efficient means for distributing and promoting their work. When the information was encoded as ink on paper, a large fraction of the costs were in the printing and distribution, and each copy produced and distributed involved an expense for the publisher. The standard business model for scientific research publication, which organized works by scientific field into journals sold by subscription, was sensible and efficient and served science and society well. But today, the most effective, efficient and widely used way to distribute scientific knowledge is over the internet, and it no longer makes sense to use an economic model optimized for print. The existing system is now unsustainable and hampers the communication and progress of science.

3.2 Most scientific publications are only available to institutional or individual subscribers, and libraries are struggling to provide access to all the journals desired by their affiliated faculty. Moreover, the logistics of subscribing have become complicated. Before, a library just subscribed to a print journal, but with electronic access there are now complex licence agreements – and complex authentication systems to ensure that unauthorized readers do not have access to the electronic journal. Different publishers have different agreements, with subscription fees being calculated in different ways.

3.3 Commercial publishers are now bundling journals together - the ‘big deals’. Although it has been argued that these big deals increase access to the literature (most notably by Elsevier), in reality bundling restricts choice for librarians (they receive journals they don’t want), while taking a greater proportion of their budget. The recent debates between Elsevier and the Universities of California and Cornell demonstrate that even large relatively wealthy institutions are unable to pay the high premiums demanded by commercial publishers for these licences1. At the other end of the spectrum, individuals may pay a fee to view a single article, even though there is no additional cost to the publisher for the reader to view that article.

3.4 All recent analyses have shown that the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing sector has achieved remarkable growth over the past 20 years. For example, financial analysts have estimated that it is at least a 7 billion dollar industry, in which publishers are used to very healthy profit margins of 30-40%2. A recent analysis by the Wellcome Trust reported that the scientific publishing market is dominated by the concerns of the commercial publishers at the expense of the needs of the community as a whole3; and the Office of Fair Trading concluded that "there is evidence to suggest that the market for STM journals may not be working well"4. Commercial publishers have done well despite falling library budgets primarily because the scientific publishing market is not competitive. This is for three key reasons.

3.5 First, every paper is unique and each journal is essentially a monopoly. Journals therefore cannot behave like most other commodities because academics need access to all relevant research findings. Librarians have consequently sought ways to fund subscriptions regardless of the fees charged by publishers, which helps explain why journal prices have increased by more that 225 percent since 1986 while inflation increased by around 60%5.

1 See the journal pricing web page at http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/jpricing.html 2 Morgan Stanley Media Report, Scientific Publishing: Knowledge is Power, Sept. 2002; J.P. Morgan Report, Scientific and Medical Publishing: Big is Beautiful, June 2003 3 http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtpubrepeas.html 4 UK OFT Report, The Market for Scientific, Technical and Medical Journals, 2002 (www.oft.gov.uk) 5 Association of Research Libraries (http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2002/2002t2.html)

3.6 Second, researchers are cushioned from the real cost of publication. Authors are unaware of what publishing entails and of the real dissemination costs involved per article. The result is that authors submit their work to journals regardless of whether there are relatively high or low costs per article, given the editorial or production standards. Readers are also cushioned from the costs of subscription because it is librarians that have traditionally negotiated access with publishers. Academics at institutions have therefore put pressure on their libraries to maintain subscriptions in the face of above inflation price increases. Making the cost per article transparent would help stabilize prices and provide real choice for authors, institutions and funders.

3.7 Finally, funding for research and research infrastructure (including libraries) is often split between different organizations and funding agencies. For example, in the UK, government funding for research is awarded via the Research Councils but budgets for library subscriptions comes from HEFCE (among others). Therefore, the cost of disseminating research is concealed from the agencies that fund it.

4. The Open Access Business Model

4.1 Even if all publishers eschewed profits and charged libraries only their fair share of each journal’s production costs, the simple act of restricting access to subscribers creates unnecessary and counterproductive obstacles to the access and use of the scientific literature. These obstacles needlessly deny access to countless researchers, teachers, students and interested members of the public who could benefit from comprehensive access to the scientific literature, and prevents the scientific community from fully exploiting technology to make the scientific literature more accessible and useful. By adopting an “open access” model for scientific publishing, in which publishers are paid a fair price for the service they provide the scientific community, we can maintain a vibrant scientific publishing industry while providing comprehensive, universal access to the scientific literature.

4.2 Open access to scientific and medical literature allows anyone, anywhere, with a connection to the Internet to find and read published research articles online, and to use, copy and redistribute their contents in the course of scholarship, teaching, and personal inquiry. There are two crucial components, based on the Bethesda Principles (2003)6.

A. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship7.

B. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (such as PubMed Central or INIST).

4.3 Open access publishers such as PLoS and BMC are using a simple alternative business model for scientific publication, designed to take full advantage of the economics and opportunities of electronic publication. In this model, the institutions that sponsor the research pay the costs of publishing the results, recognizing that communication of research results is fundamental to the

6 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm 7 The licence used by the Public Library of Science is the Creative Commons License - http://www.plos.org/journals/license.html

research process, and is an integral part of their mission to promote the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge. This cost has been estimated to represent only 1-2% of the investment in the research itself (cited by Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, at the JISC discussion meeting “Global Access to UK Research: Removing the Barriers”, London, Nov 20, 2003). The analysis was based on data obtained from the Research Outputs Database (ROD) project8.

4.4 By covering all costs upfront, it will no longer be necessary or appropriate to restrict access or use of published material. Instead, the information is made freely available with no charges for access or restrictions on use or redistribution. When an article is published in an open access journal, the authors grant to the public domain an irrevocable license to print, copy, distribute or otherwise use the work.

Researcher Researcher

£ £ Publisher Publisher

£ £ £

Doc delivery Library Personal Subscription/license Subscription

Reader Reader

a) Subscription journals b) Open access Journals

Figure 1. Subscription versus open access journals. In subscription-based journal publishing, financial barriers are imposed that restrict access to those who can afford to pay: for institutional licenses, personal subscriptions, or document delivery. Note that many journals also impose page or colour charges on authors. Open access requires that revenue is provided to the publisher to cover the costs of publication and dissemination, from the author, institution or funding agency. Literature can then be made freely available to any reader.

5. Why is Open Access Important?

5.1 Shifting the business model from ‘pay-to-read’ to ‘pay-upfront’, brings profound benefits for research, education and health and creates a competitive market that will help both reduce and stabilize costs. The promise of open access publishing for the key stakeholders in publishing will help to catalyze the changes that are necessary.

5.2 For authors, open-access literature maximizes the potential impact of their work. Anyone can find and access their manuscripts, increasing the likelihood that the works will be read, cited and used as the basis for future discoveries.

5.3 For the academic research community, open access holds great promise. Open access will provide the essential foundation for the development of diverse new ways to search, interlink and integrate the information in published research papers. Scientists are eager to incorporate

8 Dawson G, Lucocq B, Cottrell R and Lewison G (1998) Mapping the Landscape: National Biomedical Research Outputs 1988- 95. London, The Wellcome Trust, Policy Report no 9 (ISBN 1869835 95 6).

the information contained in research publications into their own databases to explore new ways to integrate the contents of published works with information from disparate sources, to reorganize it, to annotate it, to map connections between pieces of information in disparate works published in different journals, and to transform it into something that goes far beyond an electronic version of journal volumes on a library shelf. Unrestricted access to scientific data, such as genetic and molecular information, has already revolutionized life science research over recent years and has sparked new fields, such as genomics; open access to the treasury of scientific and medical literature will have similarly profound benefits for research9,10. Open access will also help level the playing field between rich and poor institutions and between those countries traditionally not able to afford access to the scientific literature (e.g. many Commonwealth countries).

5.4 For research libraries, open access will help contain the spiraling costs of subscriptions to scientific serials. Mergers and market concentration within the publishing industry are placing increasing pressures on the budgets of university science libraries and other archives of research, and open access to peer-reviewed journals is a long-term solution to the problem that has become known as the “serials crisis”.

5.5 For funding agencies, open access will ensure that the research they have invested in will be made available to the widest possible audience and that progress in that field will be maximized by the application of the latest navigation, and text- and data-mining tools.

5.6 For scholarly societies, open access will provide the means by which the research they promote can reach new audiences, whether policy makers, the general public or scientists from less wealthy countries or institutions (such as NGOs). Moreover, open access provides a financially realistic means to launch new journals or publications in burgeoning fields. The current subscription model relies on large start-up costs and having a threshold number of subscribers to make any new launch viable. Inevitably, this can take several years and can fail unless supported by additional funds. Large publishers will often provide those funds as long as there is evidence that the final product will eventually make a healthy profit. This prevents the launch of journals in less profitable areas. With open access the revenue scales with the growth of the journal.

5.7 Beyond the community of academic researchers, open access will: foster science education by making the results of scientific research available to all teachers and students; lead to more informed healthcare decisions by doctors and patients; and make publicly funded research available to the public.

5.8 In the commercial sector, open access will empower industry with unfettered access to the latest scientific discoveries. Biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industries in particular stand to gain significant economic benefits. And even in the context of publishing, open access to primary research literature will create an environment in which new publishing ventures will develop to provide and sell new tools and services so that users of the literature can get the most out of this information.

5.9 Importantly, open access will also allow market forces to operate effectively for STM literature and consequently will provide a choice for authors (in terms of paying for an appropriate dissemination service) that will help to contain costs and reward the most efficient publishing operations.

9 Yandell MD, Majoros WH, Genomics and natural language processing, Nature Reviews Genetics 3 (8): 601-610. 10 Tim Hubbard, Appendix C.

6. Who Pays for Open Access?

6.1 Because open access eliminates subscription fees for online journals, different sources of revenue must be generated to sustain publication. There currently exist a variety of business models for subscription-based commercial and not-for-profit journals that might include revenue from advertising, page and colour charges, and reprint, reuse, and course-pack charges, in addition to major revenue from subscriptions and site licences.

6.2 Open access journals also rely on a variety of revenue streams for support, but most charge publication fees for each accepted research article as the major source of revenue to replace traditional subscriptions. Such publication charges require that funders, authors and institutions treat publication as the final stage of a research project and provide additional funds for dissemination through publication as a legitimate cost of doing research, like presenting a poster or talk at a scientific meeting.

6.3 Pragmatically speaking, there are many different ways to sustain open-access publication costs. It is not necessary for the thousands of existing peer-reviewed scientific journals to adopt precisely the same business model11. It is likely, however, that successful open-access publishing models will use some combination of the following options, many of which are in use by subscription-based journals: publication charges for an accepted article; institutional membership arrangements (such as those arranged by PLOS or BMC), whereby publication charges are waived or discounted for scientists affiliated with the member institution; grant support from research sponsors and other funding bodies; continuing revenues from existing sources, such as print subscriptions, advertising, and corporate sponsorship; and new revenue streams made possible by open access to new audiences, such as the sale of value-added content or services.

6.4 Open access journals also rely on taking full advantage of the decreased publication costs that are made possible by the increased efficiency of digital technologies in journal management, publication, and distribution. Because of these efficiencies, publication costs should decrease while at the same time the quality of the published product will be improved by electronic enhancements such as interlinking, animations, and other interactive functionalities. For example, electronic publication and dissemination via the Internet eliminate printing and distribution costs and negligible additional costs are incurred for each additional reader.

6.5 However, we also recognize that some authors today do not have ready access to funds to cover the costs of publishing in open access journals. Such authors might be clinicians who are writing up findings that arise from their clinical duties, junior scientists with limited access to funds, or scientists from underfunded institutes in poorer nations. The situation could therefore arise that such authors become disenfranchised from the system of scientific publishing if publishing always requires an author payment. The first and most important response to this concern is that the ability to pay must never enter into the decision about whether a piece of work is published in an open access journal. If an author cannot pay, then the fee must be waived, if the peer review process judges that the article is worthy of publication. In addition, strenuous efforts need to be made by many stakeholders in publishing to ensure that this population of authors is provided with access to funds wherever possible. Massive savings from the cancellation of subscription journals will be made in institutions, hospitals, NGOs and universities that could help to establish funds for employees who are less well funded. As far

11 For a more detailed presentation of open-access publishing business models, see Crow, R. and Goldstein, H. (2003) Guide to Business Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access, Open Society Institute, Edition 2, July 2003.

as developing nations are concerned, many organizations, including the WHO12, INASP13 and SciELO14 are working to support journals in those areas, and to provide access to the expensive subscription-based journals produced in wealthy nations. With open access to literature, these efforts can be shifted to providing support for publication for these authors.

7. The Transition to Open Access

7.1 There are many barriers that need to be overcome to change the subscription-based model to one of open access. The transition will not be straightforward and the stakeholders in scientific publishing are all faced with different challenges.

7.2 Authors have little incentive to submit their work to new open access journals that have neither an impact factor nor an established reputation. Moreover, many authors do not have the funds required to cover the costs of open access publishing.

7.3 Research funding agencies – both private and public – and other international organizations do not yet directly apportion funds to support publication costs but have the potential to act as catalysts in the open access transition. The past two years have seen significant and influential open access policy statements from major funding agencies including the Wellcome Trust15, the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and many European funding agencies16. The UN World Summit on the Information Society also approved a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action that contained explicit endorsements of open access to scientific information17. Together, they demonstrate a remarkable commitment to the wholesale transformation of scientific publishing to open access. To ensure the long-term sustainability of Open Access publishing, a similar commitment by the UK Research Councils is a priority.

7.4 Libraries face an uncertain future in a journal publishing world dominated by open access. However, some of the savings that are made from the cancellation of subscription journals can be used to provide some financial support for the publication costs of researchers at their institution, especially those with limited funding. Librarians will also have a vital role in equipping staff and students with the skills needed to mine and navigate new literature-based resources that will develop as a result of open access.

7.5 It is not obviously in the interest of most commercial and many not-for-profit publishers to change from a system where they have achieved substantial profits and surpluses. However, there is no reason to suppose that open access publishing is not commercially viable. Indeed, the largest open access publisher is BioMed Central (BMC), a for-profit company. There will also be opportunities for publishers to provide value-added services to a freely accessible primary content layer, as pointed out in section 5.8. Society publishers have the additional concern that open access could adversely affect their membership and long-term sustainability. This is discussed in section 8.7.

12 WHO: World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/en/) 13 INASP: International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (http://www.inasp.info/) 14 SciELO: Scientific Electronic Library Online (http://www.scielo.br/) 15 http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispolpub.html 16 http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html 17 http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_single-en-1161.asp

8. Common Concerns about Open Access

8.1 All of the stakeholders involved in scientific publishing will be affected by the transition from subscription-based to open-access publishing. The following concerns are frequently expressed. All are important, but all can be answered, so that the full benefits of unfettered access to the literature can be realized.

Concern 1: Open Access Publishing is Currently Heavily Subsidized and is not Financially Sustainable

8.2 The publishing efforts of both BMC and PLoS are currently subsidized – in the case of PLoS by a $9million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. These subsidies are helping to fund the establishment of a completely new business, which includes developing systems, launching new products, advocacy and outreach. We do not expect to be in profit for another 4-5 years but it is unlikely that other publishers would have to bear similar costs once open access is accepted as a credible publishing model. PLoS and BMC have already demonstrated that the scientific community is ready to support open access publishing, by submitting outstanding scientific research for publication in these new journals.

8.3 By launching further journals, and charging a reasonable price to authors for the costs of publishing (currently set at $1500) PLoS will be able to run journals that support themselves on a fee-for-publication basis. We are making our publication costs known so that there can be a more informed debate about the real costs of scientific publishing. Although many publishers have claimed that they would need to charge authors in excess of $4000 to support journals by author payment, this discussion has been hampered by a lack of information sharing about the real nature of these costs.

8.4 The open access system is intrinsically sustainable. The costs of online publishing scale with the number of papers published, and thus are tightly linked to research expenditures. By providing funds for publication in every research grant, the funds available for publication track with the funds needed for publication. This economic balance is in stark contrast with the fee-for-access system where neither the funds available for subscriptions, nor publisher revenues, bear any direct relationship to the actual costs of publishing. This imbalance leads on the one hand to often excessive profits for publishers, and on the other to a perpetual shortage in budgets dedicated to journal subscriptions.

8.5 There is clearly enough money entering the scientific publishing system to support the industry – the robust economic health of commercial and not-for-profit scientific publishers attests to this fact. The key to sustainability is that funding and policies are changed such that funds to support open access publishing are available to all authors, via research funding agencies, universities, hospitals, institutions, companies, contractors and so on. Already, many funding agencies have indicated their support for the provision of open access publication expenses in research grants. The UK Government can take decisive action that builds on these developments.

Concern 2: How will the archival record of science be sustained in an open-access world?

8.6 The long-term sustainability of electronic journal literature is an issue that affects all journals – not just open access journals. One of the main benefits of open-access publishing is that papers are routinely archived in stable, centralized resources such as PubMed Central and INIST18. In fact, open-access journals are in many ways more robust than subscription-based journals when it comes to archiving because articles can be deposited in multiple archives without the arduous process of securing copyright permission from many different publishers separately (remember that the vast majority of subscription-based publishers own exclusive reproduction rights on the articles that they publish). Open-access journals and archives also protect against corporate contingencies (mergers and bankruptcy, for example) that may remove archives previously considered secure.

Concern 3: Open access publishing threatens the existence of scholarly societies who rely on journal subscriptions revenue to fund key activities within their respective communities. 8.7 At the heart of the mission of many scholarly societies is the aim to promote and disseminate the science of their membership. Open access publishing provides a very effective way to fulfill that mission and is being actively explored by several society and non-profit publishers, including The American Society for Cell Biology, The Company of Biologists and the British Ecological Society. In addition, PLoS has been approached by many societies who are interested in moving their journals to open access. It is also the case, however, that many society publishers have expressed great concern about the impact of open access publishing on their own activities. One of the major benefits of society membership is often a subscription to the society journal. Open access therefore removes a significant incentive to join a society, and might therefore adversely affect membership as well as revenue.

8.8 The transition to open access will lead to a profound change in the publishing landscape, and to preserve the valued activities of the scholarly societies, there is a strong case for the provision of funds to aid publishers who wish to migrate from subscription-based to open access publishing. The case is all the more strong for society publishers whose journals tend to be more fairly priced than those of commercial publishers and, as a result of their funding of community initiatives, do not usually have access to substantial cash reserves. The Joint Information Systems Committee announced, last November, a modest scheme to fund such transitions for a small number of publishers. Additional funds need to be provided for similar efforts. These could be made available for competitive bidding. The membership of the society could also be consulted to determine whether they would actively support a transition to open access. If the membership substantially supports the transition, and also recognizes that the society brings significant benefits in addition to a subscription to the society journal, fears about lost membership can be allayed. The societies at the vanguard of the transition to open access stand to gain in reputation and standing as a result of their leadership, and their journals will benefit from the increased impact and exposure that is a natural consequence of open access.

18 Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) is the centre for scientific and technical information of the CNRS in France. http://www.inist.fr/

Concern 4: Since open-access publishers will rely largely on “publication fees, there will be an incentive to publish as many papers as possible. The quality of the published literature will therefore diminish. 8.9 Publishing high-quality, rigorously peer-reviewed science costs money—regardless of the publisher's business model—and certainly open-access and restricted-access publishers both feel pressure to keep costs down. However, the quality of a journal depends on a network of cooperation among authors who send their best papers, reviewers who acknowledge and apply appropriate standards of publication for the journal, and editors who select the papers and reviewers. That requisite stream of productive interactions is independent of a particular publishing business model because if standards drop the value of the journal diminishes both for authors and readers. Open access journals therefore experience the same pressure to maintain and raise standards to retain their place in the community.

Concern 5: The 83% of scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals that currently require authors to transfer copyright to their works to the publisher do so because publishers are better equipped to protect authors’ rights than authors are19. Authors would forfeit a considerable asset—namely legal protection—by publishing with open- access licenses rather than restricted-access licenses.

8.10 Publishers claim to offer two kinds of legal protections to authors—protection against unauthorized duplication and protection against misattribution. On the first count: the “protection” against unauthorized duplication does not benefit the author; it benefits the publisher. Authors want their works to see the widest possible distribution and citation; they are publishing for impact, not for profit. Publishers, on the other hand, take substantial revenues from reprints and photocopying, particularly when the article is used as part of a coursepack, and have a standing incentive to prohibit the free duplication of works. Indeed, open access would largely eliminate the protection against unauthorized duplication, because open access would permit duplication and distribution for any responsible purpose. Broadly permitted duplication and distribution are assets of open-access publishing, not liabilities.

8.11 On the second count: STM publishers virtually never go to court to defend an author’s work against copyright violations involving misattribution or lack of attribution. The vacancy of this historical record is due in part to the fact that legal questions of attribution are governed more by legislation pertaining to fraud than by legislation pertaining to copyright. Furthermore, the real protection of scientific works against misattribution comes from standards of the scientific community. Since an author’s reputation is his or her most valuable asset, the expectations of peers will always enforce proper compliance with codes of attribution more effectively than legal statutes can. And, of course, open access makes plagiarism far easier to spot—since open archives are more inclusive and more easily searched.

19 Cox, John and Laura (2003) “Scholarly Publishing Practice: the ALPSP report on academic journal publishers’ policies and practices in online publishing,” for the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. http://www.alpsp.org/news/sppsummary0603.pdf

9. Recommendations and Actions

9.1 The Government has a crucial role to play in changing the current scholarly publishing regime to one that better serves the research community and the general public and makes optimal use of the public funds the government invests in research. Through legislation, policy and funding, the Government can also influence and encourage change among the stakeholders in the scholarly publishing enterprise by:

a) Establishing a UK national (or Commonwealth) online public library for research literature. This library would work in collaboration with the US National Library of Medicine and other national libraries to ensure that every published research article – especially those arising from publicly funded research – are securely archived in perpetuity and are freely and readily available to, and useable by, the public.

b) Asserting that restrictions on the distribution and use of research articles describing publicly funded research are inconsistent with the goals of the government in funding research.

c) Mandating (following a suitable transition period) that all research articles arising from publicly-funded research be made immediately and permanently available to the public by open access publication and deposition in a suitable public repository at the time of publication.

d) Designating a portion of university funding for the support of open access publication charges to provide the means for faculty and researchers (particularly those without specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals.

e) Designating a portion of NHS funding for the support of open access publication charges to provide the means for clinicians and researchers (particularly those without specific grant funding) to publish in open access journals

f) Including reasonable (and ring-fenced) funds to cover the costs of open access publication in all Research Council grants to encourage grantees to publish their work in open access journals

g) Requiring universities and granting agencies (including the Research Assessment Exercise) to consider the intrinsic merits of a published article, rather than the impact factor of the journal in which the article is published, in promotion and funding decisions, recognizing that the canonization of journal impact factors inhibits the development and growth of new publishing endeavors.

h) Establishing a temporary ‘open access transition fund’ to which publishers can apply for funding to facilitate the transition from subscription-based journals to open access publishing.

9.2 In taking these actions, the Government will encourage the stakeholders to take action in support of open access on behalf of their constituents, members, faculty and researchers, for example:

a) scientific research funders (here and abroad) will follow the example set by the Research Councils and will treat publication costs as essential research expenses b) the scientific and medical community will be encouraged to make their work publicly available and to publish their work in open access journals c) colleges, universities, hospitals, NGOs, research institutions and libraries will support and promote open-access journals and public availability of scientific information d) industry will be encouraged to sponsor open-access journals and help to fund the transition to open access publishing e) publishers will convert their journals to open access and respond to new publishing opportunities to meet the growing demand for navigational , educational and literature mining tools f) the general public will increase its use of the scientific and medical literature and will demand that access be made comprehensive

This collective action, led by the Government, will drive the transition to a robust and sustainable open access science and technology publishing system. Such a system will better serve the scientific research community, faculty, teachers, and students, the public and private research funding agencies, and the general public.

Appendix: Supporting Documents

Appendix A. About the Public Library of Science

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource. Our goals are to:

• Open the doors to the world's library of scientific knowledge by giving any scientist, physician, patient, or student - anywhere in the world - unlimited access to the latest scientific research. • Facilitate research, informed medical practice, and education by making it possible to freely search the full text of every published article to locate specific ideas, methods, experimental results, and observations. • Enable scientists, librarians, publishers, and entrepreneurs to develop innovative ways to explore and use the world's treasury of scientific ideas and discoveries.

With help from a $9 million grant from the San Francisco, California-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and in-kind support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, we have launched a nonprofit scientific publishing venture that will provide scientists with high- quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their most important work, while making the full contents freely available for anyone to read, distribute, or use for their own research.

The PLoS journals will be governed and operated by scientists. These publications will retain all of the important features of scientific journals, including rigorous peer review and high editorial and production standards. They will employ a new publishing model that will allow PLoS to make all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use.

We have assembled an outstanding academic editorial board and a first-class professional editorial team. We began accepting manuscript submissions in May 2003 and published our first issue of PLoS Biology in October 2003, online and in print. The launch of PLoS Medicine is planned for September, 2004, with other more specialized journals in the life sciences to follow in Fall, 2004 and following years.

PLoS is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3, nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California (Federal Tax ID 68-0492065). PLoS is governed by a ten-member Board of Directors. PLoS co-founder Harold Varmus is Chairman of the Board.

PLoS Board of Directors

Harold E. Varmus, PLoS Co-founder and Chairman of the Board President & Chief Executive, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Patrick O. Brown, PLoS Co-founder Stanford University School of Medicine Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Michael Eisen, PLoS Co-founder Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory University of California at Berkeley

Nicholas Cozzarelli University of California at Berkeley

Brian Druker Leukemia Center Oregon Health & Science University

Paul Ginsparg Cornell University Founder of arXiv.org

Allan Golston Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Calestous Juma Professor of the Practice of International Development Harvard University

Marc Kirschner Harvard Medical School

Lawrence Lessig Stanford Law School Founder of Creative Commons

Beth Weil Head Librarian, Marian Koshland Bioscience & Natural Resources Library, University of California at Berkeley

Appendix B. "Why PLoS became a Publisher"

The following article by the founders of the Public Library of Science was published in the inaugural issue of PLoS Biology, October 2003

Message from the Founders Why PLoS Became a Publisher Patrick O. Brown, Michael B. Eisen, Harold E. Varmus

ommunication among scientists high production standards, a distinctive Consider how the open availability has undergone a revolution identity, and independence. Although and freedom to use the complete Cin the last decade, with the most readers will be satisfied with the archive of published DNA sequences movement of scientific publication to free and unrestricted use of the online in the GenBank, EMBL, and DDBJ a digital medium and the emergence edition (including the right to print databases inspired and enabled of the Internet as the primary means their own copies), a printed edition of scientists to transform a collection of for distributing information. Millions PLoS Biology will be made available, for individual sequences into something of articles are, in principle, just a the cost of printing and distribution, incomparably richer. With great mouse click away from our computers. to readers who prefer the convenience foresight, it was decided in the early For many of us, PDFs have replaced and browseability of the traditional 1980s that published DNA sequences printed journals as the primary form in paper format. And the full contents of should be deposited in a central which we read about the work of our every issue will immediately be placed repository, in a common format, where colleagues. in the National Library of Medicine’s they could be freely accessed and used Yet we have barely begun to realize public online archive, PubMed by anyone. Simply giving scientists the potential of this technological Central, guaranteeing their permanent free and unrestricted access to the raw change. For practicing scientists, it preservation and free accessibility. sequences led them to develop the provides myriad opportunities to Our aim is to catalyze a revolution powerful methods, tools, and resources expand and improve the ways we can in scientific publishing by providing that have made the whole much use the scientific literature. Equally a compelling demonstration of the greater than the sum of the individual important, it is now possible to make value and feasibility of open-access sequences. Just one of the resulting our treasury of scientific information publication. If we succeed, everyone software tools—BLAST—performs available to a much wider audience, who has access to a computer and an 500 trillion sequence comparisons including millions of students, teachers, Internet connection will be a keystroke annually! Imagine how impoverished physicians, scientists, and other away from our living treasury of biology and medicine would be today potential readers, who do not have scientific and medical knowledge. This if published DNA sequences were access to a research library that can online public library of science will treated like virtually every other kind afford to pay for journal subscriptions. form a valuable resource for science of research publication—with no We founded the Public Library of education, lead to more informed comprehensive database searches Science three years ago to work toward healthcare decisions by doctors and and no ability to freely download, realizing these opportunities. We patients, level the playing field for reorganize, and reanalyze sequences. began as a grassroots organization of scientists in smaller or less wealthy Now imagine the possibilities if the scientists, advocating the establishment institutions, and ensure that no one will same creative explosion that was fueled and growth of online public libraries of be unable to read an important paper by open access to DNA sequences were science, such as the National Institutes just because his or her institution does to occur for the much larger body of of Health’s PubMed Central, to provide not subscribe to a particular journal. published scientific results. free and unrestricted access to the Open access will also enable scientists scientific literature. Today, with the to begin transforming the scientific Paying the Bill for Open Access launch of PLoS Biology, we take on a literature into something far more The benefits of open access are new role as publishers, to demonstrate useful than the electronic equivalent incontestable. The questions and that high-quality journals can flourish of millions of individual articles in concerns that remain focus on finances. without charging for access. rows of journals on library shelves. As everyone acknowledges, publishing The ability to search, in an instant, an a scientific journal costs money—the Open Access entire scientific library for particular more rigorous the peer review, the PLoS Biology, and every PLoS journal terms or concepts, for methods, data, more efficient and expert the editorial to follow, will be an open-access and images—and instantly retrieve the oversight, the more added features and publication---everything we publish results—is only the beginning. Freeing the higher the production standards, will immediately be freely available the information in the scientific the greater the cost to publishers. Most to anyone, anywhere, to download, literature from the fixed sequence of journals today depend on subscriptions print, distribute, read, and use without pages and the arbitrary boundaries and site-licensing fees for most of their charge or other restrictions, as long drawn by journals or publishers— revenue. Since these access tolls are as proper attribution of authorship is the electronic vestiges of paper incompatible with open access, how will maintained. Our open-access journals publication—opens up myriad new newly formed open-access journals pay will retain all of the qualities we value possibilities for navigating, integrating, their bills, and how will the traditional in scientific journals—high standards of “mining,’’ annotating, and mapping journals that have served the scientific quality and integrity, rigorous and fair connections in the high-dimensional community for many years survive in an peer-review, expert editorial oversight, space of scientific knowledge. open-access world? PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Page vi PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Page 001 Because publishing is an integral prices; and state and federal taxes that agencies and institutions. part of the research process, a natural subsidize healthcare, libraries, and The Howard Hughes Medical alternative to the subscription model is education. Surely the cost of open- Institute, the largest private sponsor to consider the significant but relatively access digital publishing cannot, in of biomedical research in the United small costs of open-access publication total, be more than we are already States, has already taken a leading as one of the fundamental costs of paying under the subscription and role in promoting open access. They doing research. The institutions licensing model. By simply changing will provide each of their investigators that sponsor research intend for the the way we support the scientific with supplemental funds to cover the results to be made available to the publishing enterprise, the scientific costs of publishing in open-access scientific community and the public. community and public would preserve journals like PLoS Biology. Other major If these research sponsors also paid everything we value in scientific institutional sponsors of biomedical the essential costs of publication— publishing and gain all of the benefits research are actively considering similar amounting, by most estimates, to of open access. policies. less than 1% of the total spent on There are reasons to believe that Private foundations with a sponsored research (statistics found at open-access publishing would cost commitment to science and education http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal. significantly less than the current have contributed generously to this pbio.0000036.sd001)—we would retain system. Today, each journal has a cause. Like any new business, PLoS a robust and competitive publishing monopoly on a resource vital to needed to raise funds to cover our start- industry and gain the benefit of scientists—the unique collection of up costs. A generous grant from the universal open access. articles it has published. Anyone who Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation The subscription model—in which depends on the information in a enabled PLoS to launch our nonprofit the publishers own the works they specific article has no choice but to pay publishing venture. Other individuals publish and dictate the conditions whatever price the publisher asks (or and organizations, notably the Irving under which they can be accessed or find a colleague or library that has done A. Hansen Foundation, also provided used—is sometimes presented as the so). Because scientists are so dependent generous and welcome support. These only possible way to pay for scientific on ready access to previously published start-up funds made it possible for us publishing. This pay-for-access model work, publishers are able to set their to assemble an outstanding editorial was well suited to a world in which prices with little fear of subscription board and staff, who have today the most efficient way to record and cancellations. Indeed, journal prices accomplished the extraordinary feat transmit scientific information on have been rising at a rate well in excess of launching a new publisher and a a large scale was by printing and of inflation, straining the budgets of premiere journal from scratch in less distributing scientific journals. When universities, hospitals, and research than nine months. each incremental copy represented a institutions. Open access would The opposition of most established significant expense to the publisher, eliminate monopolies over essential journals to open access has left it to any sustainable business model published results, diminishing profit new journals like PLoS Biology and depended on recovering the cost margins and creating a more efficient BioMed Central’s Journal of Biology for each copy—the recipients of the market for scientific publishing—a to lead the way. These new journals information had to pay for access. But market in which publishers would face a double challenge. First, the essential rationale of the pay-for- compete to provide the best value we are introducing an unfamiliar access model has disappeared, now that to authors (high quality, selectivity, model—open-access publication. electronic publication and Internet prestige, a large and appreciative Second, any new journal, even one distribution have become routine. readership) at the best price. with the stringent standards and Instead, this business model is what the extraordinary editorial team of stands in the way of all the benefits of Joining Forces PLoS Biology, must begin without the open access. In recent months, we have witnessed established “brand name’’ of the older Asking research sponsors to pay a remarkable surge of awareness and journals, which, like a designer logo, for publication of the research they support for open-access publication, elevates the perceived status of the support may seem to impose new both within the scientific community articles that bear it. With all that is financial burdens on the government and in the public at large, exemplified at stake in the choice of a journal in agencies, foundations, universities, and by recent newspaper articles and which to publish—career advancement, companies that sponsor research. But editorials supporting PLoS and open grant support, attracting good students these organizations already pay most access; by the recent introduction of and fellows—scientists who believe of the costs of scientific publishing—a the Public Access to Science Act in in the principle of open access and huge fraction of the US$9 billion the United States Congress; by the wish to support it are confronted with annual revenue of scientific, medical, Bethesda Workshop on Open Access; a difficult dilemma. We applaud the and technology journals comes and by public statements of support courage and pioneering spirit of the from subscriptions, site licenses, and from organizations as diverse as the authors who have chosen to send to publication fees ultimately billed to NIH Council of Public Representatives, a fledgling journal the outstanding grants or employers. Much of the the Association of Research Libraries, articles you will read in the premiere rest is borne by society in the form and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer issues of PLoS Biology. In the end, it’s of increments to university tuitions; Foundation. Achieving universal open the contributions of these authors that healthcare costs, including drug access will require action from funding will make PLoS Biology a success. 

PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Page 002 PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Page 003

Appendix C. Statements of support for open access from UK and international scientists and educators:

• Nicholas H. Barton, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh • Lon Cardon, Professor of Bioinformatics, University of Oxford • Ilan Davis, Group Leader, Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh • Bryan Grenfell, Professor of Population Biology, Cambridge University • Tim Hubbard, Head of Human Genome Analysis, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge • Georgina Mace, Science Director, Zoological Society of London • Chris Marshall, Director, Cancer Research UK Centre for Cell and Molecular Biology, London • Richard Morris, Professor of Neuroscience, The University of Edinburgh • Stephen O’Rahilly, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine, University of Cambridge • Andrew Read, Professor of Natural History, Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh • Sir John Sulston, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge • Janet Thornton, Director, European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge

Scientific research is founded on an open exchange of information - necessary to keep up with the latest developments, to seed new ideas, and to allow disparate knowledge to be synthesised. My own field, evolutionary biology, ranges over diverse fields (molecular genetics, ecology, stochastic mathematics, and so on), so that it is especially important for me to have ready access to the literature.

The proliferation of new journals, and the often excessive prices charged for them, is making this increasingly difficult. Edinburgh is one of the largest research universities in the UK, but nevertheless, the library here cannot afford to maintain subscriptions even to key journals. Electronic publication and the internet have brought the potential for considerable cost savings, and for rapid search across journals. Yet, in practice I am faced with a maze of different web sites and passwords, so that it is often quicker to walk to the library and use the print version - when that is available. A move to open access publishing would be a very great improvement.

Nicholas H. Barton, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh

Interdisciplinary research fields such as Human Genetics involve scientists with a diverse array of backgrounds in medicine, chemistry, engineering and statistics. The diversity of backgrounds requires corresponding specialisation of scientific journals.

The information age has ensured that many of these journals are now electronically distributed. Unfortunately however electronic availability does not equate to open accessibility. PLOS fills a crucial niche in this regard. By providing scientists from different disciplines with easy and free access to high quality research papers PLoS should actually enhance scientific progress itself.

Lon Cardon, Professor of Bioinformatics University of Oxford

I strongly believe that free open access to all scientific publications is very important for both the scientific community and the general public.

First, patients have the right to access scientific information which forms the basis of evidence lead medicine. The vast majority of such research is publicly funded or funded by charitable sources such as the Wellcome Trust and CR-UK.

Second, scientific progress depends crucially on availability of information and free communication between scientists. Commercial barriers to availability of information, such as charging for access to journals, does slow down progress.

Third, free access to all published scientific data promotes better public understanding of science and can counteract misconceptions and misinformation in the popular press about key scientific issues in our society.

Ilan Davis Group Leader Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh

Open access publishing is an extremely important development for the scientific community, for a number of reasons.

First, direct funding of publication costs provides a much more efficient way than at present to channel public and charity research funds into the unrestricted dissemination of scientific information.

Second, open access models such as those pioneered by the Public Library of Science are much more democratic, in that they permit free access at the point of use for the scientist.

Third, I think there is an interesting analogy here with the computing software industry: Open access software such as Linux and the statistical package R have led to an incredibly efficient focusing of technical innovation and diversity across the scientific community. It will be interesting to see if this pattern is paralleled in open access scientific publishing, as it develops.

Finally, in my discipline, the epidemiology of infectious diseases, many infections are endemic in the Tropics. Free access to the scientific literature for scientists working in these areas is particularly important.

Bryan Grenfell Professor of Population Biology Cambridge University

As a researcher, it's clear to me from personal experience how closed access journals negatively affect my research and how open access journals are already making a difference.

There is great potential for creating a completely new competitive market based on innovation in the processing of open access full text articles. My own use of PubMedCentral has already demonstrated to me the power of being able to freely process and cross link full text entries in new ways. For example, by linking entities such as genes, in PubMedCentral one can rapidly identify far more of the articles that refer to a given gene than was previously possible and link them to other types of scientific data such as the genome sequence itself.

These and related initiatives also have the potential to generate much better measures of research output which would help optimise allocation of research funds. Seeing what PubMedCentral has already achieved with the current limited set of open access articles and existing text processing technology, I would go as far as to suggest that maintaining the existing closed access publishing system will inhibit the speed of future medical progress. Existing closed publishers have by comparison made very few steps in this direction and even if they did, the fragmentation of the market in text would reduce the value of any processing and there would be almost no pressure to innovate because of their monopoly control to access.

Another example of the negative effect of the closed access system is the inhibition of exploring interdisciplinary ideas. Even the most well supported institute libraries only subscribe to a limited number of journals, even via the online packages they buy access to nowadays. In an increasingly interdisciplinary world, there are always times when one finds abstracts (via PubMed) outside one's core discipline that appear potentially interesting, but which you do not have subscriber access to. The most likely outcome is that one goes no further at this point, because of the time required to order a one-off copy (or because of the cost of such a purchase). Given that when one attends congresses one frequently gets the best new ideas from seminars outside ones immediate discipline, I am sure closed access journals slow the progress of research by preventing the cross fertilisation of ideas between fields.

For a number of decades policy makers have been encouraging interdisciplinary research. Internet access to the full text of journals has the potential to greatly facilitate this. It can lower the barriers between disciplines by making it as easy to view a journal in a different discipline as one in your own. In the past it would be in a different section of the physical library or a different library completely. The benefits of the internet however are being missed, because of close access barriers.

Tim Hubbard Head of Human Genome Analysis Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge

There should be a fundamental review of the business model that supports scientific publications. Is it really desirable that government funds to universities, channelled through library budgets, end up supporting profit margins of commercial publishers? Equally is it sensible that publicly funded science can end up being published in journals that are unavailable to the majority of practising scientists because of the commercial publishers’ priorities.

There are some major advantages to open-access publication. A re-direct of government funding from university libraries to research councils and other grant-giving bodies to support ‘author pays’ publishing would be both logical and probably cost-effective. However, there are some serious issues for the learned societies and charitable publishers who survive financially from profitable journal sales. Open access publishing models still have to be able to organise effective and rigorous peer review and this resource needs to be formally recognised in any business model. The risk for the new open access journals is that young researchers and those concerned about RAE scoring will be disinclined to submit their work while they have no ISI impact factor listed. Both these concerns are soluble but will require a systematic analysis and concerted actions which should be government led.

Georgina Mace Science Director Zoological Society of London

The benefits of open access are that it makes available scientific literature to members of the academic community that are unable to afford licence fees for non-open access journals. This is obviously of tremendous benefit to poorer nations but even in relatively well endowed institutions like this we cannot afford the fees for all the journals that we would like to have. Open access journals may also stimulate much more debate on scientific studies through easier on line access to the authors.

Chris Marshall Director, Cancer Research UK Centre for Cell and Molecular Biology London

As a scientist, the only way to make a decision between competing views is on the basis of evidence. The open-accessing publishing experiment of the Public Library of Science is a high-profile attempt to create - from scratch - high-quality, freely-accessible journals via the web. I support it on that basis. I was impressed by the quality of the staff they were able to attract, and am giving freely of my time to review and otherwise help with editorial decisions about selected manuscripts in my area of expertise. It will be very interesting to see how the experiment works out, and whether the resulting publication comes to be as well respected and as "gossiped about" as other prominent, more traditional publications. So far PLoS Biology has been excellent.

Open-accessing publishing is a different business model to that pursued by commercial publishers, whether acting on their own or on behalf of scientific and professional societies. In making the published material freely available, the burden of the costs of running the journal, particularly the editorial process, will in time come to fall largely on the author. It is open question whether this is sustainable. I worry about the future of society journals that, in general, have served their communities well and, so often, over long periods. I also worry that open-access publishing is no less open to abuse than other forms of publishing. This is primarily because open-access could become a vehicle in certain hands for material to be published without proper peer review, notwithstanding disclaimers, on behalf of those prepared to pay enough for the outlet. However, I imagine that the combination of economic considerations and the new technology (the web) will result in a shake-out and allow for different publishing niches to remain or become occupied. I very much hope that open-access publishing will be one part of the future landscape serving the effective communication of science." Richard Morris Professor of Neuroscience, The University of Edinburgh

From the perspective of a Clinician-Scientist, open access publishing has particular attractions. Ready access to the full range of available published scientific knowledge not only fuels better science but also greatly aids the translation of such science into clinical practice. The practice of medicine is becoming ever more complex and even in individual specialties the explosion of knowledge means that no single individual can carry all the diagnostic and therapeutically relevant information required in his or her head. Diseases which were once lumped as single entities are now sub-classified into tens if not hundreds of more specific diagnoses, all with different diagnostic features, prognosis and therapeutic responses. Increasingly, a consultation with a patient may involve “real time” interaction with the medical scientific literature. The quality of information available, however, is frequently restricted to short abstracts in PubMed whereas what one really wants is access to the details of the article with accompanying patient images, etc.

To sum up, therefore, I have no doubt that you will have many basic scientists extolling the virtues of open access for the purposes of pure science. However, I felt it was worth emphasizing that there are direct, perhaps even more immediately tangible, benefits for open access in the area of the clinical-medical literature.

Stephen O’Rahilly Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine University of Cambridge

Open access is extremely important in my area (evolution of infectious diseases) for two reasons.

1. Open access papers can be obtained by people working in less developed countries. There is, for instance, much malaria work going in Africa, by both Africans and Western scientists based there. With open access, these people can see our work. Universities and research institutes in those countries can often afford no more than a select few journals. PLoS and other journals, like the Malaria Journal, have transformed that, and probably do more for the state of tropical medicine science than would many additional grants. My research group makes extensive use of our library's e-subscriptions to most relevant journals. Why should those working outside the Western world be denied that? Science is tackling global issues, and should be available globally.

2. Our work is very interdisciplinary, so that if for instance we publish in an evolution journal, only those Universities with evolution interests will have subscriptions to those journals. This excludes most medical schools. Thus, with electronic literature searches, medics will see that we have written a paper, but be unable to access it. The same problem arises for evolutionary biologists in universities lacking medical schools - they can't access any paper we publish in the medical literature. I think lack of open access is one of the most severe barriers to genuine interdisciplinary work.

More generally, can I also add that it really is outrageous that people have to pay to access the scientific output of taxpayer- or charity-supported work. Build the modest costs of open-access publications into the cost of the science and then let it be free to the user.

Andrew Read, Professor of Natural History Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh

For me publication is primarily a matter of making findings generally available: the more open the access the better. It seems strange that there should be any other way. Credit in science comes as a result of sharing, not of keeping secret.

With open access comes the convenience and power of electronic access and searching, without barriers. Once the principle of open access is established it will be easy for a reader to refer to many journals, each for a particular paper. Then, when this practice is accepted by the review committees, the pre-eminence of certain journals will fade, and the destructive competition to get into those journals will cease.

Sir John Sulston Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge

The last few years have seen a huge expansion of biological data and as a consequence the development of large data resources such as those held at EBI. However the majority of scientific information is still captured in the literature and the need to exploit this information and to be able to extract it easily is now a major challenge for all biologists. Clearly computational approaches that will help scientists in this task are going to be increasingly important and they will only be able to work optimally if the literature is open access. Therefore I believe that open access is a critical step towards maximal exploitation of current biological knowledge, thereby helping us to understand and synthesize all the interactions and dependencies that make up the complexity of biological systems.

Janet Thornton Director, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)

Appendix D. The PLoS UK Editorial Board

The Editorial Board of PLoS Biology currently has 124 members from 17 countries, including 18 from the UK. Editorial Board members have two primary roles: 1) to work as an expert consultant with the internal professional editor to ensure that all papers published meet the rigorous editorial and scientific standards required for the journal, and 2) to help promote open access to their institutions and peers. Details of the full Editorial Board can be found at http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-static&name=edboard.

First Name Family Name Institution Area of expertise Julie Ahringer University of Cambridge Developmental Biology Michael Ashburner University of Cambridge Genomics Nick Barton University of Edinburgh Evolutionary Biology Michael Bate University of Cambridge Neuroscience Lon Cardon University of Oxford Human Genetics Alan Fersht University of Cambridge Biochemistry Bryan Grenfell University of Cambridge Ecology MRC Human Genetics Nicholas Hastie Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh Paul Harvey University of Oxford Evolutionary Biology Imperial Cancer Research Tim Hunt Cell biology Fund Institute of Zoology, Georgina Mace Conservation Science London Institute of Cancer Chris Marshall Cancer Biology Research Alfonso Martinez Arias University of Cambridge Developmental Biology Richard Morris University of Edinburgh Neuroscience Steve O'Rahilly University of Cambridge Medical genetics Weatherall Institute of Sarah Rowland-Jones Immunology Molecular Medicine Wolfram Schultz University of Cambridge Neuroscience European Bioinformatics Janet Thornton Computational biology Institute

Appendix E. List of UK Signatories

The Public Library of Science initiative began with the circulation of the following open letter, urging publishers to allow the research reports that have appeared in their journals to be distributed freely by independent, online public libraries of science. Over 30,000 individuals worldwide, including more than 1500 members of the UK scientific community – faculty, students, etc. – signed this letter. The names and affiliations of the UK signatories are listed below.

We support the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. Establishment of this public library would vastly increase the accessibility and utility of the scientific literature, enhance scientific productivity, and catalyze integration of the disparate communities of knowledge and ideas in biomedical sciences.

We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record of scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by publishers, but should belong to the public and should be freely available through an international online public library.

To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor, we pledge that, beginning in September 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date.

Abdoney, Mary Aldred, Nicholas Andrew, R.J. Ashwin, Chris US Geological Survey Cardiff Univesity University of Sussex University of Cambridge

Abdullah, Saleh Alexander, Michael Ansell, John Aslett, Martin University University of Edinburgh Eurpopean Bioinformatics Alexopoulos, Harris Institute Abraham, Andrew University of Sussex Ansell, Nicola Bell College Brunel University Asztalos, Zoltan Alhaq, Anwar University of Cambridge Abrams, Jolane Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Anstead, James University of Bristol Trust Biochrom Au, Shannon

Abubakar, Yaro Al-Jarrah, Hatim Antunes, Ana AUDISIO, Riccardo A. University of Nottingham University of Nottingham UMIST Whiston Hospital

Adams, Roger L P Al-Jarrah, Hatim Anwar, Naveed Audit, Benjamin University of Glasgow University of Nottingham Incyte Genomics EMBL

Adams, Benjamin Allais, Cyrille Apweiler, Rolf Austin, Susan The University of Sussex Kingston University EMBL Gateshead & SouthTyneside Health Adams, Josephine Allan, Clare Araujo, Sofia Authority University College University of Stirling MRC centre, King's London college Avides, Maria do Carmo Allan, James University of Cambridge Adeosun, Ekundayo Edinburgh University Archer, Charles GlaxoSmithKline Plc Cardiff University Ayoub, Mohammad Allemann, Rudolf Adetugbo, Kayode University of Birmingham Argasinska, Joanna Bacon, Jonathan Cambridge University University of Sussex Adura, Peter Allen, Marcus Singleton Hospital University of Sussex Armes, Steven Peter Bahler, Jurg Sussex University The Sanger Center Afrah, Abdulkadir Almeida, Gabriela Wehliye Leicester University Arney, Katharine Bailey, C. Donovan Wellcome/CRC Institute of University of Oxford Afzal, Nadeem AlQatari, Mona Cancer and University College of University College Developmental Biology Bailey, Tom London London Zoological Society of Arnott, Ian London Agnew, William Mark Al-shoukeirat, Rasmi Western General Hospital Biocolor Ltd Bailleul, Valerie Al-Ubaydli, Mohammad Arrand, Helena Ahmed, Irfan Cambridge University Bookham Technology Baird, Richard University of Leeds Royal Marsden Hospital Amaee, Richard Arroyo, Mariona Ahringer, Julie University of Cambridge cranfield university Baker, Kym University of Cambridge University of Kent Amer, Halima Ashbridge, Michael Ainsworth, John Ross Imperial College University of Ulster Baker, Mya Birmingham Children's Nottingham City Hospital Hospital Amsler, Sarah Ashburner, Michael LSE University of Cambridge Bakolas, Dimitrios Akhtar, Muhammad University of Southampton University Anandavijayan, Vijay S Ashcroft, Frances Wolverhampton Rowett Research Institute University of Oxford Al-bar, Adnan Balaam, Andy University of Sussex Anderson, W. Gary Ashcroft, Neville Uni of Sussex University of St. Andrews MRC Albertini, Angiolina Baldock, Richard A Institute of Arable Crops Andras, Pulai Ashman, James MRC Human Genetics Research University College University of Hull Unit London Baldwin, Geoffrey Bashtanov, Mikhail Benmayor, Rebecca Bloore, Darren Imperial College of University of Sussex Centre of Ecology and Knoll Limited Science, Technology & Hydrology-Oxford Medicine Bassett, David Blower, Andrew MRC Human Genetics Benson, Charlotte Balfour, Peter Unit Institute of Cancer Boardman, Paul Research U.M.I.S.T Balk, Janneke Bate, Michael Oxford University University of Cambridge Bentley, Mark Boiteux, Helene Open University university of Southampton Banaji, Murad Bath, Abigail UCL University of Bristol Benton, Richard Bolanos-Garcia, Victor Wellcome/CRC Institute University of Cambridge Bannister, Richard Batoko, Henri Royal Holloway, University of Oxford Bernard, Emmanuelle Boll, Satnam University of London University of sussex Baxter, Colin Bond, Alex Barber, Tim University of Strathclyde Berry, Katherine University of Birmingham Vale of Leven District Rothamsted Research General Hospital Baxter, Alasdair Station Bonfield, James MRC Laboratory of Barbone, Sheila Bayer, Micha Bertrand, Nicolas Molecular Biology Essex University Royal Botanic Garden Oxford uuniversity Edinburgh Bonnington, Jennifer Barclay, Robin Betson, Martha Cambridge University Scottish National Blood Beaken, Jack MRC-LMCB Transfusion Service Booy, Frank Beall, Sarah Bhaskaran, Ambily Imperial College Bardsley, Louise Ealing Tertiary College University College The Wildlife Trusts London Bordass, William Beck, Stephan William Bordass Barker, Anthony The Sanger Centre Bhatt, Ramesh Associates IACR Rothamsted Sandwell General Beckstein, Oliver Hospital Borts, Rhona Barnavon, Laurent University of Oxford University of Leicester University of Southampton Bignone, Paola Beckstein, Oliver University of Kent Borycki, Anne-Gaelle Barnes, Peter University of Oxford University of Sheffield Imperial College Bion, Julian Bedford, Robin Queen Elizabeth Hospital Boscan, Pedro Barnes, Phil University of Exeter University of Bristol Private Research Bishop, John Beedie, Alexander University of Reading Boss, Jeffrey Barr, Michelle University College Bristol University University of Reading London Bishop-Bailey, David Queen Mary's University Bossing, Torsten Barr, Tom Begum, Ruhena University of Cambridge University of Sheffield University of Oxford Biss, Judith Singleton Hospital Bostock, A. Barros, Claudia Bell, Vaughan Acro Logic Wellcome/CRC Institute University of Surrey Bizarro, Lisiane Roehampton Institute of Psychiatry Bostoen, Kristof Barrow, Andrew King's College London London University University of Portsmouth Bell, Kevin Biomedical Sciences Blackmore, Colin Boutsen, Luc Bart, Vanhaesebroeck University of Cambridge University of Birmingham Ludwig Institute for Bellin, Gianluigi Cancer Research Queen Mary and Westfield Blaise, Regis Bowden, Rory College The Rayne's Institute University of Oxford Barth, Anukampa University College Bending, Lucy Blondel, Anne Bowen, Gareth London Institute of Psychiatry SR Pharma

Bowyer, Helen Brown, John Michael Busfield, Luke University of Wales North Area College Oxford U. University of Newcastle Stockport Upon Tyne Carden, Martin Brown, Thomas University of Kent Boyd, Chris Centre for Ecology & Busselot, Sven University of Edinburgh Hydrology Carlow, Alex Bustin, Stephen Kingston University Brader, Sharon Bruce, Edmonds Barts and the London Institute of Cancer Manchester Metropolitan School of Medicine and Carlton, Nikki Research University Dentistry Carnall, Douglas Bradley, Daniel Buchner, Peter Butcher, Geoff Carnall.org University of Cambridge Institute of Arable Crop Imperial College Research (IACR) Carnielli, Virgilio Bradnam, Keith Rothamsted Butler, Danica Institute of Child Helth The Sanger Centre Southampton University Buckle, Ashley Carrizosa, Alvaro Brakoulias, Andreas Medical Resaerch Council Butler, Patrick Univ. of Lincoln University College Birmingham University London Budd, Bill Carter, Jenny MRC Institute of Hearing Butt, Sajid De Montfort University Brandano, Sergio Research Guy's and St Thomas' University of London Hospital Carter, Patricia Buerton, John A Open University Brazier, Karl World Land Trust Button, Chris University of East Anglia University of Edinburgh cartlidge, john Bujalski, Jakub IRI Leeds University UK Brazma, Alvis The University of Byrne, Emma EMBL Birmingham Aston University Carvajal, Jaime Institute of Cancer Brennan, James Bujalski, Waldemar Cabrera, Hector Research The University of Institute of Arable Crop Brennen, Michael Birmingham Research Carvalho, Brendan Plymouth Hospitals Briggs, Carol Bullock, Seth Cabrerizo, Yolanda University College University of Leeds Imperial Cancer Research Cassoret, Marine Hospital Fund University of Bristol Bulmer, Nicholas Brignull, Harry Pilgrim Hospital Cadoret, Katel Casteras, Vincent Sussex University HDRA Cardiff University Bundred, Peter Britton, Allan University of Livedrpool Calvino, Ruben Causton, Helen King's College School of ICSM Britton, Allan Burge, Neil Medicine South West International Oxford University Cayzer, Steve University Campbell, Malcolm Burman Roy, Shona University of Oxford Cellek, Selim Brook, John David Moorfields Eye Hospital University College University of Nottingham Campbell, Ian London Burrows, James The Robert Gordon Brown, Nigel Queen's University, University Chad, John University of Birmingham Belfast University of Southampton Campbell, Robin Brown, Amanda Burrows, Andy University of Stirling Chadd, Richard IACR Rothamsted The University of Environment Agency of Liverpool Campbell, Brian England & Wales Brown, John Caithness General Institute of Cancer Burton, Peter Hospital Chakrabarti, Bhismadev Research Glasgow University University of Cambridge Canales, Roberto Brown, David John Burton, John A University of Greenwich Chakravorty, I University of Edinburgh. World Land Trust Royal Brompton & Candeias, Adriana T. Harefield Hospital Chamberlain, Janet Chung, J. Sook Constancia, Miguel Courtney, Carol University of Sheffield University of Wales The Babraham Institute BCTU

Chan, Philip Chyb, Sylwester Coolen, Isabelle Cousens, Simon University of Sheffield Imperial College cambridge university London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Chan, Philip Ciantar, Marilou Coomes, David University of Sheffield Eastman Dental Institute University of Cambridge Couso, Juan Pablo University of Sussex Chance, Tom Clark, Melody Cooper, Adam HGMP Resource Centre University of Birmingham Coutelle, Charles Chand-Kumar, Meera Imperial College Cambridge University Clark, Mike Cooper, Simon Cambridge University Edinburgh University Coutureau, Etienne Chaplin, Martin Cardiff University South Bank University Clark, Duncan Corfield, Anthony GeneSys Ltd. University of Bristol Coward, Kevin Chaplin, Martin University College London South Bank Clark, Ralph Cornett, Johanne London University Primatech Systems Ltd Nonlinear Dynamics Cowley, Stephen Chaplin, Martin Clarke, Berwyn Cornish, Valerie University of Cambridge London South Bank Virco UK University of Oxford University Cowling, Daniel Claudio, Scotti Correa, Isabel University of Chapman, George University of North Imperial Cancer Research Gloucestershire Bio Products Laboratory London Fund Cox, Iain Chapman, Ian Clauss, Rainer Corrie, John University of Kent University of Dundee Institute of Cancer National Instiute for Research Medical Research Cox, Rachel Chawdhery, M Zafar St Helier Hospital, Clayton, Lesley Cosby, Louise Cox, Anthony Carshalton MRC Laboratory of The Queen's University of Aston University Molecular Biology Belfast Cherrington, Jason Cox, Don Cochran, Siska Costa, Céline University of Teesside Chestnutt, Joseph The University of Science University of Birmingham Anthony John and Technology in Cox, Patrick Elemental Ltd Manchester Cottam, Steve University of East Anglia Great Eccleston Health Chettle, Kevin Cole, Jeffrey Alan Center Coxon, Fraser University of Birmingham University of Aberdeen Chidzik, Richard Cotter, Nick Cole, David Cracknell, Lucy Chikhi, Lounes University of Bath Coull, Barry Science Press Internet University College University of Sussex Services London Collett, thomas stephen University of Sussex Coulson, Alan Craig, Michael Chikota, Joseph The Sanger Centre Argyll and Clyde Health Concha, Miguel Board Child, Emma University College Coulton, Gary Imperial College London St. George's Hospital Craig, Iain Medical School Elsevier Science Chopra, Shalu Connolly, Bernard Imperial College University of Newcastle Court, William Creswell, Cathy ICR UCL Chris, Donnellan Connolly, Christopher Datamonitor University of Dundee Court, Emma Cridge, Mark University of the West of University of London Chubb, Jonathan Constable, Edwin C England Western General Hospital University of Birmingham Croft, Stuart University of Sheffield Crompton-Roberts, Dardonville, Christophe University of Reading West Cumberland Francois Hospital Queen Mary, University of Darlington, Oliver Deak, Peter London University of Sussex University of Cambridge Di Paolo, Ezequiel University of Sussex Cronin, Leroy Daubos, Thierry Dearman, Joshua University of Birmingham The Queen's University of University of Bath Dickinson, Francis Belfast St Hughs College Oxford Cronin, Deborah Deeming, Antony University of Birmingham Davey, Michael University College diego, jose CodeRage Ltd. London NAPL (Oxford) Crookes, Annie Univ. Leicester David, Tree Degtyarenko, Kirill Dinsdale, David Stanford University EMBL Crouzet, Olivier Medical School Dobson, Malcolm Keele University Delehedde, Maryse Lanarkshire Health Board Davidson, Marcus University of Liverpool Cserzo, Miklos University of Dundee Dodd, Ciara S University of Birmingham Del-Estal, Dolores Cardiff University Davies, Jeff University of Newcastle- Cuesta Perez, Javier Cardiff University upon-Tyne Dodimead, Shaun The Institute of Cancer Research Davies, Jane Alison Della Corte, Marcello Dolphin, Annette Sussex University Oxford Radcliffe Hospital University College Cunningham, Ben London Davies, Peter Dellaire, Graham Currie, Elspeth University of Westminster MRC-Human Genetics Dominy, Peter University of Edinburgh Unit University of Glasgow Davies, Martin Curry, Jim North Staffordshire Delpy, David Donaldson, Lucy Queen's University Hospital University College University of Bristol London Curtis, Robert Davies, Gareth Donohoe, Siobhán Greenfaulds high school HDRA Deng, Jing University College University College London Dal Secco, Valentina Davis, Ilan London University of Liverpool ICMB, Univeristy of Don-Wauchope, Andrew Edinburgh Dengler, Martin University of Edinburgh Dalby, Andrew Investment Bank University of Exeter Davis, Ian Dorrell, Nick Eastman Dental Institute, Denholm, Erica London School of Hygiene Dalby, David UCL Institute of Cancer and Tropical Medicine Linguasphere Observatory Research Davis, Nick Doust, Ross Dale, Trevor University of Birmingham Dennell, Timothy Glasgow university vet ICR BBC Radio Sheffield school Davison, Richard Dale, Colin University of Luton Derlla Corte, Marcello Doverty, Lynne University of Central Oxford Radcliffe Hospital Grampian University Lancashire Dawson, Tim Hospitals Royal Preston Hospital Despland, Emma Dance, John Oxford University Downey, Jim Oxford University Dawson, Jill National Health Service Institute of Health Dewez, Thomas Dancer, Stephanie Sciences Brunel University Dracup, Will Vale of Leven District Nonlinear Dynamics Ltd General Hospital Day, S.H DEY, Shubhamoy Staffordshire University University of Leeds Draycott, Gwen Daniel, Gwenaelle St. George's Hospital Bookham Technology plc De Bono, Stephanie Dharmeswaran, Prabakar Medical School MRC Centre NHS Daniels, Lucy Drury, Steve University of Bristol De Meyer, Kris Dhebar, Mahesh Open University Drysdale, Rachel Eagle, Robert Erzinclioglu, Zakaria Fernández, Daniel University of Cambridge University of Cambridge University of Cambridge University of St Andrews

Dubois, Thierry Ebenezer, Catherine Eskelinen, Eeva-Liisa Field, Mark C University of Edinburgh South London and University of Dundee Imperial College Maudsley NHS Trust Dubrova, Yuri Esvant, Helene Field, Andy University of Leicester Eccles, Ron LSHTM University of Sussex Cardiff University Dudley, Chris Eswaran, Jeyanthy Filippi, Celine Eckersley, Robert University of Cambridge University of Edinburgh Duffy, Claire Imperial College Imperial College of Evans, Martin Finch-Turner, Barbara Science, Technology and Edwards, Nick Cardiff University CMS CAMERON Medicine University of Oxford MCKENNA Evans, Dave Duguid, Gail Edwards, Glyn University of Exeter Finnegan, David Bistol University University of Cambridge University of Edinburgh Fagg, Martyn Dumoulin, Stephane Ehinlaye, Paul University of Sussex Firman, Keith Imperial College Nottingham Trent University of Portsmouth University Fairhurst, Peter Dunbar, Donald Fivelman, Quinton Organon Laboratories Ltd Ehrmann, Michael Fant, Jeremie London School of Hygiene Cardiff University University of Cambridge and Tropical Medicine Duncan, Andrew Royal Infirmary Ellenrieder, Claudia Farooq, Imran Flanagan, Karen ICRF University of Liverpool Inpharmatica Ltd Dunham, Stephen University of Glasgow Ellis, Graham Fattah, Hasan Flatman, Peter St. John's Hospital Highland Acute Hospital Edinburgh University Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal Trust University of Cambridge Ellis, David Fletcher, Susan University of Edinburgh Faulkner, Joan withington hospital Dunkerley, Chris BPL Bio Products Laboratory Ellis, Robert Flinterman, Marcella rotherham general Faure, Georges-Etienne King's College London Dunn, Cath hospital nhs trust University of Hull Beatson Institute for Flower, Margaret Cancer Research Elmezgueldi, Mohammed Favis-Mortlock, David Institute of Cancer Imperial College Queen's University Belfast Research Dunn, Humphrey Glenfield Hospital Elwell, Clare Fawn, Colette Flowers, Timothy University College Sussex Autistic Society University of Sussex Dunne, David London University of Cambridge Febles, Alberto Ford, Robert Enfield, Louise UMIST Dutia, Mayank UCL Fehling, Johanna Edinburgh University Dunstaffnage Marine Ford, Michael Medical School Engelhardt, Thomas Laboratory MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit Dyer, Michael Eniola, Olufemi Feil, Edward University of Oxford NorthTyneside General University of Bath Forrest, John Hospital Scottish Crop Research Dyer, Rosalind Ferasin, Luca Institute University of Eperon, I. University of Bristol Wolverhampton University of Leicester Forrester, Auriel Ferguson, Julie S. University of Luton Dykes, Iain Erel, Umut MRC Human Genetics University of Sussex Nottingham Trent Unit Forrester, James University Eadie, Leila Fernandes, Carlos Fothergill, Tim UCL Cardiff University UMIST Fox, Keith Gardiner, Chris Gillespie, Michael Gosling, Paul University of Southampton University College News Corporation HDRA London Hospitals Foy, Robbie Glaser, Daniel Gosselin, Chantal University of Edinburgh Gardner, David University College University of Luton UMIST London Frances, Garrad-Cole Gossett, Roger University of Wales Garro, Unai Goat, Christopher Brunel University The University of Delphi Diesel Systems Frank, Rene Edinburgh Gould, Rebecca Cambridge University Gokmen, Refik Institute of Psychiatry Garthwaite, John University College Frankel, Joe University College London Hospitals Gout, Ivan Edinburgh University London Ludwig Institute for Golden, Michael Cancer Research Franks, Felix Gaten, Ted University of Aberdeen BioUpdate Foundation University of Leicester Gouzer, Jean-Francois Golden, Barbara University of Edinburgh Freeman, Stephen Gates, Monte university of aberdeen Rothamsted University of Wales Gow, Jennifer Goldenberg, Eldan University of Aberdeen Freeman, Louise Gavalas, Anthony University of Sussex Mayday University NIMR Gowers, Darren Hospital Gomez Dans, Jose Luis Bristol University Geddes, Jennian University of Sheffield Frigerio, Lorenzo Royal London Hospital Goymer, Patrick University of Warwick Gomperts, Miranda Oxford University George, Rodis Gomperts Frith, Julie University of Lincoln University of Cambridge Graham, Christopher University of Aberdeen Oxford University Ghasem, Yadegarfar Gonsalves, Anthony Fromm, Elisa Manchester University Oxford Graham, Ian Cancer Research UK University of York Institute for Cancer Gherghel, Doina Goodall, Elizabeth Studies Aston University Royal College of Graham, Alan Physicians and Surgeons Heriot Watt University Frost, Stephen Ghose, Aurnab of Glasgow The Princess Royal Beatson Institute for Green, Clare Hospital Cancer Research Goodier, Charles University of Cambridge Doid Fulker, Derek Ghoul, Cherif Green, Jonathan A University of Brighton UMIST Goodman, Neil University of Birmingham University of Southampton Furley, Andrew Giantzoudis, Dimitris Greener, Marc University of Sheffield Durham University Goodwin, Amanda Guy's King's and St. KHT Thomas' Medical Schools Furmonaviciene, Ruta Gibb, Alasdair Leicester University University College Goody, Terry Greer, Claire London University of Dundee university of sussex Gaggiotti, Oscar University of Cambridge Gigord, Luc Goranov, Bojidar Gregoriades, Christiana University of Exeter University of Newcastle University of Nottingham Gait, Michael upon Tyne Hills Road Gilbert, Kerry Grieve, Niall University of Bristol Gordon, David Centre for Aquatic Plant Gallagher, May Leng Lanarkshire Health Board Management Gilchrist, Susan Ganellin, Charon Robin MRC Human Genetics Gordon Boyd, Sally Griffith, Simon University College Unit University of Oxford London Gorecki, Dariusz Gill, Reese School of Pharmacy and Griffiths, Rachel Gardiner, Tom EuroLyme Biomedical Sciences Cambridge University Queen's University Belfast Grijalva, Carlos Hall, Andrew Harris, William Henderson, Katherine London School of Hygiene University of Aberdeen Cambridge University Homerton and Royal and Tropical Medicine London Hospitals Hall, Duncan Harris, Duncan Grima, Dominic None Sapio Design Ltd Henderson, Neil University of Oxford University of Newcastle Hambelton, Paul Harris, Midori Grimshaw, Matthew national library of European Bioinformatics Hene, Lawrence Imperial Cancer Research scotland Institute, EMBL University of Oxford Fund Hamed, A G Harrison, William Henshall, Simon Gubler, Lorenz Southampton General University of Aberdeen Grove House Practice Johnson Matthey Hospital Technology Centre Harrold, Joanne Heptonstall, John Hami, Rafiq University of Liverpool Centre for the Study of Guillain, Mike ealderly asian TCM Wansbeck General development organisation Harrower, Timothy Hospital Cambridge Centre for Herath, Athula Hamilton, Graham Repair Oxford GlycoSciences Guillot, Vincent Universsity of University of Southampton Lincolnshire and Harte, Declan Hermand, Damien Humberside Modernisation Agency ICRF Gullick, William University of Kent Hamilton, Alan Harty, Carol Hesketh, Mark University of Oxford Cambridge University Henry Doubleday Gurney, Trena Research Association University of Birmingham Hammond, Martin Hasseldine, Anthony South Bank University King's College London Hewison, Martin Guy, Adam The University of University College Hancock, John Hastie, Nicholas Birmingham London Royal Holloway Western General Hospital University of London Hibberd, Julian Guyard, Philippe Hawkins, Ross University of Cambridge University of Portsmouth Hanlon, Mike Incyte Genomics BBSRC Higham, Jeffrey Gwilliam, Rhian Hawkins, James Portsmouth University The Sanger Centre Harding, Stephen The Open Univeristy Hawxwell, Frances Hill, Elizabeth Haas, Karsten Bio Products Lab University of Aberdeen Hare, Walter Hayes, Nandini University Hospital University of Kent Him, Aydin Hadjianastassiou, Vassilis Lewisham Edinburgh University John Radcliffe Hospital Hearn, John Hares, Dickon Hinton, Jay Haines, Ben Manchester Grammar Heck, Margarete Institute of Food Research University of Sussex School University of Edinburgh Hobson, Piers Haines, Bryan Harman, Marcus Heckemann, Rolf IACR-Rothamsted Institute of Cancer The Wildernesse School Imperial College at Research for Boys Hammersmith Hospital Hodrien, John Campus The University of Leeds Haldane, Morgan Harmsworth, Andrew The Leys School Helgason, Thorunn Hogarth, Lee Hale, Michael University of York University of Sussex Hays Chemicals Ltd. Harnad, Stevan Southamton University Helleday, Thomas Holding, Richard Hales, David Cancer Studies Manchester Metropolitan Harpaz, Yehouda Holland, Stephanie University Cambridge University Henderson, Neil University of Sussex Royal Infirmary of Halford, Stephen Harris, Ross Edinburgh Holley, Matthew University of Bristol Sussex university University of Bristol

Holmes, Stephen Humphreys, Kenneth James, Rachel Jones, Richard MRC Universtity of Edinburgh University of Edinburgh University of Kent

Holroyd, John Hurrell, John James, Helen Jones, Steven Demos Technosis Ltd Barnsley District General CBD Porton Down Hutchison, Michael Hospital Holzer, Ludwig Max ADAS Laboratories Jones, Gwynfryn MRC Laboratory of James, Benjamin Freshwater Biological Molecular Biology Huys, Quentin London Guildhall Association University of Cambridge University Honorio, Sofia Jordaan, Jacob Arie Birmingham University, Huys, Anne-Catherine James, Ashman London School of Medical School University of Cambridge University of Hull Economics

Hood, Ian Hvizdos, Pavol Jamieson, Derek Jordan, Abbie UK National Health QMW College, Univ. of Heriot-Watt University University of Bristol Service London Jansen, Vincent Jordan, Abbie Hopkins, Pamela Hyvonen, Marko Royal Holloway, University of Bristol Univ. of Manchester University of Cambridge University of London Institute of Sci & Techn. Josserand, Francois Iain, Tullis Jansson, Roland University of Strathclyde Hopkins, Justin University College The Open University King's College London London Julian, Daniel Jarrett, Ruth University of Birmingham Hopwood, David Iborra, Francisco University of Glasgow Oxford University Juliet, Jacobsen Horton, Tammy Jaspars, Marcel USAF The University of Reading Incles, Chris Aberdeen University Institute of Cancer Karen, Dickson Houart, Corinne Research Jefferies, Paul Enlighten-action for King's College London epilepsy Ink, Barbara Jellyman, Juanita Housecroft, Catherine glaxosmithkline University of Cambridge Kaunda, Sam Kabajan The University of University of Oxford Birmingham Irfachsyad, Danial Jenkins, Aaron Southampton University Imperial College at Kaur, Hardip Howard, Kenneth Charing Cross Hospital University of Oxford University College Irvine, Nicola London Ninewells Hospital Jenner, Tracey Kaye, Philippa UMIST Cambridge university Hsiung, Lainey Iserles, Arieh The University of University of Cambridge Jennings, Sarah Keat, Simon Liverpool University of Cambridge IACR Long Ashton Islam, Yunus Yakoub Hudson, Rex Jermutus, Lutz Kell, Barbara Norwich School Jack, Anthony Cambridge Antibody International Medical Institute of Cognitive Technology Press Hughes, William E. Neuroscience Imperial Cancer Research Jewell, Jacqueline Kelsh, Robert Fund Jackson, J. Baz Royal Cornwall Hospital University of Bath University of Birmingham Hughes, David Joe, Lewis Kemmerzehl, Ina University of Oxford Jackson, Lorna University of Edinburgh HDRA, the organic Kemp, Fred Hughes, David A. organisation Johnson, Tim University of Reading UMIST Sheffield Kidney Institute Jackson, Sam Kemp, Jeremy Hughes, Elizabeth Institute of Neurology Jones, Ian University of York BioReliance University of Reading Jakob, Suckale Kemp, Charles Frederick Humphreys, Kate Oxford University Jones, Philip University of Reading Birkbeck College Sussex University, Ken, Norris Kittenis, Marios Lalanne, Eric Lehvaslaiho, Heikki Reading University University of Edinburgh University of Leicester European Bioinformatics Institute Kendke, Tony Knaeuper, Vera Lam, Amanda University of Reading University of York Institute of Neurology Lehvaslaiho, Minna European Bioinformatics Kenneally, Neil Knapp, Richard Lamb, Kelly Jane Institute, EMBL Sussex University Allergy Therapeutics ltd SAC Leighton, Rachel Kenneally, Patrick Knight, Jo Lancaster, Ian University of Oxford St Bartholomews Prime Medica Ltd Kerr, Bradley Lendon, Corinne King's College London Knox, Paul Landgraf, Matthias University of Bimringham University of Liverpool University of Cambridge Kessler, Klaus Leray, Yann University of Wales, Kohli, Ajay Langham, Harry Unilever School of Psychology John Innes centre none Leslie, Graham Keynes, Robert Korkia, Pirkko Langton, Philip University College University of luton University of Bristol Leung, Terence London University College Kotsoni, Eleni Laniado, Marc London Khan, Muhammad Akram Birkbeck College, Charing Cross Hospital Sheffield Hallam University of London Lew, Virgilio University Last, Alexander University of Cambridge Kotta, Konstantia Oxford University Khanom, Aysha University of Kent at Lewin, Michelle University of Westminster Canterbury Laurie, Sophie University of Edinburgh IACR Long Ashton Kilford, Lloyd Kraak, Sarah B. M. Lewin, Robert Imperial College London University of Leicester Law, Samantha University of York Robert Gordon University Kilham, David Kringelbach, Morten Lewin, Alex University of Bristol University of Oxford Law, Harry Imperial College Integrated King, Mikayala Krishna, Sanjeev Communications Corp Lewin, Alex University of Kent St. George's Hospital Imperial College Medical School Lawrence, Marc King, David Newcastle General Lewis, Annabelle Queen's University of Kumarasamy, Mohan Hospital Babraham Institute Belfast UMIST Lazell, Edward Lewis, Paul King, Alexandra Kunin, Victor Royal Holloway, University of Wales ORION Clinical Services European Bioinformatics University of London Swansea Institute King, Michael Leadlay, Peter Lewthwaite, Jo Royal Free and UC Kuo, C.Y. University of Cambridge Eastman Dental Institute Medical School University of Bath Leadsham, Jane Li, Shu-Rui Kins, Alexandre D. Kwan, Tao University of Kent London University Queen University of Sussex Mary College Medical Kirk, Victor Leaver, Christopher School BAE SYSTEMS Kwan, Tao University of Oxford LI, Yongmin Kirk-Smith, Michael Lachowski, Eric Leclerc, Vincent Queen Mary, University of University of Ulster University of Aberdeen Wellcome CRC Institute London

Kisil, Vladimir Lagido, Cristina Lee, James T Li, Francois-Xavier University of Leeds University of Aberdeen University of Plymouth University of Birmingham

Kite, Edwin Laing, Gavin Lees, Beverley Lijnzaad, Philip University of Newcastle Liverpool School of Allergy Therapeutics Ltd European Bioinformatics Tropical Medicine Institute Lima, George Lorraine, O'Gorman Lyford, Joanna Malcolm, Patricia The University of York Institute of Arable Crop Science Press Internet Royal Holloway, Research Services University of London Lin, Yung-Yao University of Cambridge Lorusso, Lorenzo Lyons, Gary Malcomson, Roger University of Liverpool Dept of Agriculture & Edinburgh University Linse, Katrin Rural Development N. Medical School British Antarctic Survey Louis, Edward Ireland University of Leicester Malden, Catharine Lipinski, Kai Maas, Barbara Royal Marsden NHS Trust Cobra Therapeutics LTD Loureiro, Rui WSPA The University of Reading Maldonado, Joanna Littler, Moira Maathuis, Frans Wellcome/CRC Institute LOVELAND, Jane University of York Livermore, Roy BBSRC Bioscience IT Malhotra, Anita Services MacAskill, Donald University of Wales Lizcano, Diego Addenbrooke's Hospital Bangor University of Kent Low, Ann Robert Gordon University MacDonald, Don Mancini, Laura Loach, Daniel University of Cambridge The Institute of Cancer University of Wales, Lowe, Fergus Research & Royal Bangor University of Wales Macdonald, Derek Marsden Hospital Biochemistry Dept. Loer, Karsten Lowry, Ken Raigmore Hospital mann, david The University of York Royal Hospitals Imperial College MacGill, Markus Logan, Darren Lucas, Michael 'Doctor' news weekly Mann, Leena MRC Human Genetics University of Glasgow Leicester Royal Infirmary Unit MacInnes, Donald Lucas, Helen Manchester University Mant, Christine Loke, P'ng Lavender Hill Group King's College ICAPB Practice MacKenzie, Jane University of Glasgow Marangos, Petros Lomas-Cecil, Bryn Marc Lucato, Silvia Helena UCL University of Manchester Bulizani MacLeod, Annette Southampton University of Glasgow Marantes, Cristiano Long, Sam Oceanography Centre UMIST University of Glasgow Madhavan, K S Faculty of Veterinary Lue, Leo St LUKES CANCER Maravita, Angelo Science UMIST CENTRE University College London Longshaw, Christopher Luheshi, Leila Magdalenic, Vjera University of Leeds University of Cambridge University of Edinburgh Marchant, Stephen Wells Healthcare Loo, Jia Mayne Luis E, Cuevas Magee, Tony Communications University of Nottingham Liverpool School of Imperial College School Tropical Medicine of Medicine Marcora, Samuele Lopes de Mendonca, University of Wales Filipa Lukashkin, Andrei Mahdavi, Jessica Imperial College University of Sussex Goldsmith's College, Marginson, Victoria University of London Univeristy of Walse Lopez-Correa, Catalina Lunn, Brian Bnagor Genomica University of Newcastle Mahendrasingam, upon Tyne Arumugam Maria Emanuela, Cuomo Lopez-Schier, Hernan Keele University ICR University of Cambridge Lunt, Paul UMIST Maiden, Martin Mari-Beffa, Paloma Lord, Robert University of Oxford University of Wales Rotherham Hospital Lusoli, Wainer Bangor London School of Majerus, Tamsin Lord, Phillip Economics Cambridge University Marini, Joseph C. 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Martin University of Glasgow Pardo, Mauricio Lancaster University Pinter, P.H. The Univ. of Reading Price, Howard Peiris, Dharshana Piqueras Bravo, Virginia Parida, Shreemanta King's College London Proud, Christopher University of Oxford Pelizon, Cristina University of Dundee Hutchison/MRC Pirmohamed, Munir Parker, Garry The University of Proud, Janice University of Manchester Pelizon, Cristina Liverpool IACR-Rothamsted University of Cambridge Parker, Joseph Placzek, Marysia Proudfoot, Alan Medical Research Council Pereira, Vini University of Sheffield Kingston University Laboratory of Molecular COGS, Univ of Sussex Biology Plotkin, Henry University College London Pugh, David Raynaud, Florence Richardson, Jim Rockstuhl, Thomas Framingham Earl High The Institute of Cancer University of Glamorgan University of Surrey School Research Ride, Jonathan Rodas-Perez, Maria Punchard, Neville Rayner, Tim University of Birmingham Clemencia University of Luton Cambridge University University of Warwick Ridgway, Karyn Purdy, Gordon Raza, Syed university of york Romani, Susana ST MARY'S HOSPITAL Kings College Pybus, Ruth LONDON Risley, Paul Edinburgh University st georges hospital Romina P, Barbagallo Reaves, Barbara medical school University of Essex Pye, David University of Bath University of Rivens, Ian Roos, Marthinus Hertfordshire Reay, David Institute of Cancer Dr Gray's Hospital University of Edinburgh Research Quadrini, Fabio Rose, Nicola Oxford Redman, Christopher Rizzo, Sian University of Dundee SCIEH St.George's Hosp Med Quinn, John School Rose, Elaine University of Liverpool Rees, Jonathan University of Wales, University of Oxford Rizzo, Sian Bangor Rabouille, Catherine Institute of Cancer University of Edinburgh Rees, Dai Research Rouchier, Juliette University of Central Manchester Metropolitan Radajewski, Stefan England Roaden, Louise University University of Warwick UMIST Reese, Gillian Rousset, Jean-Marc Raff, Jordan EuroLyme Roberts, Ian Univ of Edinburgh Cambridge University University of Reading Reid, Lee Routledge, Daniel Rahulan, L University of Sussex Roberts, Michael University of Edinburgh University of Reading University of York Rellos, Peter Rowlands, Ann Rajesh, Krishnan NIMR Roberts. Kathrine Ashley University of Wales, Hope Hospital, ,Salford Bangor Rene, Assenberg Robertson, David Rajkowitsch, Lukas University of Cambridge University of Oxford Rowsell, Chris UMIST Rennie, Mike Robertson, Douglas Rubio-Godoy, Miguel Ram, Felix University of Dundee Andrew University of Bristol St George's Hospital Sandwell Healthcare Medical School Rennie, Mike Rudge, Helen University of Dundee Robinson, Alan UCL Ramnarayan, European Biological Padmanabhan Ribeiro, Maria Institute Rudiger, Stefan University of Sussex Medical Research Council Rash, Rad Robinson, Iain Rice, Suman University of Cambridge Ruffle, Stuart Rashbass, Pen IRDB Univeristy of Exeter University of Sheffield Rocchi, Mara Silvia Laura Richardson, Tobias Moredun Research Rugg, Elizabeth Rashid, Muhammad Institute of Cancer Institute Queen Mary, University of St Mary's Hospital, Research London Newport Rocha, Joao Richardson, Nathan BBSRC, Babraham Rulten, Stuart Rasmussen, Hasse Institute of Cancer Institute University of Sussex IACR Rothamsted Research Rocha Caceres, Roman Russell, Steve Rayfield, Caroline Richardson, Lee Rotherham Geheral University of Cambridge University of Sussex University of Ulster Hospital Russell, Adam University of Sussex Russell, Sarah Sandle, Tim Schnier, Thorsten Sewell, Martin University of Manchester Bio Products Laboratory University of Birmingham University College London Russell, Craig Sanguineti, Mirco Schofield, Claire leeds teaching hospitals University of Sussex London School of Hygiene Shah, Mahmood and Tropical Medicine Rusterucci, Christine Sankar, Nathan Shamsi, Farrukh Sainsbury Laboratory Newcastle General Schweizer, Michael Cardiff University Hospital Heriot-Watt University Saccheri, Ilik Shanahan, Hugh University of Liverpool Sansone, Assunta Susanna Scordis, Phil University College EMBL Outstation-The Manchester University London Sadani, Deepak European Bioinformatics Scottish National Blood Institute Scordis, Phil Sharp, Matthew Transfusion Centre Celltech R&D ltd. University of Edinburgh Santamaria, David Saeed, Ramazan Wellcome/CRC Institute Scott, Mike Shaw, Robert Islamic Home School University of Liverpool European Research Office Sanyal, Abir Saez, Fabienne Jersey Hospital U.K. Scott, Varihi Sheer, Denise University College PLAN International Imperial Cancer Research London Sardi, Hara Fund Cardiff University Scotting, Paul Saha, Vaskar University of Nottingham Shepherd, David Imperial Cancer Research Sartori, Anna University of Southampton Fund Imperial College Seabra, Miguel Imperial College School Sheraton, John Sala Oliveras, Carles Sauret, Veronique of Medicine University of Newcastle University College Shetty, Prakash London Hospital Seago, Amanda London School of Hygiene Salcedo, Suzana Glaxo SmithKline & tropical Medicine Imperial College Sauter, Paul International Consortium Searson, Dominic Shirsat, Anil Saldanha, Gerald of Operating Room University of Newcastle University of Wales University of Leicester Professionals upon Tyne Shmueli, Karin Salisbury, Andrew Savary, Franck Sekkali, Belaid UCL RHS Royal Veterinary College N.I.M.R. of London Siclon, Franck Sallares, Robert Sekkides, Onisillos University of Exeter UMIST Savitri, Prihatiningsih University of Dundee Sellers, William Sidorov, Alexander Sama, Anshul University of Edinburgh University of Sheffield Queens Medical Centre Saweirs, Walaa University of Edinburgh Sells, Paula Sigala, Barbara Sameer, Zar School of Tropical University College St George's Hospital Scally, Aylwyn Medicine London Medical School TTP Semple, Colin Silkstone, Malcolm Samson, Rebecca Schafer, Stefanie M. 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Simpson, Elizabeth Smith, judith Soundararajan, Meera Stette, Jan Clinical Sciences Centre, Medical Research Council MRC-LMB Orchestream ICSM Smith, Paul Miller Sourmail, Thomas Stevenson, Ken Simpson, David University of Newcastle Cambridge Univerity Withington Hospital Queens University Belfast Smith, Victoria Spachis, Elisabeth Stewart, Monica Simpson, Deborah Institute of Cancer imperial college Glasgow University University of York Research Veterinary School Sparks, Caroline Simpson, Peter Smith, Matthew IACR-Rothamsted Stewart, James Universuty of Glamorgan University College University of Edinburgh Worcester Speck, Jeremy Singer, Ron BirdLife International Steyn, Bennie Medical Practitioners' Smith, Madeleine NHS Union (Trade Union) University of Birmingham Sperrin, Gill Wells Healthcare Stigter, Jill Singh, Shradha Singh Smith, Paul Communications Ltd Institute of Cancer University of Luton Stolte, Heiko research Spevak, Christian University of North Smith, Trevor University of London Skaer, Helen NHLI Imperial College Hertfordshire University of Cambridge Stone, Miranda Smith, Billy Spooncer, Elaine MRC Human Genetics Skapinakis, Petros Newham College of UMIST Unit University of Wales Further Education College of Medicine Springate-Baginski, Oliver Strom, Molly Smith, Vincent University of Leeds Imperial College Slade, Nigel London Bridge Hospital Smith, Derek Spry, Christopher Strom, Alan Cambridge St. George's Hospital Slaght, Sean Medical School Stupka, Elia Cardiff University Smithson, Ann University of Exeter Squires, Sarah Sucena, Elio Sleeman, Karen Univ of Sussex University of Cambridge Department of Paediatrics Smyth, Ian MRC Human Genetics Staden, Rodger Sumathipala, Ranjith Slesser, Malcolm Unit MRC Laboratory of Kent & Canterbury Resource Use Institute Molecular Biology Hospital Snaith, Hilary Slevin, Mark University of Edinburgh Stafford, Lynne Sumner, Mat Manchester Metropolitan Marwell Zoological Park University of Birmingham University Sohi, Saran IACR Stamler, Robin Surguladze, Simon Slowe, Robin Birkbeck College Institute of Psychiatry Rookery Medical Somavarapu, Partnership Satyanarayana Starke, Richard Swan, Dan Aston University QMW Smales, Christopher Staynov, Dontcho University of Kent at Somerville, Liz King's College London Symonds, Catherine Canterbury University of Sussex university of newcastle Stemple, Derek Smart, Jane Sommerhoff, Gerd National Institute for Szczelkun, Mark Plantlife and Planta University College, Medical Research University of Bristol Europa London. Stephen, Wills Szüts, David Smith, Tom Somogyi, Peter University of Kent at University of Cambridge University of Sussex Medical Research Council Canterbury

Tada, Masazumi Tevendale, Maxine Tobin, Desmond Tufail, Uzma University College University of Cambridge University of Bradford University of Edinburgh London Thaha, Mohamed A Tobin, Vannessa Tuff, Katie Tait, John University of Dundee University of Wales, British Standards Bangor Tulloch, Brian Institution Thierry, Guillaume Medical Research Council University of Wales Toby, Walsh Taiwo, Tokunbo Bangor University of York Turic, Dragana De Montfort University University of Wales Thirumalairajan, Srinath Todd, Rebecca College of Medicine Talbot, Chris University of Southampton University of Leicester Todd-Pokropek, Andrew Turkoglu, Ercument Thom, George University of Leicester Tang, Amy Cambridge Antibody Toh, Geraldine University of Nottingham technology Oxford University Turlais, Fabrice ICR Tanner, Julian Thomas, Joanne Toone, William Imperial College of University of Reading Paterson Institute Turner, Carl Science, Technology and Chirotech Technology Ltd Medicine Thomas, Adrian Tooze, Sharon Oxford University ICRF Turner, Rebecca Tavares, Jose Henry Doubleday Royal Society for the Thomas, Geraint Topp, Simon Research Association Protection of Birds University College GlaxoSmithKline London Turrall, Johnathan Tawfik, Dan S. 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Wigmore, Edward Wilson, Stephen Wooster, Richard Zhao, Min Royal Military College of UCL Sanger Centre University of Aberdeen Science Wilson, Bryan Worth, Simon Zhou, Jing-Jiang Wilkerson, John University of Kent at bangor university Intergrated Arable Crops Victoria Medical Centre Canterbury Research Woudstra, Elies Wilkie, Gavin Wilson, Stuart ICRF Ziessen, Tom MRC Human Genetics Institute of Cancer University College Unit Research Wright, Alan London MRC Human Genetics Wilkins, Elwood Wilson, Theresa Unit Zrenner, Christoph University of Essex Dundee University University of Cambridge Wrightman, Benjamin Wilkinson, Roger Wilson, Craig Zurdo, Jesús Lanarkshire Primary Care Wyatt, Dorothy University of Oxford Wilkinson, Catherine NHS Trust Royal Hospitals Trust

Williams, P. Huw Wing, Corin Xavier, Jose University of Cambridge University of East Anglia University of Cambridge

Williams, David Winney, Bruce Xydias, Nickplaos Sunderland Royal Cancer Research UK UMIST Hospital, Kayll Road Winny, Cerys Yamada, Chihiro Williams, Gareth University Of Nottingham University of Cambridge University of Sussex Winter, Alan Yáñez, Rafael Williams, Roger University of Glasgow Medical Research Council Medical Research Council Winter, Doug Yanow, Stephanie Williams, David Imperial Cancer Research University College Wipat, Anil Fund London Univeristy of Newcastle Yehouda, Harpaz Williams, James Wise, Michael J. Cambridge University Unilever Pembroke College Yeoh, Ann-See Williams, Norman Wiseman, Vicky University of Luton University College Airedale NHS Trust London Yiu, C.-P. Benny Woakes, Anthony Cambridge University Williams, Wynford Robert University of Birmingham Chemical Lab. University of Glamorgan Wolff, Gerry Young, Peter Williams, Pam University of Wales at University of York University of Westminster Bangor Yu, Qicheng Williams, Auriol Wood, Carlton London Guildhall Institute of Medical University of Sussex University Sciences Wood, Grahame Zelent, Arthur Williamson, Jill Salford Royal Hospitals Institute of Cancer Institute Of Cancer NHS Trust Research Research Woodside, Jayne Zhang, Fuquan Williamson, Martin Queen's University Belfast Imperial College IACR-Rothamsted Woolmer, Andy Zhang, Yinghui Willis, Ruth Unversity of Wales Glasgow University Vet Swansea Zhao, Jeff School School of Computing, University of Leeds

Appendix F. Press Articles on Open Access

• “A Fight for Free Access to Medical Research”, Rick Weiss, The Washington Post, Tuesday, August 5, 2003. • “Open Access to Scientific Research”, Editorial in the New York Times, August 7, 2003. • “Scientists Take on the Publishers in an Experiment to Make Research Free to All – New Academics’ Journal Launched in Challenge to Multinationals”, David Adam, The Guardian, October 6, 2003. • “Publishing progress,” The Guardian, October 13, 2003.

A Fight for Free Access To Medical Research Online Plan Challenges Publishers' Dominance

By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 5, 2003; Page A01

The family was poor, living on the Great Plains, and the child had a rare medical condition.

"Here's what we can do," the family doctor told them. But it didn't work, recalled Michael Keller, who oversees the libraries at Stanford University. "So the family went to the Internet."

Soon they were back at the doctor's office with a report of a new therapy. "They plunked it down and said, 'Hey, can we try this?' And guess what? It worked."

Such tales are becoming increasingly common, but the happy endings come at a cost -- literally. That is because the vast majority of the 50,000 to 60,000 research articles published each year as a result of federally funded science ends up in the hands of for-profit publishers -- the largest of them based overseas -- that charge as much as $50 to view the results of a single study online. The child's parents, Keller said, paid for several papers before finding the one that led them to the cure.

Why is it, a growing number of people are asking, that anyone can download medical nonsense from the Web for free, but citizens must pay to see the results of carefully conducted biomedical research that was financed by their taxes?

The Public Library of Science aims to change that. The organization, founded by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and two colleagues, is plotting the overthrow of the system by which scientific results are made known to the world -- a $9 billion publishing juggernaut with subscription charges that range into thousands of dollars per year.

In its place the organization is constructing a system that would put scientific findings on the Web -- for free.

Scientists and budget-squeezed librarians have long railed against publishers' stranglehold on scientific literature, to little avail. But with surprising political acumen, the Public Library of Science -- or PLoS -- has begun to make "open access" scientific publication an issue for everyday citizens, emphasizing that taxpayers fund the lion's share of biomedical research and deserve access to the results.

"It is wrong when a breast cancer patient cannot access federally funded research data paid for by her hard-earned taxes," Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-Minn.) said recently as he introduced legislation that would give PLoS a boost by loosening copyright restrictions on publicly funded research. "It is wrong when the family whose child has a rare disease must pay again for research data their tax dollars already paid for."

It remains to be seen whether the newly bubbling discontent among citizens and politicians will boil over into a full-blown coup, fulfilling scientists' longstanding goal of democratizing the scientific publication enterprise. But whether it succeeds or fails, historians of science say, the effort is a remarkable social experiment in itself. After all, publication is at the heart of the scientific system of rank, respect and power. So the movement to dissect and rewrite the rules of that system is, in effect, a rare opportunity to watch scientists experiment on themselves.

Research as Moneymaker

Historians peg the birth of scientific publication to 1665, when England's Royal Society began publishing its Philosophical Transactions -- the same journal that would later announce key discoveries by Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other icons of science.

Today the universe of scientific journals includes about 28,000 titles, but they fulfill the same four basic needs: communicating findings; controlling quality by "peer review," in which scientists check one another's work; creating a historical record; and documenting authorship for personal credit and professional recognition.

In recent decades, however, journals have found that scientific communication can be not only a service but also a potent moneymaker. Central to their success is that each journal publishes original research that appears nowhere else, so each is necessary for scientists in a given field.

"Scientific journals are monopolies in that there's the Journal of Artificial Intelligence, for example, and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and as long as they're both good there's no way a library can just say, 'We'll take the one that's most cost-effective.' They have to have both," said John McCarthy, a Stanford University professor emeritus of computer science and an authority on scientific publication. "And when there's a monopoly there's always the opportunity for extra profit."

Indeed, said Stanford's Keller, "over the course of the years several of these companies have become giants. And some of their price increases have been horrendous, sometimes 25 to 35 percent per year. It's been unbelievable."

Many commercial publishers -- the biggest include Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer, both of Amsterdam; Blackwell Publishers of England, and BertelsmannSpringer of Germany -- charge between $1,000 and $5,000 for a one-year subscription to their journals. One prestigious collection of journals called Brain Research costs subscribers about $20,000 a year.

Publishers defend their prices largely by pointing to the extra services they provide. Not only must they pay for publication and mailing, they say, but they also hire peer reviewers, editors and contributors to write commentaries and review articles. Some, including the premier journals Nature and Science, also have writers who produce news articles and scientific perspectives.

"We believe we add value to the research," said Jayne Marks, publishing director for Nature Publishing Group in London, a closely held company that publishes about 50 journals, including Nature.

Nature does not reveal financial details, but figures released by the largest publisher of scientific journals -- Amsterdam-based Elsevier -- help explain why many scientists and others are frustrated. Its 1,700 journals, which produce $1.6 billion in revenue, garner a remarkable 30 percent profit margin.

"I do realize that the 30 percent sticks out," Elsevier Vice President Pieter Bolman said. "But what we still do feel -- and this is, I think, where the real measure is -- we're still very much in the top of author satisfaction and reader satisfaction."

In October, critics say, the real test of that will begin, as PLoS begins the first of a series of journals dedicated to the free sharing of results. The aim is to get the world's best scientists to submit their best work to PLoS -- and force change by starving profit-oriented publishers of their earnings and prestige.

"Our goal," said PLoS's executive director Vivian Siegel, "is to transform the landscape completely."

Shift to Open Access

The PLoS plan is simple in concept: Instead of having readers pay for scientific results through subscriptions or other charges, costs would be borne by the scientists who are having their work published -- or, practically speaking, by the government agencies or other groups that funded the scientists -- through upfront charges of about $1,500 an article.

The shift is not as radical as it sounds, the library's founders argue. That is because government agencies and other science funders are already paying for a huge share of the world's journal subscriptions through "indirect cost" grants to university libraries, which are the biggest subscribers. The new system would radically increase the number of people who would have access to published findings, though, because results would be freely available on the Internet. By contrast, people today who do not subscribe to these journals must pay charges, typically $15 to $50, to get a reprint of -- or online access to -- a single article.

Those charges can add up quickly.

"When my father was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, for example, I must have glanced through 50-100 articles almost immediately" while searching for treatment information, Siegel wrote via e-mail. Physicians, professors, graduate students and others, including science journalists, face the same problem daily.

Some journals have already made the leap to open-access publishing. But for the most part they have not attracted the best science -- a key to success. Now, with a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the PLoS hopes to lift open-access publishing into the scientific stratosphere, in part through the personal gravitas of its founders and friends.

In terms of scientific stardom, the critical mass is there. PLoS was founded by three highly respected scientists: Harold Varmus, who won a Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work with cancer viruses, headed the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999 and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York; Patrick O. Brown, a renowned genomics expert at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Michael Eisen, a computational and evolutionary biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley.

Having hired a team of hotshot editors and reviewers -- in some instances wooing them away from prestigious journals -- the group will begin its first monthly open-access journal, PLoS Biology, in October. It plans to launch PLoS Medicine in 2004. Others may follow, but the group hopes that the need to keep creating journals will drop off as existing journals see how successful the model is and shift to the open-access system themselves.

For scientists, the benefits would extend well beyond being able to read scientific papers for free. Unlike their ink-on-paper counterparts, scientific papers that are maintained in open electronic databases can have their data tables downloaded, massaged and interlinked with databases from other papers, allowing scientists to compare and build more easily on one another's findings.

"In epidemiology and public health it would be an enormous leap forward," said Christopher Murray, a World Health Organization epidemiologist and health economist. "You can't imagine how much time researchers spend trying to get access even to old data sets to do new things or make new connections."

But pressure from consumers, whose taxes provide about $45 billion in federal research funding each year and who are increasingly asked to take on a larger role in their own care, may be the force that finally tips the balance.

"They've paid for the research," Eisen said. "And the fact that the primary results are not available to them is really crazy and grossly unfair and completely unnecessary."

Publishers Raise Red Flags

The bigger for-profit publishers say advocates of open access exaggerate the benefits.

"This is, in general, very esoteric material . . . not written for the public," said Elsevier's Bolman, adding that he doubts the business model will work. "Everybody is getting onto the open-access bandwagon. It reminds me of the enthusiasm and mania of the dot-com explosion, and it will pop, too."

But what Bolman and other publishers object to most of all are budding congressional efforts to force publishers to adopt open-access principles. The latest House appropriations report instructs the National Library of Medicine to look into ways to make federally funded research more available to the public. And Sabo's bill would require research "substantially funded" by the federal government to be in the public domain.

That is especially worrisome to the smaller, not-for-profit publishers -- most of them affiliated with scientific societies -- that say they are sympathetic to open-access principles but fear that the system will not work for them, with their tighter margins.

"Saying you're for free access is like motherhood and apple pie," said Ira Mellman, chairman of Yale's Department of Cell Biology and editor in chief of the highly cited but inexpensive and nonprofit Journal of Cell Biology. "But you have to recognize that this is an experiment in publishing, and the legislation seems to be trying to enforce one model before the conclusion of the experiment."

Several journal editors noted that they have moved in recent years to widen access. Many have agreed to make their papers available for free to scientists in developing countries, for example, and some release results freely to anyone six to 12 months after publication. But critics say that is not enough, arguing that even a six-month delay deprives scientists and others of the latest and best information.

Ironically, several observers said, the fate of open-access science publication may ultimately depend on something highly unscientific: the enigmatic quality of prestige. With scientists' professional standing still intimately linked to their latest paper in journals such as Science and Nature, will the best of them step up to the plate and start sending their hottest papers to open- access journals such as PLoS?

"With scientific journals, competition is not so much on the reader end but on the author's end," Bolman said. "When you get the best authors, then other authors tend to follow, and then you have an exciting journal, which really is your objective."

PLoS Biology started accepting its first submissions for its premiere issue last month, and Varmus said he is pleased with the quality of the work the journal is attracting.

One thing is certain: Among the countless scientists and others who will read PLoS Biology for free in October will be Bolman and other publishing executives, who will be looking for the first hints of an exodus.

Editorial in New York Times, August 7, 2003 Open Access to Scientific Research A number of influential scientists have begun to argue that the cost of research publications has grown so large that it impedes the distribution of knowledge. Some subscriptions cost thousands of dollars per year, and those journals are usually available online only to subscribers. This looks less like dissemination than restriction, especially if it is measured against the potential access offered by the Internet. That is why a coalition led by Dr. Harold Varmus, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, is creating a new model, called the Public Library of Science. Several years ago Dr. Varmus’s group issued an open letter, signed by some 30,000 colleagues, calling on the publishers of scientific journals to make their archived research articles freely available online. Most journals declined, so they would not undercut the profitable business of selling expensive subscriptions to libraries. But there is a basic inequity when much of the research has been financed by public money. The Public Library of Science plans to confront that inequity by establishing a new series of peer-reviewed journals that will be freely available on the Internet. The first ones, published this October, will be PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine. The aim is to create a freer flow of data about research and results. The journals will pay for themselves by charging a small fee to the organizations and institutions that support the research. Most of us, admittedly, will not have much use for free access to new discoveries in, say, particle physics. But it is a different matter when it comes to medical research. Popular nostrums abound on the Web, but it can be very hard, if not impossible, to find the results of properly vetted, taxpayer-financed science — and in some cases it can be hard for your doctor to find them, too. The Public Library of Science could help change all that, creating open access to research. The publishers of scientific journals are naturally skeptical, but the real test will come in the marketplace of ideas. What will matter this fall, when the new journals make their debut, is how many scientists choose to publish in them rather than in the journals traditionally deemed the most prestigious in their disciplines.

Scientists take on the publishers in an experiment to make research free to all New academics' journal launched in challenge to multinationals

David Adam, science correspondent Monday October 6, 2003 The Guardian

In the highly lucrative world of cutting-edge scientific research, it is nothing short of a revolution. A group of leading scientists are to mount an unprecedented challenge to the publishers that lock away the valuable findings of research in expensive, subscription-only electronic databases by launching their own journal to give away results for free.

The control of information on everything from new cancer treatments to space exploration is at stake, while caught in the crossfire are the world's publicly funded scientists, some of whom will soon face a choice between their career and their conscience.

On one side of the conflict stand the major multinational publishing houses like Elsevier Science that package scientific findings into hundreds of specialist journals and sell them for thousands of pounds a year. On the other is a new publishing group called the Public Library of Science (PLoS) that will distribute its journals free of charge and is backed by top scientists, including the British Nobel prize winners Paul Nurse and Sir John Sulston. "The publishers are making a lot of money out of our research and it's not fair that lots of good, basic science isn't available to everyone," said Julie Ahringer, a biologist at Cambridge University. "Knowledge should be free." Dr Ahringer is on the editorial board of PLoS Biology, the group's first journal that is due to be launched on October 13. With articles about the genetic origins of elephants and molecular signalling in the fruit fly, it is unlikely to displace Cosmopolitan and FHM from the newsstands. But those behind the new venture have their sights on an equally ambitious target: convincing existing publishers to change their ways and join them in making more information freely available.

"Our goal is to have this publishing model extend well beyond us. We don't want to have 1% or 5% of the literature being open access, we want all the literature to be open access," said Vivian Siegel, executive editor of the PLoS.

The new biology journal will be available on the internet, but 25,000 print copies of the first monthly edition will also be produced. A second journal for medical research is planned for next year and more could follow. While PLoS Biology is not the first open access scientific journal, it is the most high-profile and best supported so far, and, crucially, it is financed by a grant of several million dollars from an American charitable foundation. It is probably also the first science journal to advertise on US peak-time television.

Hallmark "The goal of this journal is to become the first destination for research in the life sciences and to compete head-on with the existing high-profile journals," Dr Siegel said. "It's about doing something you believe in rather than doing things the way everybody else does them and I think that's the hallmark of the best scientists." While other publishers publicly say they are not threatened by the move, they are watching the situation with mounting concern. At least one already has its own open-access version primed and ready to launch if necessary.

"We're all scientists and we like experiments, well here's an experiment. And if it works then we'll all take the lessons from it," said Dr Alan Leshner, executive publisher of the American journal Science.

In a statement, Elsevier Science said: "Elsevier welcomes further experimentation and are open to competition, but do not believe that the existing subscription-based business model should be abandoned prior to proving that another model works."

Some competitors have predicted that the new journal group will be unable to keep its head above water once its initial funding runs out. While most journals charge hefty subscription fees, the PLoS intends to pay its way by charging the scientists whose work is published; it hopes that the funding agencies and charities paying for the research in the first place will pick up the $1,500 bill. "Our motivation is to serve the community in the best way possible and to do it by just making ends meet rather than generating huge profits," Dr Siegel said.

The new journals follow a failed attempt by the PLoS group to use more direct action to force scientific publishers to make information freely available. More than 30,000 scientists signed its pledge to boycott journals that refused to fully release scientific results, but backed down when the publishers called their bluff.

This is partly because such journals offer scientists more than just information. Researchers need to publish their findings to secure funding and job offers, and an appearance in the highly regarded pages of Science or the London-based Nature effectively places a large gold star on a young scientist's CV.

Some scientists say this academic pecking order could yet scupper the PLoS journals. "I would probably at the moment continue sending my best work to the established journals," said Dr William Harrison, a chemistry researcher at Aberdeen University who signed the original PLoS petition. "However good or well-intentioned this new kind of initiative is, it will certainly take time for it to become known and established and even respectable." One group of people willing it to succeed are university librarians, who have seen both the number and price of journals escalate rapidly in recent years.

Jan Wilkinson, head librarian at the University of Leeds, said an average journal subscription costs about £1,000, with some, such as Elsevier's Brain Research, costing as much as £15,000 a year. "Big research libraries have tried to act collectively to put pressure on publishers, but our academics need the journals for their research and the pressure from them is so great that our ability to withhold payment isn't very powerful," she said.

Most research libraries are phasing out print subscriptions in exchange for access to large electronic packages that give access to hundreds of titles, but the price of these packages is rising by as much as 150% a year.

"We need to get academics to recognise the craziness of what they've been doing," she said. "They do all this work and then they just hand it over for free, and then the publishers sell it back to us at these rip-off prices."

Annual print subscription prices for UK libraries (2004 price where available)

Nature Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

Price: £545 Prestigious, long-running multidisciplinary journal and a must-have for libraries

Science Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science Price $510 (£325) Major US player and perhaps the most widely read science journal in the world

Journal of the American Chemical Society Publisher: American Chemical Society Price: $3,244 (£1,940) One of the heavyweight specialist journals, a big favourite among chemistry researchers

Physical Review Letters Publisher: American Physical Society, $3,255 (£1,945) Essential for physicists, many of whom prefer it to Science and Nature

Brain Research Publisher: Elsevier Science Price: €19,013 (£13,300) A comprehensive look at events in neuroscience

Publishing progress Leader Monday October 13, 2003 The Guardian

Ensuring that knowledge spreads through society is one of the key challenges of the modern age. Stimulating understanding is important for economic progress and technical advancement. To make this possible should be easy: a characteristic of knowledge is that one person's use does not lessen another's. Even better if it is inexpensive to make new ideas available to someone else. For example, reading about a new scientific development and lending someone an article about it involves not much more than the cost of the text. Until now the editing, printing and distribution costs have meant that the price of academic journals were controlled by publishing houses. But the internet offers a chance to change all that, and today sees the most high-profile attempt to do so. Being launched is the first journal of a publishing house, the Public Library of Science, which aims to give away research for free.

Backed by Nobel prize winners and a respected US charity, "open access" aims to overturn three centuries of publishing tradition. This alternative has arrived just in time - as even well- financed university libraries are finding it difficult to stock the full range of scientific journals, thanks to annual subscriptions which now carry a price tag of as much as £15,000. But for the new publishing model to work, two things have to change: one is to do with mindset; the other with money. First, scientists must start using the online journals rather than established outlets for important new bits of research. Second, the way of funding the process of peer review, which ensures scientists can trust what they read, must be redesigned. One course of action, advocated by the Public Library of Science, is for the peer review to be financed by scientists' institutions. This makes sense as they would be only using money that would otherwise have paid for subscriptions. The promise of such new models cannot be underestimated.

Transferring new scientific advances to poor countries is key to boosting their economic prospects and enhancing their ability to cut poverty. Commercial publishing houses should not control access to information just to maximise revenues - especially when much of the research has been publicly funded. But international regulations are moving in the wrong direction. A government commission last year raised concerns that new laws in the EU and the US would limit access to electronic databases. The rules which govern copyright ought not be written to deliver for private interests, but for the widest possible public good.