Health Knowledge Commons”: Open Access, Human Rights, and What the Commons Means for Researchers and Editors

Annual Meeting Reports

Building the “Health Knowledge Commons”: Open Access, Human Rights, and What the Commons Means for Researchers and Editors

Moderator: who can afford it. That paradigm helps and independent, the journal has published Gavin Yamey to fuel the $5 billion scientific and medi- 42 articles and has an acceptance rate of PLoS Medicine, PLoS Neglected cal publishing industry and can be consid- about 20%. Tropical Diseases ered a public-health crisis because restrict- Anita Palepu presented recent OA poli- San Francisco, California ing access to biomedical knowledge can cies. In December 2007, the United States have life-or-death consequences. Arguing passed a bill requiring researchers funded by Speakers: that scientific knowledge is a human right, the National Institutes of Health to submit Anita Palepu Yamey cited multiple international initia- all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts Open Medicine tives, including Article 27, Section 1, of to PubMed Central on the day of publication Vancouver, British Columbia the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human and to make them freely available within 12 Rights: “Everyone has the right freely to months. The European Research Council Claire Kendall . . . share in scientific advancement and its (ERC) requires all peer-reviewed publica- Open Medicine benefits.” Medical research findings should tions arising from ERC-funded research to Ottawa, Ontario be considered a “global public good,” says be placed in a repository (such as PubMed Yamey, especially because most research is Central) on publication and made OA with- Jocalyn Clark funded by the public. in 6 months. Palepu also described the new PLoS Medicine With the advent of the Internet, the OA mandate at Harvard University—the Toronto, Ontario proposed solution is to make all research first of its kind at the US university level. results freely available online, as practiced Approved in February 2008, the policy gives Reporter: by Public Library of Science (PLoS) and Open the university license to exercise copyright Oliver Yun Medicine. Jocalyn Clark presented an over- and to make each faculty member’s scholarly Doctors Without Borders/Médecins view of PLoS Medicine, launched in 2004 articles freely available. Harvard plans to cre- Sans Frontières as an OA alternative to top-tier medical ate its own OA repository for papers. On the New York, New York journals. One of a suite of PLoS journals, basis of those recent OA mandates, Palepu PLoS Medicine considers medical research concluded by saying that publishers and The “public” part of “publication” often an “international public resource”. It has authors will face increasing accountability gets lost in the world of academic jour- an impact factor of 13.8 and an accep- with research funders “who want taxpayer- nal publishing. Many readers cannot access tance rate of 5% to 10%. Clark noted that funded research to be available”. scientific and biomedical articles because research articles published in PLoS Medicine of exorbitant journal-subscription charges have had favorable effects on international References (typically hundreds of dollars a year) and fees public health, including the first global map 1. Guerra CA, Gikandi PW, Tatem AJ, Noor AM, 1 to access full text (typically $30 for a single of malaria transmission and the first clini- Smith DL, Hay SI, Snow RW. The limits and intensity article). Traditional copyrights prevent read- cal trial showing that male circumcision of Plasmodium falciparum transmission: implications for 2 ers from freely reusing the literature; dis- reduces HIV risk in sub-Saharan Africa. malaria control and elimination worldwide. [Internet]. tributing, copying, or translating articles; or Open Medicine, launched in April 2007 [cited 2008 August 21]; PLoS Med. 2008;5:e38 producing derivative works. But the model in Canada, is a new OA medical journal. Available from: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/ of open-access (OA) publishing, making Claire Kendall explained how the journal perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/jour- journal articles freely and immediately avail- was “born . . . out of chaos” after an exodus of nal.pmed.0050038. able to the public under a progressive license editors from the Canadian Medical Association 2. Auvert B, Taljaard D, Lagarde E, Sobngwi-Tambekou that encourages reuse, plays an increasingly Journal (CMAJ) due to editorial interference J, Sitta R, Puran A. Randomized, controlled inter- important, and arguably essential, role in the and censorship by its publishers. The edi- vention trial of male circumcision for reduction of dissemination of biomedical knowledge. tors wanted to establish another Canadian HIV infection risk: the ANRS 1265 trial. [Internet]. Gavin Yamey led the session, opening and international voice on medical issues [cited 2008 August 21]; PLoS Med. 2005;2:e298. with the main problem under discussion: a and created Open Medicine on the basis of Available from: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/ vast amount of biomedical research is pri- the principles of “freedom, transparency, perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/jour- vately owned and available only to those creativity, and community”. Peer reviewed nal.pmed.0020298.

Science Editor • September – October 2008 • Vol 31 • No 5 • 157