Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, June 27, 1999

This is a reply to the objections voiced by The American Association of Immunologists to the E-biomed proposal.

http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/com0627.htm#aaoi185

Similar objections have been raised by others in the E-biomed discussion; the following replies apply to those too, mutatis mutandis.

> The American Association of Immunologists, June 23, 1999
> Jonathan Sprent, M.D., Ph.D. President
> Frank W. Fitch, M.D., Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Immunology
> M. Michele Hogan, Ph.D. Executive Director
>
> Peer-Review: First and foremost, we find that this proposal compromises
> the cornerstone of scientific method: peer-review. The process
> described in your proposal is vague, but if taken at face value it does
> not ensure a rigorous peer-review process. Without this we compromise
> our excellence, (at best) and (at worst), pose potential harm to the
> scientific community as well as the public at large. Furthermore,
> scientists depend on the current peer-review process to give their work
> legitimacy and guidance; they do not want to be held to lesser
> standards.

It is correct that the E-biomed draft proposal is vague and somewhat ambiguous on some points, but this is all easily remediable. Indeed, a simple remedy was already proposed in the first set of comments on the draft:

http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm#harn45

The remedy is to make it clear that the Archive is intended for the SELF-ARCHIVING of the refereed biomedical journal literature by its authors, in the first instance. It is not meant to be a journal; it is certainly not meant to provide peer review; nor is it meant to bypass peer review. If all authors self-archive their peer-reviewed articles, it is evident that peer review is in no way being compromised or sacrificed.

Once the archive has established its raison d'etre in this way, a formal relationship with journals will also be possible, in the form of official journal overlays "authenticating" the authors' self-archived drafts, as has evolved in the case of the Los Alamos Physics Archive and the American Physical Society, publisher of the most prestigious and highest-impact journals in Physics.

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Author.Eprint.Archives/0006.html

Initially, however, there is no need for this official overlay, nor can such official relationships be established before the Archive itself is established, with a body of contents that the user community puts to heavy daily use, as it does in the case of the Los Alamos Physics Archive, the model for E-biomed:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_weekly_graph
http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_monthly_submissions"

In addition to self-archived peer-reviewed eprints, E-biomed will, like Los Alamos, contain self-archived non-peer-reviewed preprints as well. Because such unrefereed papers in biomedicine (unlike physics) could conceivably pose public-health risks, E-biomed has proposed a novel peer "filter" to screen them. This filtering is not a substitute for peer review, it is a supplement to it, in the NON-peer-reviewed domain of self-archived preprints.

This ambiguity too, is easily resolved.

> Please do not dismiss out-of-hand a process that has taken 300 years of
> trial and error to evolve...

These admonitions seem entirely unnecessary as the E-biomed proposal takes pains to make it quite explicit that it is not dismissing peer review!

Moreover, it is a false opposition to imply that the central goal of E-biomed, which is a free, self-archived version of BOTH the peer-reviewed and pre-peer-reviewed literature (clearly and unambiguously tagged as one or the other) can only come at the cost of compromising peer review in some way. It is quite clear that one can have both a peer reviewed literature AND a self-archived, free version of it: One need not sacrifice one for the other.

> Creation of a Monopoly: We are concerned that the proposal would create
> a monopoly. The publishing world successfully operates on free-market
> principles and there is no evidence that monopolies guarantee a better
> product at a lower cost in any market. There may be cause for the
> government to supply a product or a service if there is evidence that
> free markets are unable to do so. But this is not the case in
> scientific publishing. The federal government has the prerogative of
> perpetuating established monopolies, e.g., national defence, but they
> have seldom replaced a successful free-market effort. A single review
> and publication source offers no options to investigators. Has the NIH
> considered the risks of creating a monopoly to replace a diverse and
> successful enterprise?

No monopoly whatsoever has been proposed. The Archive is not intended to be a Mega-Journal or set of Mega-Journals, replacing the established journals. It is intended to be a reliable, permanent, free repository in which the authors of the articles in the established journals can make their research available online for everyone for free.

Now there is no doubt whatsoever that this service will force the established journals to restructure themselves in certain ways. (My own prediction would be that it will make journals scale down to providing only the service of peer review and authentication, and that this service will be paid for on the author-institution end instead of the reader-institution end, but THAT is for the market to decide. E-biomed merely provides authors with an infinitely more powerful and useful way of distributing their peer-reviewed findings to everyone for free.)

> Conflict of Interest: In step with creating a monopoly is what we find
> to be a conflict of interest in NIH becoming a sole, centralized
> publisher. That is, that the funding agency charged with carrying out
> the assessment of the scientific accomplishment of an investigator now
> also carries out one of the most important signifiers of that merit:
> publishing. Additionally, it seems that rather than stimulating
> experimentation, oversight of both functions by one organization could
> narrow the scope of what is "acceptable" science.

Again a misreading (though, again perhaps resulting from some of the vagueness and ambiguity mentioned already, but easily resolved):

E-biomed is not intended to be a publisher but a free Archive of both the refereed and the unrefereed literature. Journals will continue to be the publishers -- but their role may well shrink to that of providing and then certifying the quality control. The rest of publishing will vanish (for refereed journals).

> Service To the Community: The JI is a major scientific publication
> ranking in the top 10 percent of peer-reviewed publications
> concentrating on immunology. Approximately 9,000 subscribers receive
> 13,000 text pages annually in both print and electronic formats. Almost
> 4,000 new manuscripts are received per year, requiring about 12,000
> reviews. The peer-review process and the quality of data published is
> overseen by a 60 member editorial board and a dedicated in-house staff.
> We continue to acquire the latest in technologies that employ the
> Internet and enable rapid delivery of information to the community in a
> cost effective manner without jeopardizing the peer-review process nor
> diminishing our standards of quality. This is most certainly the goal
> of major scientific publications and we believe we have accomplished
> this it very well.

All of this is irrelevant. JI is not at risk if it indeed intends to provide essential services to the biomedical community. Those essential services consist of implementing the peer-review of the literature, and certifying those final drafts that successfully pass that filter as accepted and published in JI.

But now we face the real heart of the potential conflict between E-biomed and the journals: Are the journals prepared to try to prevent their authors from self-archiving their refereed papers? If so, on what grounds? What service is being provided to the biomedical community by preventing authors from distributing for free what they have given to the journal for free (unlike authors of, say, books or magazines, who provide their texts in exchange for a fee or royalties)?

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Author.Eprint.Archives/0006.html

THIS is the real question to confront, and, I believe, the real motivation behind the attempts to find fault with the E-biomed initiative on "free market" grounds: Let us face directly the question of whether this very special and unusual subdomain of publishing -- one in which the authors themselves want only the eyes and minds of their readers, not royalties or fees for their articles -- has any justification for trying to continue to hold this literature hostage.

We must ask what advantage SCIENCE derives from having its users denied access to its research findings, when the researchers themselves wish to give them away. This is the REAL conflict of interest lurking behind this entire question, and it needs to be brought out.

For a discussion of the "Faustian bargain" at the heart of all of this, see:

Okerson, A. & O'Donnell, J. (Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing. Washington, DC., Association of Research Libraries, June 1995. http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html

> The JI has one of the highest acceptance rates among the larger
> journals and it is still only 40%. This leaves thousands of manuscripts
> not accepted for publication in the JI. We consider the publication, or
> even posting, of these unaccepted manuscripts to be clutter and a
> disservice to busy scientists who rely on expert endorsement to present
> the progress of their field.

This is a separate issue, and can be discussed separately, and examined empirically. It concerns the non-peer-reviewed sector of the Archive. It is likely that clearly tagging that sector as non-peer-reviewed (and the peer-reviewed sector as peer-reviewed, with journal name, etc.) will go a long way toward allaying such concerns, and E-biomed's proposed extra peer-filter superimposed on top of that will go still further. (In principle, all unrefereed papers in E-biomed could be made retrievable only with an accompanying "health warning," if that was really deemed necessary.)

But at this point dwelling on the unrefereed preprint sector is a red herring. Launch E-biomed exclusively for self-archiving the peer-reviewed literature, if we like, and meanwhile work out the details about the preprints. They need delay nothing.

> On another level, scientists depend on the hierarchy of journals to
> help them select the most important studies in the plethora of
> information available to them. It is unclear how a single information
> source would assist this sorting process.

And this hierarchy will remain intact, with a clear tagging hierarchy in E-biomed, including JI.

> Logistics As we stated earlier, the JI alone receives almost 4,000 new
> manuscripts a year for review and 60% of those are reconsidered. Unless
> some other screening event is put in place, this will continue and
> likely increase without barriers such as manuscript submission fees,
> page charges, and rigorous peer-review. How would the NIH handle the
> volume from thousands of scientific journals in a timely and quality
> assured manner? What are the personnel requirements to carry out this
> effort? What sort of editorial oversight would be required? Would this
> oversight be voluntary or would professional level FTE's be required?
> The lack of details in the proposal regarding the logistics make it
> impossible to assess your plan.

This was indeed the heart of the vagueness and ambiguity of the first draft, but the answers should be quite clear now: The established journals will continue performing this function, funded by the current sources of reader-institution-end access-tolls -- Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P) -- until such a time as the free versions in the archive capture the user market as they have in Physics, and S/L/P cancellations begin to make themselves felt. At that time an alternative way to recover the much scaled-down costs of providing only the service of peer-review and certification will be author-institution-end publication-charges, provided by authors' institutions out of only a small portion of their annual S/L/P savings.

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html

So this too is a false opposition.

> Budget for E-Biomed: The proposal states that scholarly publishing is
> costly. The implication is that, somehow, these costs are an
> unnecessary barrier and can be mostly eliminated if only all
> publication took place electronically. As much as we wish it were not
> so, the reality is there are large associated costs in scientific
> publishing regardless of the medium; at best your proposal appears to
> only shift, rather than eliminate, cost.

This is a controversial issue, much discussed, for example, in the American Scientist's ongoing September-Forum:

http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september-forum.html

Suffice it to say that no publisher has yet done a realistic estimate of what it would cost to provide only peer review, dropping all other functions, and all expenses associated with them.

At the very worst, the answer could be: not a penny less -- in which case the reader-institution budget would be entirely shifted to the author-institution budget in exchange for freeing the literature for one and all. But the truth is probably much closer to a saving of 70% or more, in which case the institutions too (and not only all authors and readers, and research itself) will be much better off.

> However, our real concern is there is no substantive budget to support
> your proposal. We request that the NIH carry out due diligence and
> provide a realistic, detailed budget analyzing the start-up costs
> including personnel, infrastructure support, outsourced editorial
> support, hardware, development of software, and redaction as well as a
> projection for continued costs and support for assurance of longevity
> of the project and archiving the acquired information.

The budget need be only for the provision of a reliable, permanent self-archiving facility, like Los Alamos. The cost will prove to be remarkably modest, as the Los Alamos experience already reveals.

This too was a false opposition, making it appear that the free archive can only be had if NIH pays the equivalent of all biomedical journals' full current operating budgets, whereas in reality the cost of providing a permanent, free, global archive is infinitesimal, and will also force a downsizing of journals, whose remaining essential costs will be recoverable out of institutional S/L/P savings.

> Support in Perpetuity: The final effect of this proposal, were it
> successful, would be to destabilize existing publishers. If truly
> successful, this would eliminate journals as we know them today.
> Without the backup of these journals, the NIH would have to carry on
> scholarly publishing in perpetuity and commit to this venture
> regardless of the funding circumstances befalling the NIH. In times of
> limited budget commitments to the NIH, how would the financial support
> of this venture be assured?

Nothing of the sort. Initially, E-biomed will make it possible for authors to self-archive their refereed research findings for one and all for free. Once that free Archive starts to cut into S/L/P revenues, publishers will downsize and eliminate obsolete and inessential services. Quality control will continue to be an essential service, however, and its costs will be recoverable from S/L/P savings by abandoning the reader-institution-end trade model for an author-institution-end publication-charge model that is far more suited to this very anomalous and special form of literature: the refereed research corpus.

Stevan Harnad
Professor of Cognitive Science
Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/

Werner Krebs, Paul Bertone, and Mark Gerstein, Yale University, June 27, 1999

NIH's proposal for the e-biomed system highlights a crucial issue relating to on-line publishing. How will we collectively finance it? Many scenarios distribute the bill over progressively larger groups of readers -- e.g. pay per download, individual subscriptions, institutional subscriptions, society dues, and large-scale government support. Not usually discussed, writers could finance medical journals through page charges. At first glance, this system might appear undesirable in that page charges effectively convert a research paper into an advertisement. However, it is already used in limited form in some scientific print publications. Moreover, in electronic form, it has a number of compelling advantages. It simplifies copyright and ownership issues, readily allowing authors to redistribute their publications freely from their own websites or via on-line indexes. This is important in that a central goal of government-funded basic-science research is the unrestricted dissemination of ideas to the broad public. More practically, page charges would also mean that the presentation, organization, and access of on-line material would not be hindered by complex "login" and payment procedures. In either scenario, whether reader or writer pays, most of the money for medical publication is ultimately coming from government grants, so these just represent ways to shift around the funds.

We have placed further comments on e-biomed and electronic publishing in a preprint at http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/e-print/epub-ed-bioinfo.

Werner Krebs (grad. student, New Haven)
Paul Bertone (grad. student, New Haven)
Mark Gerstein (academic, New Haven)

http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu

Walter B. Panko, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago, June 26, 1999

I have followed the comments about E-BIOMED from the science community and read the addendum of June 21.

I find only one criticism of the proposal to have merit. The wisdom of placing not-yet-reviewed clinical trial data on-line is open to question. However, this criticism can be easily addressed by restricting certain types of clinical studies to publication only after peer-review. This would not violate the spirit of the E-BIOMED proposal while address these legitimate concerns.

The rest of the concerns seem to be the cries of entrenched interests opposed to changes that might disrupt the cozy relationships of professional scientific society management and publishers. If the rapid dissemination of new scientific information is not the first priority of professional societies, what then is their raison d'etre? Except for annual meetings, which are usually break-even propositions, what is there justification for existence? Political lobbying? Can they do anything more effective in advancing science and the professionals who drive it than getting information to the place it is need, at the time it is need, and in the form needed?

The cost of the current method for scientific information dissemination, largely borne by university or research libraries, is not justified by the value added by the current publication method. The large bulk of the value comes from scientists and volunteer reviewers, not publishers. Large increases in the cost of maintaining scientific collections have distorted the priorities of libraries at the very time they need resources and energy to cope with the change to digital forms of information. Thus, the current publication methods not only results in the inefficient use of government-funded information but also threatens the evolution of libraries into viable organizations for the digital age.

The real threat to the electronic publishing comes not from the professional society-publisher axis but from promotion and tenure committees in our universities. On-line publication is doomed to second-class status for the short-to-mid term because of the committees' strong bias towards ink-on-paper publishing. The E-BIOMED proposal, backed by the prestige of NIH, may be the only way to speed the acceptance of on-line sources as valid.

I strongly encourage the NIH to push ahead resolutely and rapidly with the E-BIOMED initiative.

Walt [Walter B. Panko, Ph.D.]
Professor and Director
School of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences
College of Associated Health Professions
University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, IL

Alastair Gordon, President, The Islet Foundation, June 26, 1999

Dear Dr. Varmus,

While I have on many occasions disagreed with the research funding strategies of NIH, your idea of a web-based journal for medical research is brilliant. Such a facility would make a material difference to the rapid dissemination of important new biomedical discoveries and advances. I believe history will write that such a journal was a turning point in research publishing.

The obvious point of comparison is Medline. However your proposal has the advantages of (1) the information is available sooner, (2) the full text is available online, not just the abstracts, and (3) you will be publishing new ideas and observations that have not yet received full peer review. I believe that readers will have the intelligence to understand the difference between the levels of review and consensus associated with each section.

From an operational perspective, such a medium must have an excellent search engine, allowing keyword searches under any and all categories. Medline's search capability would be a good model.

From a perspective of cost effectiveness, a web-based journal will have an enormous impact relative to its modest budget. You will be achieving universal accessibility for minimal cost. Please do not be deterred by the inevitable resistance from print media. There has never been an advance that does not step on the toes of some entrenched interests.

Congratulations on a wonderful idea!

Best regards,
Alastair T. Gordon, President The Islet Foundation
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.islet.org

Floyd W. Dunn, Ph.D., Chiang Mai University, Thailand, June 25, 1999

Dear Dr. Varmus:

Your proposals for free access to scientific information is appreciated. I appreciate your efforts.

My perspective is influenced by more than forty years experience in teaching and research not only in the USA, but also extensive experience in the country of Thailand. One of the serious problems for researchers and teachers, especially in a country such as Thailand, is the lack of access to information. We already struggle with finding a way to obtain full text to needed articles, which may be referenced in such sources as PubMed. The online journals certainly help, but budget considerations limit their availability. "Lonesome doc" helps, but it also involves budget problems, as well as considerable delays. Any suggestions for the folks in Thailand?

Best wishes for continued progress in your plans for information access.

Floyd W. Dunn, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor of Biochemistry
Faculty of Medicine, Biochemistry Department
Chiang Mai University
Chiang Mai, Thailand

Home address: Abilene, Texas
(Professor and Graduate Dean Emeritus, Abilene Christian University)

Bruce Patterson, June 25, 1999

I strongly support the E-Biomed concept. Personally , I have found the current review process to be hugely arbitrary; the roll of the dice that determines what 2 reviewers are drawn out of a hat makes the differences between watching an admittedly ambitious work and interpretation sail through while solid works spend months in debate over trivial issues. Working in an olde and entrenched field (mechanics of myosin function) I perceive other flaws in current review model. Established but moribund individuals dominate a field (grants and publications) that has been sedentary for decades (recently, this has been improving). For these and other reasons, I think the 'extended' E-Biomed general repository concept is a wonderful opportunity. I believe that an _essential_ aspect of this concept would be the ability of visitors to provide responses/annotations. I believe this sort of technology is rapidly evolving on the internet. I also think that an objective form of quanititation of visitors and their responses should be established. If the 'old guard' shuns a work but it is enthustiastically received by others, this fact should be made readily apparent to the invesigator (for inclusion in granting requests, tenure packages, etc), the field and 'browsers'. Indeed, one should be able to follow the 'favorite papers' of individuals one respects or that one finds being of like mind to oneself.

Perhaps the most important aspect of 'voting with one's feet' would be that reviews, while not performed with the structure currently enforced, would include comments by individuals who had CHOSEN to read the specific work, had for reasons of their own pored over its every nuance and had voluntarily rendered an informed opinion. Such opinions would accumulate over time into a dialog into which the author could enter. Thus we would have review BY ALL INTERESTED PARTIES rather than an arbitrary and periodically unwilling or otherwise hassled/overworked pair or trio.

I am sure that details of giving each individual a key that validated their identity and prevented at least certain gross abuses are already under consideration. I think the opportunity of following the opinions of a 'favored reviewer' that one has found to have the same likes and enthusiasms as oneself would be of inestimable value.

In summary, I think it is the extended (general repository) concept, if rigorously implemented by allowing unsolicited review offers hope of ameliorating some of the horrors present in the current system as well as offering truly revolutionary opportunities in terms of making science a meritocracy of ideas rather than the political animal it sometimes tends towards.

Please fight for E-biomed!

Thanx for your time
Bruce Patterson

Anthony J. Koleske, Dept of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, June 25, 1999

Dear Dr. Varmus et. al,

I think the proposal for E-Biomed is a good one. Electronic publishing will significantly enhance our scientific culture.

I encourage you to set up a commission of people to brainstorm on the mechanics of setting up a system and a governing board. I think it is particularly important to include people from a cross-section of relevant disciplines and with differing comfort levels with the proposal.

I would consider myself a recent convert (and former skeptic) to the benefits of electronic publishing. I suspect that in time a similar conversion will happen in most of the biomedical community.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Sincerely,
Anthony J. Koleske
Assistant Professor
Dept of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Yale University
New Haven, CT

James Shedlock, AMLS, AHIP, Director, Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University, June 25, 1999

Dr. Varmus -- Hello! I'm writing to applaud your leadership of the E-Biomed Proposal and to offer information that you recently referenced in the proposal's Addendum. In the Addendum you wrote: "We are also trying to estimate what the NIH, other funding agencies, and individuals currently spend on publication of biomedical research, in the form of subscription fees, page charges, reprint purchases, paper copying, and institutional library costs." In response to this statement I can offer you data available from the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL). I serve as Editor of the Annual Statitics of Medical School Libraries in the United States and Canada. We have much data on library operations including spending on journals. For example, in 1997-1998, academic medical center libraries spent $112,407,781 on serial publications and a total of $128,539,649 on collections (serials, monographs, AVs, etc.).

I'm not sure but the full Annual Statistics publication may be in the NIH library; otherwise it can be purchased from Association HQ in Seattle. I would be happy to supply any other information you may need to further the work on the E-Biomed Proposal.

Sincerely,
James Shedlock, AMLS, AHIP
Director, Galter Health Sciences Library
Northwestern University
Chicago, IL

Valerie C. Virta, The University of Texas, June 25, 1999

To whom it may concern,

I have just read the proposal for E-Biomed, and to me it sounds like a great idea. I feel like some of the potential benefits of electronic communication that I envision for the future coincide with many of the proposed features of E-Biomed.

Scientists cannot forget that their purpose is to shed light on the inner workings of the world, and that the public deserves to know exactly what is going on in the domain of science. Too much of what is offered to public access (ie, information accessed without the payment of fees, membership in some society or club, or position in the hierarchy of the scientific community) lacks any real scientific data whatsoever, and consists of some media person's impressions instead of true knowledge. The public deserves more than the mindless pap offered by traditional mainstream media outlets just as much as the scientific community deserves the support of the public.

As a flegling scientist with but one publication, I can see both sides of the question. Too many criticisms of this proposal seem tainted with the vanity of established scientists wary of losing their prestige/position in the hierarchy. Too many nonscientists lambast the academic community for the pursuit of knowledge in their frustration at their lack of access to that knowledge, because there are too many barriers of financial, educational, and social nature.

By all means, more cooperation and more communication needs to be fostered both among members in the academic community, and between the academic community and society as a whole. The current situation, where most information is published in a format that is not always accessible to those that are not of the scientific elite, leaves much to be desired.

I encourage you to go on with your plans for E-Biomed in the face of any and all opposition. The world needs this great service that you would like to perform. Thank you for your efforts so far, they are most appreciated.

Sincerely,
Valerie C. Virta
The University of Texas, Austin

Scott C. Todd, Ph.D., Asst. Professor, Immunology, Kansas State University, June 24, 1999

The proposal for E-biomed correctly anticipates and responds to fundamental changes in the media for communicating scientific content. The revolutionary changes in information management and exchange will greatly expedite the research and discovery process and it is imperative that E-biomed, or a similar agency, be implemented for reasons of precedent. Because it is still early in the transition to internet-based exchange of information, the opportunity to establish standards and a universal platform for scientific content exists. Left to its own, the publishing community will (and has already) transpose its paradigm of communication into the new media rather than creating new, more useful paradigms. For example, on-line journals are generally "re-prints" of the print version but few of the powerful new modes of manipulating content are realized.

The four major reasons to implement E-biomed are:

1) To establish a standard (universal platform) of scientific communication. This will make searching for content much easier and make it possible to filter and link content in novel ways.

2) To expand the scope of information conveyed in a report. For example by providing video or other forms of data not amenable to print and, more importantly, by removing the space/cost constraints imposed by conventional print media, multiple reproductions of an experiment can be presented for independent comparison.

3) To provide a more authentic measure of the quality of work done by a particular group or investigator. Currently it is common to judge the quality of a person's work (for promotion or career decisions) on the basis of the perceived gradient of prestige associated with journals. These journals grade themselves on the basis of impact. To assess the quality of work from an individual it would be more accurate to measure the impact of individual or collected reports. An individual would be less likely to buffer their publication list because the number of reports becomes less meaningful. This paradigm emphasizes the significant contributions from a lab.

4) To provide equality to the field. E-biomed would reduce or remove the price barrier which impairs access to information for many scientists and would reduce the effects of politics and reputation in determining the visibility of a person's work. Lastly, it is important to set a precedent for government involvement in managing information exchange because the acquisition of this information is generally funded by the public and its access and manipulation should remain in the public domain.

Scott C. Todd, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor, Immunology
Kansas State University
http://www.ksu.edu/tetraspan (under construction)

Billi Goldberg, AIDS Activist, San Francisco, June 23, 1999

I would recommend that full text should be added to all MEDLINE entries thus providing article availability for all that wish to view it.

I would also recommend that the NIH, which certainly has the money, to reimburse publishers for allowing the full text article to be viewed either at the publishers' website or specially handled by NLM.

As concerns availability prior to publication of the print journal, one only has to review the Journal of Infectious Diseases excellent electronic edition, which has the full text available online when the article has been accepted for publication (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JID.)

NIH Director Varmus should take the "bull by the horns" and work with the various journal publishers instead of trying to steamroller them.

Even with peer review, especially in AIDS research, there are more than enough questionable articles without dismantling the present system to allow less control of article dissemination.

Billi Goldberg
AIDS Activist
San Francisco, CA

George Munchus, UAB Graduate School of Management, June 23, 1999

This is a great idea and long over due in the world of scholarly publishing. This will cause the elites to share decision making power with the readership. Give the practicing doctors some credit Dr. Arnold Relman.

Peace,
George Munchus-UAB
Graduate School of Management

Jill Day, Executive Editor, Sage Science Press, June 23, 1999

The concept of E-Biomed reflects an extreme naivete about the business of scholarly publishing. If an idea such as this one were presented to me by one of my employees I would tell them to go away and talk with me when their thoughts were better thought out. As a publisher with over ten years of experience in STM publishing, I'm very willing to work with this group on the E-Biomed concept - in many ways its appealing and gives the research science community what they need and want. But please, let's assess the bevy of challenges apparent before issuing statements such as these which beg for criticisms because so much is missing.

Jill Day
Executive Editor
Sage Science Press

The American Association of Immunologists, June 23, 1999

Dear Dr. Varmus:

On behalf of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), we are responding to your recent NIH E-Biomed proposal. Like you, we are keenly interested in the innovative and effective use of the Internet and emerging technologies for advancing the practice and dissemination of science. While your proposal contains some elements that would assist the science community, we have grave concerns about this proposal overall and do not endorse it.

We are sure the NIH can offer some innovative services that would complement the existing peer-review and publishing process. We fully support NIH's development of a centralized repository for complex data sets. We also think that the conversion of back issues (print) to digital text and image format for a global archive of pre-electronic back issues, as well as recent electronic issues as subject to publisher access release, would be of great benefit to the community.

Our concerns regarding the E-Biomed proposal include:

• the integrity of the peer-review process
• the potential creation of a monopoly
• an inherent conflict of interest
• service to the community
• assessment of the magnitude of the effort and disclosure of standard operating procedures (logistics)
• cost of the effort and disclosure of a proposed budget
• source of funds: immediate and future

Jim Schachterle, Acquisitions Editor, Medicine & Life Science, Sage Science Press, June 23, 1999

To whom it may concern,

Although the E-Biomed proposal is intriguing, it poses a number of problems for the scientific community and the publishing community at large. In my opinion, the government exists to aid free market communication and growth. Unfortunately, I feel as if E-Biomed undermines that stalwart principle. Scientific publishing is an industry, and it employs thousands of Americans. I shudder to think that the United States government would embark on a project that would undermine an entire industry, which in my opinion disseminates valid information in an efficient manner. Perhaps, when drafting the E-Biomed proposal, Dr. Varmus was not concerned with the economic implications of such a system. Regardless, they do exist and should be measured heavily against this proposal. As a publisher of scientific journals, I believe that the publishing community should be given a forum to discuss this issue, and I, as well as my colleagues, would like to be a part of that forum. Please inform me when plans exist for such a venue. Thank you.

Best Regards,
Jim Schachterle
Acquisitions Editor, Medicine & Life Science
Sage Science Press

Jenna McCoy, Graduate Student, Haggard School of Theology, APU, June 23, 1999

I am a graduate student who spends quite a bit of time doing on-line research because there is not a library with adequate journal publications near me. I think that this debate is good especially in today's high-tech world. I can think of many reasons to make your journals public on-line, and none for keeping it in a paper only format. I will only address a couple here.

The environmental benefits are substantial! Imagine fewer trees being destroyed for paper consumption, and cleaner air as a result. As an asthmatic inhabitant of Los Angeles County California, this is a great draw.

Also, while I can understand the concern over maintaining control over the quality of published materials, I don't think the Journal has to give up publishing rights. Should the Journal decide to make their publication available on-line they would still maintain the control of standards of what is printed on their site. Regardless, one doesn't have to be right, morally or factually to put things up on the internet. Besides, just as in paper bound publications, the reader must decide for themselves the reliability and pertinence of the subject matter for themselves.

I would hope that those who are opposed to placing this type of research on the Web would become open to the new technology available, rather than maintaining the status quo. I personally believe that going on-line is the wave of the future, and printed mass publications will soon be archaic, if they aren't already.

Sincerely,
Jenna McCoy
Production Associate/AACN; and
Graduate Student, Haggard School of Theology, APU

Steve Heller, June 22, 1999

In reading over the comments on your web site, as well as those in print, I am reminded of the following quote:

"New scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Max Planck, "Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers", Williams & Norgate, London (1950), pages 33-34.

S. Heller

Prof. Nezih Oktar, M.D., Editor, The On-line Journal of Neurological Sciences (Turkish), June 21, 1999

Dear Prof.Varmus

As an editor of a neuroscience journal from a developing country, I read your proposal for E-biomed with great interest and discussed with my colleagues.

In general proposed E-biomed could make working communication among scientists easier and more effective. In a new era of scientific publication definition must rebuilt but it should reinforced in consideration against scientific fraud, good quality in peer-reviewing with low costs!

We are in the arena of "no-paper" publication since 1998 and having more readers, subscribers and with lower costs than "in-print" form. We support your efforts and look forward to any manner in which we can participate in E-biomed.

Sincerely yours
Prof.Nezih Oktar, M.D.
Editor, The On-line Journal of Neurological Sciences (Turkish)
http://www.med.ege.edu.tr/~norolbil

Stuart Linn, University of California, Berkeley, June 21, 1999

Dear Sirs/Mmes:

I should like to speak out against the NIH getting involved in the e-biomed endeaver. I think that it is yet another distraction of NIH funds from investigator-initiated research. Though the NIH has received generous increases in funding, these have generally not filtered down to what has always been considered the major strength of American biomedical research: peer-reviewed, investigator-initiated research.

In this instance, I see no need for the NIH to become involved in an endeaver which is being well-handled by Professional Societies and Publishers. Journals like the NIH Journal and Environmental Health Perspectives have contributed little if anything to the scientific literature. Again, this would be another distraction from the goal of the NIH: to fund research.

Thank-you for considering my comments,
Stuart Linn
Professor and Head,
Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
University of California, Berkeley Lab Website: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/labs/linn/