Albert Henderson, Editor, Publishing Research Quarterly, July 4, 1999

Comment on E-Biomed Supplement

A supplement to NIH's E-Biomed proposal appeared on June 20. Articles in Science (June 25), The Scientist, and elsewhere seem to indicate (A) the biomedical community has clearly not embraced the proposal; and, (B) Dr. Varmus is intent on going ahead with what might well be a monster more destructive than Frankenstein's.

What is the rush, Dr. Varmus? The technology will not disappear. There is no competitive international crisis, as there was following Sputnik. No scientific study provides evidence that E-Biomed will cure or even treat complaints about the performance of NIH. Nothing in the new material explains its urgency.

I see three issues of paramount importance that must be resolved before E-Biomed goes further: 1.dangers posed by economic disruption and lower standards; 2. the desire to improve the productivity of NIH programs; 3. the appropriate role of government, specifically NIH. Within these there are legal issues that cannot be casually ruled out.

I also offer what I feel are better ideas.

1. Economic Disruption and Lowering Standards:

"Offering the international scientific community free, fast, and full access to the entire biomedical literature," which E-Biomed claims to be its most important goal, will have an economic impact. The the proposal avoids this issue. NIH's outline of "an electronic public library of medicine and other life sciences" leaves major questions unanswered:

Will E-Biomed hurt libraries and publishers?

If institutions' researchers have unpaid access to all the literature on E-Biomed from their personal workstations, why should any university, corporation, or other organization continue to maintain libraries that purchase journals and provide services far beyond, but closely related to, their collections?

Will associations of scientists survive?

If the entire literature is available on the internet free, why would scientists and students join associations and pay dues? It is true some wish to participate in meetings and other activities, but publications have usually been the primary benefit of membership.

The supplement appears to acknowledge that cost-free distribution of articles would undermine the viability of journals. It suggests, "the editorial board [of each journal] would need to consider the means available for recovering the costs of reviewing ... from annual meetings, from workshops ..., or from increased annual fees." With these words, NIH cavalierly evades concerns of the associations and its responsibility for the likely economic devestation of E-Biomed. It dismisses the dependence of journals on library subscriptions to cover first-copy costs and more. NIH's solution is unrealistic, perhaps even preposterous.

In the context of the "War on Faculty" [Chronicle of Higher Education. April 16, 1999 B4], "The Treason of the Learned" [Library Journal Feb.15, 1994 130-131], and similar observations going back to the 1970s, it seems clear that E-Biomed serves the agenda of university managers wishing to shed the trappings of intellectual inquiry -- tenure, libraries, academic freedom, associations, copyright, publishers, and publications -- that interfere with nonacademic interests in bureaucratic power. Over the objections of academic senates universities have slashed library spending. Since 1984 higher education spending on libraries has been less than total unspent revenues. For decades prior, library spending was greater. Universities have never had so much money. The trouble is, they have become greedy.

What about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

"Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine and conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce ..."

Based on the present evidence I would be inclined to vote 'guilty.' The supplement says the system, "would not be owned by the NIH or any other component of the U.S. government." By whom would it be owned? How would it not monopolize, through predatory pricing, the scientific publishing industry after 330 years of private sector operation? How would it not emasculate the hundreds of scientific associations that are involved not only in publishing but in accreditation, policy, and oversight of the various disciplines and specialties.

Will E-Biomed eliminate Index Medicus and Medline?

With its dependence on what appears to be a totally automated search engine, E-Biomed appears to have dispensed not only with libraries but with the NLM and its labor- intensive services. I seriously doubt that an automated search engine can adequately do the job of Medline, simply based on the preference of many authors and readers for unpredictable jargon.

Wouldn't a better idea be to upgrade Medline?

Medline's coverage might be more sophisticated. I have a report that indicates 10,000 Medline cites were screened to locate about 400 articles related to "whiplash." More labor-intensive indexing might eliminate the monumental challenge that the literature makes to the researcher before reading and evaluating a single article. The same report indicates that less than 100 articles survived tests for scientific merit applied by teams of specialists.

Medline's coverage might be wider. Medline, a true pioneer in electronic publishing and dissemination, indexes over 400,000 articles annually. In spite of the impressiveness of that number, it covers less than a fifth of over 22,000 periodicals received by the National Library of Medicine. It ignores thousands of nonperiodical items received.

Medline got the blame for incomplete and inaccurate reports of prior scientific work, real threats to the integrity of science. Apparently, "searchers often go back only a few years (in medicine, for example, three years -- the length of time covered by Medline, the biggest reference data base)." When searchers fail to cover the literature fully, proposals, merit review, and the sponsors all suffer. [Chronicle of Higher Education. April 21, 1995:B1-B2]

Many researchers tell me they prefer more specialized databases that offer comprehensive coverage and analysis. Maybe a better idea would be for NIH to foster more specialized resources by improving research overhead for libraries and improving the commercial market for research information.

Why is lowering standards of access good?

The system of fees and licenses is restrictive. So is the formal publication process requiring peer review. It limits the published literature and its readership to qualified individuals. That is good, not bad, according to the most authoritative comments posted so far. Dropping restrictions as proposed may put E-Biomed closer to talk radio. The reference to Paul Ginsparg's experience has little relevance. Physics and math are relatively small fields. Errors in physics theories are unlikely to affect anyone's health. Snake oil cures and other quackery are typical of medicine, not physics, creating a special need for rigorous oversight by the Food and Drug Administration. The jurisdiction of Federal "scientific integrity" policing extends only to Federally financed researchers. Others are free to report whatever they like, probably with the protection of the First Amendment. Relying on researchers' integrity alone does not seem to be realistic.

As the prologue to E-Biomed points out, electronics made communication easier than ever before. Informal exchanges via email have supplemented, perhaps replaced, more traditional channels. This has reduced, not aggravated chronic problems in science communications. No urgency has been expressed by the research community for NIH's solution as far as I can see. When an 'invisible college' wishes to set up an exchange of informal documents in its own specialty, perhaps protected by passwords or limited to a qualified list, no one objects.

Many publishers and others (known as aggregators) provide electronic access to their journals, including to backlogs of unpublished accepted papers. I think that the mainstream journals are nearly all available online.

True, journals are not free. Why is that problem? The economy is good. Universities have more unspent revenue than ever before! (according to U.S. Dept. of Education and other statistics). If you are concerned that researchers are spending direct grant funds on publications, why not improve overhead reimbursement of their libraries and insist that university upgrade their collections?

This is a better idea. Federal research commands sixty per cent of sponsored academic research expenditures. Why does indirect cost reimbursement barely cover ten per cent of library spending? Why was library spending cut while research spending grows? If library spending had kept pace with the growth of research since 1970, it would be more than double.

2. Productivity and performance:

One of the most disturbing statements in the original proposal is not mitigated by the supplement. It reads:

The active E-Biomed process might be accompanied by a much-needed effort to convert material already published on paper to digital text and image format, with hyper-linked citations. This additional initiative would ultimately allow all users of E-biomed to move seamlessly through the entire body of reported information in biomedical sciences. And it would also enhance scientific productivity and reduce burdens on library facilities.

Pietr Hitzig, M.D. , West Virginia, July 3, 1999

I strongly support your evolutionary, not revolutionary, concept, E Biomed. Ten years of observing news groups has shown that while there is an enormous amount of chaff, there is a lot of grain.

The recent trend of the Mayo Clinic to turn out disparaging comments about combined dopamine and serotonin agonists would not have destroyed FEN/PHEN.

The article purporting to show the dangers of FEN/PHEN would have been proceeded by my note of September, 1996 in which the obvious was pointed out. The wanton use of powerful monoamine agonists, especially one so clean as fenfluramine, I stated in a letter to JAMA, would inevitably bring problems, especially since in the beginning the increased frequency of a known serotonin complication would be buried in the white noise of disease prevalence.

JAMA, in its wisdom, decided not to print that letter, saving space for a discussion whether fellatio was a sexual act:-0

Later, when Connolly's anecdotal NEJM report erupted, a study, I strongly believe, that was printed for the advertisers and not for the end users of FEN/PHEN there would have been many of us who would have stomped on it hard and for good reason. Instead, the same "talking heads" appeared on CNN including an elderly pediatric surgeon in a ridiculous uniform and established nonsensical "conventional wisdom" standards that were not brought out in the name of truth but to sacrifice truth itself for Madison Avenue's Mammon.

The CNN viewers were not told that Surgeon-General Koop was the paid spokesman for the Society of Bariatric Physicians. Could E-Biomed be so misleading?

It is unfortunate that the best neuroimmunology still comes from lands where vowels at the end of names predominate and sermons on the value of free speech come not from Boston, the home of Sam Adams, but instead from London.

Keep on fighting and stay out of Baltimore.

i still hope that in this millennium we shall meet.

Pietr Hitzig, M.D.
West Virginia
http://www.phen4.com/

Paul B. Sigler, Henry Ford II Professor, Investigator in the HHMI, July 2, 1999

Dear Harold:

Clearly, the issue of electronic publishing must be addressed. I applaud you for doing so. I was pleased to see that the spirit of contemplation, due process and evolution has held sway over urgency and revolution. That's good. Having said that let me voice some concerns.

1. It may be a sign of age, but my ability to effectively absorb the current tidal wave of available information (forget about E-biomed) has already been exceeded, and the time left over to actually think about this information has dwindled to a frustrating minimum. Are we really short of information and discourse? Is access to information the rate-limiting step? I wonder.

2. Plan ii. You propose to minimize garbage and craziness by requiring credentials of the contributor in lieu of scrutinizing the content of the contribution. Clearly, that is counter to the uniquely American spirit that cherishes the fresh, naļve contributions of youthful up-and-coming outsiders who lack credentials. Unlike our European/Asian colleagues, we judge the worthiness of a contribution on the science not the scientists. Let's not introduce into American science the worst attributes of the European/Asian 'Academy' in order to manage an initiative of unproven worth.

3. The physicist's "XXX.LASNL.GOV" website, which indiscriminately displays all preprints and other unrefereed reports, is successful. I have polled my colleagues in physics and to a man/woman they consider it worthwhile. I submit that its success is because physics is primarily a 'convergent' science in which the community tends to focus on a limited number of central questions. Foolish ideas and obviously flawed data stick out like a sore thumb and embarrass the contributor. Biology also has its 'convergent' issues, but is loaded with open-ended wide-ranging phenomenology. Who among us would feel competent to counter the claim that the glycine codon from brussel sprouts is essential for song learning by the crested sprout-eating tit.

4. Then there are the questions of citation and "priority". Should an author reference unrefereed material from E-biomed? When is a person "credited" with a discovery? How does one deal with the guy who rightfully claims he put that idea or discovery out on E-biomed . . . along with his 250 wrong ideas? Whether we think it noble or not, peer approval and accolades are strong motivating forces and these issues count more than we like to admit.

5. Figures. Structural biologists need a good medium for figures. The journals take the lead here in producing excellent color figures. E-biomed requires that the recipient have the appropriate printer. Can you imagine what it would take for individual labs to depict a molecular structure as well as Ben Lewin does?

6. Then there is the question of archiving, which was dispatched rather cavalierly in your message. I don't know what the server at Los Alamos is doing about storing massive physics throughput. Electronic media are only good for archiving in the 5-year frame, but after five years, the machines used to read the archives become rare and obsolete with no software support. We have racks of tapes we can no longer read. Hardcopy (parchment, papyrus paper) may be the only solution. The physics server at Los Alamos is surrounded by deep canyons and abandoned dry cave dwellings to store all that paper. The much larger paper explosion of E-biomed (plan ii) archives may require filling part of the Grand Canyon which the environmentalist (and I) will object to. But, then there is the problem of retrieval. Are we creating a monster of uncontrolled growth that will outstrip our ability to archive and retrieve information? There are many hidden attributes to the limitations imposed by refereed hard copy journals. Archiving is one.

Again, these are difficult problems but you have smart people and time is on your side. Thanks for initiating the discourse; hopefully, if you don't rush into this, the result will lead to better science and not just an enterprise that satisfies a need to use the new technology.

Very truly yours,
Paul B. Sigler
Henry Ford II Professor
Investigator in the HHMI

Susan C. Harris, Dean, Salazar Library, Sonoma State University, July 2, 1999

Dear Colleague:

This proposal is an excellent one, and the time has arrived. Universities (and their libraries) stand ready to publish scholarly information, at an undoubtedly lower cost than publishers are willing to meet, and with fewer restrictions on the subsequent use of the material. Sonoma State University, which is a small university in northern California, is already publishing one such journal. As you know, Stanford is working on a larger scale, as is UC Berkeley. People like yourselves can make all the difference in keeping access to the results of university scholarship open and available. Thank you.

Susan C. Harris
Dean, Salazar Library
Sonoma State University

Pr. J. E. Dumont & Pr. G. Vassart, University of Brussels, Belgium, July 2, 1999

We fully support the E-BIOMED initiative provided it is truly international. It will free our libraries from the financial stranglehold of greedy publishers and from the intellectual stranglehold of close knit editorial board power structures.

Pr. J.E. Dumont
Pr. G. Vassart

Pr. G. Vassart
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research (IRIBHN)
University of Brussels

Dr Jacques E. Dumont,
University of Brussels, School of Medicine,
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research (IRIBHN),
Brussels, Belgium

Suthat Fucharoen, Mahidol University, Thailand, July 2, 1999

Dear Sir,

I am a physician/scientist working in Bangkok, Thailand. I read about the idea proposed by Varmus and his colleagues in Science. I would like to support such idea of E-Biomed. It will be a great benefit to scientists working in the third world where information is either lacking or come very slow. The economic crisis recently occurred in Asia and many other parts of the world effect us a lot. The libraries stop ordering many aricles. In the past it may take us a few months to have a chance to read the articles but now it is no chance to see it. I just want to give you some example of items that has been sacrified from our libraries: J Clin Invest, Cell, Nucleic acid, Genes&Development etc. I wonder what that you have proposed will help to fill up the gap/boundary between the north and the south.

What I would like to ask you to pay attention is the cost. It will be excellent if the E-Biomed will be available free of charge. I believe it is in your plan how to arrange topics/subjects to be easily accessed by user that have a limited experience in the IT technology to get to the data/information that they want. I will encourage my friends to read your proposal and make comment to what you posted.

Suthat Fucharoen
Director, Thalassemia Research Center
Institute of Science and Technology for Research and Development
Mahidol University, Salaya Campus
Nakornpathom, Thailand

Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, July 1, 1999

Caution Against Anarchic Archiving!

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> Not to forget free Web access to all papers, including e-prints and
> refereed papers, recently announced by the commercial publisher Current
> Science
> http://current-science-group.com/Presscos.html
>
> ...not all
> such initiatives will be positive for the academic community or will help
> towards the goal of universally accessible, free e-print archives in
> perpetuity...
> ...other important factors to consider when
> evaluating these archives are ownership and long-term plans for access,
> distribution, mirroring, etc, to avoid the same hostage to fortune that
> journals have come to represent. Multiple archives are fine, but there
> should be scope for integration via distributed services too.

Steve Hitchcock is 100% right for sounding this important note of caution. What is not wanted is an anarchic-archivng period of fly-by-night archives in which authors' papers become orphaned (as they have in many other ephemeral web and ftp sites) or are stamped with a proprietary price-tag after an interval.

(I am not implying that this is the case with the Current Science Archive or any of the other nascent ones, but it is something that must be given explicit consideration. Let me add, though, that the Current Science Archive, like the BMJ/Stanford Archive, is for UNREFEREED preprints only; apart from that, it is in reality endeavouring to be a JOURNAL, not an archive, for it plans to offer peer review for papers if they are submitted on the refereeing track. As I have cautioned many times before, founding new archives should NOT be confused or conflated with founding new journals, nor with reforming peer review. The purpose of public online archives is to free the journal literature for one and all; there is a place for new online journals too, as there always has been, but that is an incomparably smaller matter, and only beclouds the free-archive issue if linked to it in any way. Peer review can do with some reform too, but that is a long-term empirical problem, requiring experimental testing, and hence likewise not to be linked in any way with the fate of freeing the journal literature through self-archiving, whose time has now come, and whose empirical success has already been resoundingly demonstrated by the Los Alamos Archive (http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_monthly_submissions).

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/

Zev Williams, July 1, 1999

Dear Dr. Varmus,

As an M.D./Ph.D. student I greatly applaud your efforts to provide free, unlimited access to bio-medical research. I would like to suggest a model that would respond to the concerns of established journals and the needs of researchers.

As a great first step, E-biomed could allow anyone to do a literature search (for example with Pubmed) and then be able to view the full text on-line. E-biomed would pay a reasonable fee to the journals in return for allowing their papers to be covered on E-biomed. You can think of it as an institutional on-line subscription in which anyone with a computer is part of the institute.

Funding could be provided by selling advertising space on the margins of the web pages. Since the service would undoubtedly be a major tool for researchers around the globe, advertisers would not be difficult to find.

I hope this model is of help. Again, thank you for taking such a courageous step for research.

With sincere appreciation,
Zev Williams

Dr. Stephen W. Ragsdale, University of Nebraska, July 1, 1999

The Draft Document on E-biomed offers some provocative scenarios about the future of publishing and disseminating scientific findings. I am strongly in favor of the electronic press. I agree that electronic publishing offers a much richer source of information in which data can be presented in much more depth. For example, a typical publication on the structure of a protein contains a series of gif or jpeg files that describe inherently multi-dimensional data in a two-dimensional format. In contrast, the pdf file can be viewed in a much more informative way. Structure-function papers could take the form of kinemages, which can be highly interactive and informative analyses of proteins. However, while the electronic medium offers many promises for the future, E-biomed as it is presented in the Draft Document of May 5, 1999 contains some severe weaknesses.

It appears that the major goals of E-biomed are to expedite the dissemination of scientific findings and to make the information freely available. The goal of making information freely available is very important and I think this should be the major focus of E-biomed. One of many possible ways to achieve this objective is for the federal government to develop a program for the scientific societies and journals to apply for federal grants to cover the costs of electronic publishing. Then, the publishers could afford to offer free access to published information. Although I agree that it is important for findings to reach the scientific community as fast as possible, much appears to be sacrificed to the altar of rapid dissemination. The traditional journal is rapidly changing. Competition to be the fastest journal from submission to decision to publication is having tremendous impact on the way papers are reviewed and accessed. Thus, I project that the lag time before findings reach the electronic medium will continue to diminish without E-biomed.

I am concerned about the possible effect of E-biomed on undermining the concept of peer-review of articles. It is of major importance that the traditional peer review process with its hierarchy should form the structure of the process. I disagree that the second tier submission as it is presented might become the common mode of submission. Finding articles published by any arm of E-biomed should be equally fast. I strongly disagree with the proposal that authors could publish through the general repository and then at any time solicit review from an editorial board. This would lead to congestion of the database. I foresee many freely available papers undergoing constant review and revision in attempts to gain credibility. This be much like a court with advocates, defenders, and judges in a constant battle with ever changing facts. I think that E-biomed should only support submissions through the first tier.

Concerning the "Other possibilities" Section: Professor Varmus considers "Other possibilities" for the evolution of E-biomed. The first of these - for the critiques to be accessible and possibly signed - would be damaging to the conduct of science. I strongly disagree with the loss of anonymity of the reviewer. Compromising this is dangerous to the review process. One should never have to worry that honest appraisal of a submitted manuscript could result in retribution by one of the authors. For similar reasons, there are strict confidentiality rules in NIH study sections.

The second possibility for E-biomed to be a "communal site" is innocuous, but unnecessary since the described functions are already available in a variety of venues.

The third, to include amendment of publications, would make it difficult to assess research papers that have been subjected to various levels of review. With this proposal, a paper that met the standards of J. Biol. Chem. could be amended by preliminary findings that have been subjected to minimal peer review. Even if the status of each amendment is clearly marked, the criteria of quality would be blurred.

What are the disciplinary boundaries of E-biomed? One question that is not addressed in the proposal is what are the disciplinary limits of E-biomed? For example, one currently can use Pubmed to search for information that is published in Science, J. Biol. Chem., Biochemistry, etc. However, biologically important articles published in the more chemically oriented journals cannot be located. Should all or only part of chemistry and physics be included? I think that it is important to include all of science as a goal.

Dr. Stephen W. Ragsdale
Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Beadle Center
University of Nebraska
http://www.pigment.unl.edu/dept/Ragsdale/homepage.html

Juan Miguel Campanario, Universidad de Alcala, Madrid, Spain, June 30, 1999

Dear PROF VARMUS:

I was both, happy and surprissed when I read the articles on "Science Publishing" appeared in THE SCIENTIST (7/June/1999). I was happy because the E-Biomed propossal launched by you is very similar to a propossal I published in THE SCIENTIST (http://165.123.33.33/yr1997/may/let1_970512.html)

I was also a bit surprissed when I read the full text of E-biomed propossal and I did not find any citation to my propossal. The main difference between E-biomed and my propossal is that althought in E-biomed authors send their papers to a central facility, they are allowed to choose the journal in which referees will review the paper. In my propossal, authors send papers to the central facility and, next, referees from different journals compete among them in reviewing the manuscript and offering publication in their journals.

I believe (and hope) that in the future the main outlet for publication will be as I dreamed.

I would be very happy if you could include a citation to my short letter (previously publiched in THE SCIENTIST) in future versions of E-biomed propossals.

Enclosed are copies of my propossals

Juan Miguel Campanario

*******************************************************

The journal scout (Campanario, Juan Miguel, 1997, The Scientist, Vol 11, Iss 10, 12 May pag. 9) (Internet: http://165.123.33.33/yr1997/may/let1_970512.html)

I propose a partial reform of the existing scientific publishing process. My proposal aims to improve the techniques for manuscript processing and to stimulate competition among journals for exceptional articles.

Despite its seeming widespread acceptance, the peer-review system is constantly under fire and criticism. Critics argue that it is excessively costly and time-consuming. The system is vulnerable to misconduct, plagiarism, and breach of confidentiality. Some of the most cited papers in the history of science, now widely accepted, were previously rejected by referees. At least eight articles that would eventually earn the Nobel Prize for their authors wereinitially rejected outright by reviewers (J.M. Campanario, Science Commuication,16:304-25, 1995). Although refereeing usually involves only a few hours, thewhole process delays publication excessively. Indeed, the lag in somecompetitive fields is considered unacceptable (R. Roy, The Scientist, Sept 6,1993, page 11). Under the current system, authors compete for space in high-prestige journals. Most other lesser journals passively await manuscripts, and many gladly accept mediocre manuscripts in order to stay in business. The situation favours leading journals, since they receive most of the high-impact papers. Reforms have been suggested to overcome the afore mentioned shortcomings (D.V.Cicchetti, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14:119-86, 1991). Unfortunately, none of the suggested reforms involves fundamental changes in the peer-review system. For example, computer networks speed up the editorial process but do not permitjournals to compete for good manuscripts in real time.I suggest the creation of a central facility, or metajournal, organized by discipline or specialty, similar to Internet USENETs. Authors would submit an abstract or a full manuscript to the metajournal. Journal editorial boards would routinely scan the metajournal to locate potentially innovative manuscripts. Editors would then contact authors about publishing the article. If more than one offer is made, the author would choose the journal in which to publish. The task of shopping around could be eliminated and left totally in the hands of interested journals. The new system would inspire a new role in science: thejournal scout or journal agent who would seek out manuscripts for journals.Journal scouts should be real experts in their fields and should be able toconvice editors that candidate papers are worthy of publication. Thus, journal scouts would act as literary agents. Successful performance in locating goodmanuscripts might even be taken into account for tenure and promotion, just as being appointed as a referee today is considered meritorious.With many journal scouts looking for good manuscripts, the chance that a significant publication with unorthodox but innovative ideas would be delayed bya single biased referee would be minimized. In many cases, authors might bewilling to publish in less prestigious journals that would agree to prompt publication. This might eventually boost the impact of these journals. The best safeguard against plagiarism or theft of ideas is open discussion in the metajournal for scrutiny by journal agents. In addition, any scientist could volunteer to serve as a freelance referee, and all commentswould be made available to authors. The metajournal could easily coexist with the "normal" scientific publishing system in which authors send theirmanuscripts to traditional journals.

*******************************************************

----------------------------------

A more elaborated version

----------------------------------

Metajournal: Using new technologies to make scientific journals actively compete for good manuscripts

Juan Miguel Campanario

Grupo de Investigaci¢n en Aprendizaje de las Ciencias
Departamento de F°sica
Universidad de AlcalŻ de Henares
Madrid (Espana-Spain)
http://www.uah.es/otrosweb/giac

In this document I dare to suggest proposals intended at carrying out a partial reform of existing scientific publishing process, yet, without risking the total disappearance of peer review system as it is known today. I have published a shorter version of this document in the journal The Scientist, 1997, Vol 11, Iss 10, May 12, pag 9 (http://165.123.33.33/yr1997/may/let1_970512.html)

My ideas are geared at improving the processing techniques of manuscripts submitted for publishing. Simultaneously, I bring forth ideas, which would entice incentives, and consequently enhance as well as stimulate competition among academic journals for exceptional articles. The whole process can be easily accomplished by resorting to the new information tecnologies.

Despite seemingly favorable acceptance, the peer review system is constantly under fire and criticism. Critics often argue that it is an excessively costly and time devouring method, where referees' agreement is most of times little higher than by chance (1). The system is vulnerable to misconduct, plagiarism and breach of confidentiality. Some of the most cited papers of all times were misinterpreted and consequently rejected by referees (2). Theories now widely accepted in biological, biomedical (3), economics (5) and other sciences were rejected and considered unacceptable by referees (4). At least eight articles that would eventually earn the Nobel Prize and fame for their authors were outrightly rejected during the initial inspection by reviewers (6). Other serious charge against peer review deals with the time that revision process consumes. In concrete, some surveys and studies claim that the refereeing of a given manuscript is as brief as a few hours (7, 8). However, the editorial reviewing process is a lengthy undertaking lasting from a few weeks to many months. No wonder that the waiting period in some leading and very competitive fields is considered as scandalous.

Under the current system authors compete for journal space. Academic journals passively await the manuscripts but if authors send mediocre manuscripts they have to publish mediocre or even unacceptable papers in order to stay in business. The situation is favourable to leading journals since they keep receiving high impact papers.

Many reform options have been suggested to stem off these shortcomings (1), and some authors call for its replacement (9). Actually, in some hotly disputed areas of research, such as particle Physics, e-mail is the prime channel of communication and few scientists wait to read papers in the "old" printed journals (10). If this system is extended to other fields, peer review could virtually disappear.

Many scholars have suggested to use modern information technologies in the academic publishing system. There are some advantages, for example, it speeds up the editorial process and cuts the excruciating waiting period. Unfortunately, it appears that none of them propose deep changes of the peer review system. Thus, according the new propossals, new technologies would be used to play the same old tune. However, would it not be desirable that journals actively compete and search for good manuscripts via computerized networks?

In short, a Central Facility could be made available to any scholar who wishes to communicate some relevant results about his research work (**). The Central Facility could be organized by disciplines or knowledge areas, in a similar way as the USENET facility installed on the Internet is organized by topics. The prospective author could submit an abstract or he could submit a full manuscript to the Central Facility. Journal editorial boards could routinely scan this Central Facility to seek out exceptional, high impact, and innovative manuscripts. As soon as one of these extraordinary manuscripts were located, editors could clue the authors to publish the masterpiece. The potential author could feel free to choose the most adequate journal in which to publish his scientific contribution. Thus, the individual task of shopping around for an acceptance could be eliminated for all practical reasons and left totally in the hands of interested journals. With an advent of this new system a new role may appear in science: the journal scanner or journal scout. The mission of this editorial board member would be to seek out and procure manuscripts for the journal. Of course, the new system I propose can perfectly coexist with the traditional editorial and peer review system: the usual medium status science could still rely on the current editorial process.

As noted above, one obvious advantage is that this new system would speed up the processing of manuscripts. In addition, having many journal scanners scurrying the Central Facility for good manuscripts, the chances that significant, innovative and unorthodox but potentially revolutionary manuscripts get sidetracked by some unaware referee are lower. Another advantage is that, using some vigorous editorial policies plus good scouting teams, even modest journals could manage to fish out some good manuscripts and with some time and effort, improve their prestige and impact factors.

In the ensuing paragraphs I shall intend to elaborate on the hindrances of proposed system. A first objection that comes to mind is that this system would create a significant division between high level science and low level science. However science is already a highly stratified activity and there is a clearly cut difference between the science published in leading journals and science published in medium or low impact journals. The second objection would probably concern plausible misuse of the system by fictitious authors who could send fake or plagiarized manuscripts to the Central Facility. However, under the current system anybody can send a fake or plagiarized manuscript to any journal through the usual mail. Actually, this was the technique used by Peters and Ceci and other investigators to ascertain the reliability and validity of peer review system (13). Some security measures could prevent misuse of the Facility. For example, each prospective author should send to the managers of the Central Facility a signed form authorized by the representatives of his employment. The managers of the Central Facility would then assign a public key code and a private one to the prospective author. Public and private key codes should not be confused with the typical passwords of a few characters. Actually, such public and private access codes are usually made up of hundreds of characters and they are managed by computer programs. These keys could be used to produce digital signatures. Using digital signatures, fake manuscripts (if any) would be easily detected and deleted.

The third objection is undoubtedly the most serious one. It would be possible for anyone who reads the Net to steal, copy or use ideas obtained from the Central Facility. Again, public code cryptography may come to rescue. Using the Central Facility's public access code, the prospective author can encrypt the manuscript in a such way that only journal scanners in possession of the appropiate decoders could discern such text. Another solution consists of recording the identity of journal scanners who read a given submission thus making that person responsible for security of submitted paper. In addition, authors could choose not to encrypt their contributions, so, the priority over their discoveries could be fully recognized and publicly registered. Any detected plagiarism or theft of ideas could be managed in the similar way as in the present editorial system. Given that the processing time would be greatly reduced, there would be fewer chances for abuse or misuse of privileged information by journal referees while the manuscripts are being evaluated. Any other attempts of breaking into the Central Facility by hackers or intrusionists, could be easily detracted with efficient management policies.

This new system would also make referees more accountable for their actions and commitments. In the past there have been suggestions that referees sign their reports thus become solely responsible for entrusted reviews (1). Some disadvantages of this approach are patent. For example, referees could be pestered or even threaten by irritated authors, etc. Digital signatures could help to resolve this catch-22 situation. A given referee could "sign" his report and still preserve his anonymity. Using the public key code of a given referee, any author could verify that this referee actually wrote a given report, a fact which even the referee in question would not be able to deny (13). Referees' reports could be logged into an electronic journal (The Journal of Referee Reports) and made available to authors for a routine access (6). Perhaps with time, authors would be able to recognize efficient, knowledgable and helpful referees. Maybe then they could be appointed by journal editors to serve as special scout force or scanners, qualified to screen all incoming scientific contributions. Nevertheless the decision to reveal his identity would then become a sole prerogative of the referee. Another possibility exists, anybody could serve as a free lance referee to judge contributions that were to be sent to the Central Facility in an open format. Will ever highly qualified free lance referees perform better than journal referees?

Acknowledgments: I acknowledge the help by Jerry Keller in writing this manuscript

References

1. Cicchetti, D.V. The reliability of peer review for manuscript and grant submissions: A cross- disciplinary investigation The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 119-186 (1991).

2. Campanario, J.M. Have Referees Rejected some of the Most-Cited Papers of all Times? Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences, 47, 302-310 (1996).

3. Campanario, J.M. Consolation for the scientist: Sometimes it is hard to publish papers that area later highly cited Social Studies of Science, 23, 342-362 (1993).

4. Nissani, M. The plight of the obscure innovators in Science Social Studies of Science, 25, 165-183 (1995).

5. Gans, J.S., Shepherd, G.B. How are the mighty fallen: Rejected classic articles by leading economists Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8, 165-179 (1994).

6. Campanario, J.M. Commentary on Influential Books and Journal Articles Initially Rejected Because of Negative Referees' Evaluations Science Communication, 16, 304-325 (1995).

7. Jauch, L.R. Wall, J.L. What they do when they get your manuscript: A survey of Academy of Management reviewer practices Academy of Management Journal, 32, 157-173 (1989).

8. McNutt, R.A., Evans, A.T., Fletcher, R.H. The effects of blinding on the quality of peer review JAMA, 263, 1371-1376 (1990).

9. Horrobin, D.F. The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation JAMA, 263, 1438-1441 (1990).

10. Taubes, G. Publication by electronic mail takes Physics by storm Science, 259, 1246-1248 (1993).

11. Campanario, J.M. The journal Scout, The Scientist, 11, 9

12. Peters, D.P., Ceci, S.J. Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 187-195 (1982).

13. Diffie, W. The first ten years of public-key cryptography Proceedings of the IEEE, 76, 560- 577, (1988).

Juan Miguel Campanario
GRUPO DE INVESTIGACION SOBRE EL APRENDIZAJE DE LAS CIENCIAS
Departamento de Fisica
Universidad de Alcala
Madrid (ESPANA-SPAIN)
http://www.uah.es/otrosweb/giac

Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, June 30, 1999

The BMJ/Stanford Self-Archiving Initiative

British Medical Journal (1999) 318:1637-1639
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/318/7199/1637
http://chronicle.com/free/99/06/99063001t.htm

The BMJ/Stanford initiative is a welcome one, but make no mistake about the fact that it differs from the E-biomed proposal in one very critical respect: It is only intended for author self-archiving of unrefereed preprints, whereas E-biomed is also intended for author self-archiving of refereed reprints too.

This difference is like night and day (apart from one little slippery-slope factor to be mentioned in a moment), for the E-biomed Archive would free the journal literature for one and all, whereas the BMJ/Stanford Archive would only broaden preprint distribution.

Let 1000 flowers bloom, however; all self-archiving initiatives are welcome, as they will eventually subvert the access-barriers that hold the literature hostage at the moment, one way or the other:

Ann Okerson & James O'Donnell (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

Moreover, BMJ/Stanford may get off the mark faster than NIH/E-biomed (which presently seems enmired in endless discussion):

http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/comment.htm

Successful innovations rarely await prior consensus; they lead the way, which Los Alamos has already done:

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

The Scholars Forum Archive needs to move into high gear too:

http://library.caltech.edu/publications/ScholarsForum/

Now the slippery-slope that could turn the BMJ/Stanford Archive into one that helps free the refereed journal literature after all:

Where is the point of no return on the continuum from the unrefereed preprint to the refereed reprint? Will any rational author want to reserve the power of free public self-archiving for the unrefereed side of that continuum alone?

http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/intpub.html

And where do copyright agreements stand on this? The Los Alamos Physics Archive, which began as an unrefereed-preprint Archive now contains more and more refereed drafts, just as predicted in the Subversive Proposal above. And why not? The outcome (note: not the prior cause) is that the American Physical Society, the publisher of the highest quality and impact journals in Physics, now has the most progressive copyright policy, a model for all other publishers. No attempt is made to prevent authors from self-archiving the refereed version. (In whose interests would that have been? Certainly not in those of authors or readers, nor of research itself, hence of the rest of society.)

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

Let me close with a plug for another brave new Archive, for the interdisciplinary field consisting of the Cognitive Sciences (Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Biology [sic], Philosophy, and Linguistics) which has quietly been following the Los Alamos model for over a year now:

http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk

The academic thoroughbreds have been led to the water; history will record how long it takes them to drink...

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/

Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, June 30, 1999

On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Juan Miguel Campanario wrote:

jc>> I am sending comments on EBIOMED. The EBIOMED idea is very similar to
jc>> an idea I have published before. I am sending an elaborated version
jc>> of my idea with references to THE SCIENTIST, the journal in which I
jc>> published it.
>
sh>Unfortunately, I cannot agree with your ideas about peer review.
>
sh>Please see:
sh>http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature2.html
sh>plus my critique of E-biomed:
sh>http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm#harn45
>
> Dear Prof. Harnad:
>
> Thank you for your answer. I know your opinions concerning E-biomed
> and concerning peer review.
>
> My main interest in E-biomed is that I propossed a very similar
> publishing outlet some time ago. The main diference between E-biomed and
> my idea is that, while in E-biomed authors are entitled to choose the journal
> to which referes are afiliated, in my proposal (a central database or
> metajournal) authors would submit an abstract or a full manuscript to the
> central facility or metajournal. Journal editorial boards would routinely
> scan the metajournal to locate potentially innovative manuscripts and/or
> papers of interest. Editors would then contact authors about publishing the
> article. If more than one offer is made, the author would choose the
> journal in which to publish. The task of shopping around could be
> eliminated and left totally in the hands of interested journals. The new
> system would inspire a new role in science: the journal scout or journal
> agent who would seek out manuscripts for journals.Journal scouts should be
> real experts in their fields and should be able to convice editors that
> candidate papers are worthy of publication. I strongly believe that when
> electronic publishing evolves, the
> publishing system will be similar to the above I dreamed. Now, I am interested
> in stating that a precedent to the idea of E-biomed was published by me some
> time ago.
>
> The Scientist,
> 1997, Vol 11, Iss 10, May 12, pag 9 (Internet:
> http://165.123.33.33/yr1997/may/let1_970512.html
>
> Juan Miguel Campanario
> GRUPO DE INVESTIGACION SOBRE EL APRENDIZAJE DE LAS CIENCIAS
> Departamento de Fisica
> http://www.uah.es/otrosweb/giac
> Universidad de Alcala
> Madrid (ESPANA-SPAIN)
> ---------------------------------------------

Dear Prof Campanario,

The idea is interesting but has some problems.

(1) Peer-review is a "seller's" market and not a "buyer's" market (if the "market" metaphor is applicable at all -- and I rather doubt it). This means authors are trying to reach the acceptance threshold of the highest quality journal they can reach. Quality-control is a FILTER, not a MAGNET.

(2) There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the current quality and specialty hierarchy and network of journals -- except that access to it is blocked (by the access-constraints of paper and the toll-barriers of proprietary paper and online access) instead of being free.

(3) E-biomed's real mission (once the confusion about being, competing with or collaborating with journals is resolved in favour of what the archive should real be: none of these) is to provide a reliable, permanent facility for authors to self-archive both their refereed reprints and their unrefereed preprints, thereby freeing the journal literature for one and all.

(4) Megajournals and peer-review reform having nothing whatsoever to do with it. E-biomed will only come into focus when it dissociates itself from such interesting but irrelevant and potentially derailing issues.

Sincerely,
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/

Irmgard Willcockson, June 30, 1999

Very interesting proposal. As a post-doc, this would speed up searching the literature and provide a means for publishing "negative data". One concern I have is the ability of e-biomed to gain participation from top print journals. These journals stand to lose a substantial number of print subscribers and therefore revenue. Another concern is partially addressed by the proposal and addendum, but bears restating. The public is often unable to discriminate between genuine science and that of dubious value. Especially for reports that have a direct impact on human health and safety, clear, strong distinctions need to be made between peer-reviewed entries and those submitted after a simple suitability check. This becomes more important if the NIH name/logo appears on a website in some form, since it may lend an air of legitimacy to the site as a whole.

Irmi

Steve Goldstein, Publisher, SG/pts, June 29, 1999

Harold,

We are a medical publishing company based in Santa Monica, California. We currently publish a number of journals in foreign countries in their native language-for example, we publish the Brazilian and French editions of CHEST in cooperation with the American College of Chest Physicians. We would have an interest in publishing print medical journals for foreign countries in their native language, with articles drawn from E-Biomed's extensive databases. Journals would be divided into medical specialties-i.e. a cardiology journal published specifically for France, printed in French.

Working titles for the various journals might be:
NIH Digest: Cardiology. The French Edition.
NIH Journal of Cardiology-The French Edition.
NIH Cardiology Review-The French Edition.

Questions I have for you: 1. Do you see any problems with copyrights, etc. if we get the permission from the authors?
2. Can we use the NIH name in the title of the journals, either in the title or sub-head?
3. When do you plan of establishing E-Biomed?
4. How will publicize the site outside the United States, or do you plan to?

I look forward to your response and possible cooperation in bringing articles posted on E-Biomed to the medical communities outside the United States in their respective foreign languages.

Sincerely,
Steve Goldstein
Publisher
SG/pts

Al Globus, June 29, 1999

I want to express my strong support for the basic concepts behind your proposal. It seems to me that if the taxpayer pays for research, then the taxpayer should own the results and should have easy and inexpensive access to these results. As a practical matter, the Web provides for easy and inexpensive distribution.

I think that most of the complaints about the proposal, although some offer useful improvements, are from people who have made money or gained power and prestige by effective ownership of research results paid for by the federal government. While before the Web existed this helped distribute results, it is no longer optimal, or even close. The federally funded gravy train should be ended. Those with federal research grants should be required to put all their results on the Web for easy access by those who pay the bills. Scientists who can't stand free and universal access to their research results don't have to take the money.

Your proposal is a good step in the right direction.

Al Globus
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, June 28, 1999

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, J.W.T.Smith wrote:

> This entire debate seems to have become hung up on whether or not the Los
> Alamos Archive model is applicable to e-publishing or e-archiving in other
> subject areas (especially biomed). This has obscured the fact it is
> perfectly possible to believe, as I do, that the Los Alamos Archive model
> is not the way to go for many subjects yet also believe in a model where
> the role of current journals is reduced to that of quality control only.
>
> My objection to the Los Alamos Archive model is that it is centralised and
> such a model can easily degenerate into a monopoly.

A monopoly of what PRODUCT, on behalf of what PROVIDER relative to what MARKET? For Los Alamos is in the (government-supported) "business" of making it possible for authors to give away reports of their own scientific research away to one and all for free.

And what do you mean "centralised"? Los Alamos is open to one and all, reader and author alike, the world over; it is mirrored in 15 countries, cached in who knows how many other places and ways, incorporated into further Gateways such as NCSTRL and Spires, and there integrated with other archives. Anyone else can make copies of the archive too (that's part of what make the "product" free entails), and the authors who self-archive in it are encouraged to archive their papers elsewhere too, if they wish, including in their own institutional servers, which can then be gathered together as another backup of the "central" archive.

http://xxx.soton.ac.uk/servers.html
http://ncstrl.cs.cornell.edu/
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/about_spireshep.htmll

As I have noted before, this central/distributed issue is a red herring, based in part on papyrocentric thinking (we are in reality talking about a distributed virtual library where locus has little meaning) and in part on proprietary thinking, based on the reader-end, access-blockage trade model (whereas we are talking about self-archiving facility in which authors distribute their own "products" for free).

This has all been discussed in: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september-forum.html

See: HTTP://AMSCI-FORUM.AMSCI.ORG/scripts/wa.exe?A1=ind99&L=september-forum&F=lf&O=T&H=0&D=0&T=1#5

> You asserted in a
> recent note (27 June) that there was no intention that any archive become
> a 'mega-journal'. However if it becomes the place where academics in a
> given subject expect to find relevant articles it will have become just
> that and it will become *necessary* for authors to place their work there.

Nothing of the sort! The journal is the quality controller and certifier. There will continue to be the full spectrum and hierarchy of journals, varying in quality and impact factor, each with its own distinctive "brand name." In the virtual archive, this will be designated by tags, so you can restrict your search engine to the refereed literature appearing in, say, American Physical Society journals only, if you wish.

An Author Archive is hence, as I said, not a Mega-Journal: It is an archive, in which the entire refereed journal literature (as well us the unrefereed preprint literature) is available for free for all.

Now who is monopolizing what for whom?

> Although I have long argued, e.g.,
> http://www.ukc.ac.uk/library/papers/jwts/d-journal.htm
> for the separation of the quality control role of the traditional journal
> from the publication role I have always advocated a 'distributed' model
> over a 'centralised' model for 'publication/archiving'. This at least
> escapes the possibility of a monopoly by the operators of the central
> archive. It also echoes the argument in Stuart Weibel's earlier note (11
> June) about the redundncy inherent in the multiple copies of
> books/journals in the current paper library model. That model may be
> inefficient (too many duplicates are kept) but its robustness is clear.

Redundancy is a non-problem; we know all about backups, mirrors, distributedness, and even distributed coding. It is a waste of time to keep dwelling on these solved problems. Moreover, they have nothing to do with the "monopoly" issue, which is likewise a red herring.

Stop thinking in terms of a reader-end "product," with competition among access-blockers, and think instead in terms of a platform for author-end "freebies," with collaboration among access-providers, and things will come into better focus. This is the refereed journal literature, not trade books or magazines.

> we should take from past publishing models that which is
> clearly of value like peer review (and maybe distributed archiving?) but
> discard that which is clearly constraining (due probably to some feature
> of the underlying medium of the old model) like the linking of quality
> control and distribution.

Correct, but then what is all this needless fuss about centralisation and monopoly?

> Summary: It is possible to escape the problems of the 'trade model' of
> current academic publishing without running headlong into the possibly
> equally constraining model of a monopolistic central archive.

Yes. Change the vocabulary.

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/

Jamie Cunliffe, June 28, 1999

This subject interests me a great deal.

Why? Well, I have been touting around a substantial idea for more than 10 years now. Admittedly, the idea has evolved and blossomed over the last 4 years but it was substantially sound in 1984 (see web site below). Now, as long as science has been practiced, substantial insights that overturn current beliefs have traditionally been (r)ejected by the "in situ" cognoscenti. "Bacons's idols" - those hidden assumptions that trip up scientific progress - are eventually noticed and they lead to major (Kuhnian) revolutions in their respective field. It is here that the current system of peer reviewed, selective publishing becomes a major impediment to progress and, what is more, to a dilution of credit. Should I prove right, then the very system that has deemed it appropriate to (r)eject these ideas and suppress them has simply added dynamite to the conceptual explosion that will eventually ensue.

Physics (a subject where "hidden assumptions" are probably easier to identify than in biology, where there are so many parameters that it is difficult to tie them all down with certainty) has long held a more open attitude to the airing of ideas. But biology and medicine are subjects where there seems to be a feeling that all there is left to do is fill in the blanks with an accelerating stampede into reductionism. The only journal to welcome "wild ideas" is Medical Hypotheses and this has, so far, not been considered in the least a "prestigious" journal.

The two main results of the current process is that there is

1) much publication of "conventional" science, particularly when it comes from the established "cognoscenti".
2) much suppression of "unconventional" science, particularly when it comes from outsiders.

Now the first is a safe bet and, more often than not, it is justified. But the second runs the risk of being asleep when - or simply ignorant of - a substantial new perception when it comes along. Any system of publishing that overcomes this impasse should be welcomed. And any system that overcomes the ludicrous cost of some articles ($30 I was asked for the other day) must also be welcomed. Science, scientists and understanding are the real loosers in this scenario - particularly when only a fraction of those articles with interesting words in the title uncover a truly exciting paper.

Should this "revolution" prove to be as dramatic as I suspect then "conventional" science needs to look hard and long at itself and the methods by which it should encourage the emergence of radically fresh perceptions.

In summary, I am all for E-Biomed. The conventional journals will be able to amplify and authenticate studies they agree with while the others are not actively censored.

Jamie Cunliffe
Waterside Health Centre, Hythe, Southampton, UK
Home pages at: http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~greenprac/jamie.html

Eliot Bush, June 28, 1999

I think the database is a great idea. It would be an enormous advantage to researchers to be able to get at anything in the literature instantly. The technology exists to do this, and it would be silly not to take advantage of it.There is no reason that a peer review process isn't compatable with e-publishing. e-publishing is faster, and cheaper. and it has the big advantage of simplicity. individual researchers wouldn't have to bother with getting subscriptions from individual journals if they wanted to read in their own office.

Most of the comments I have read are negative--I guess the scientific community is pretty conservative--but this oposition seems to me to show a lack of imagination.

Eliot Bush

Eduardo Salido, University of La Laguna, Spain, June 28, 1999

Dear Sir,

I think that your E-Biomed proposal would be of great help to many scientist in second and third world countries, where availability to printed journals is limited due to their high cost abroad. The World Conference on Science and the Third World Academy of Sciences have documented that the gap between the resources available to scientist in the most developed countries and the rest is widening. NAS' Bruce Alberts has presented the view that access to information via internet could help to bring more third world researchers aboard in the quest for scientific knowledge. I totally agree, and deeply believe that the NIH, which has been behind examples of leadership and generosity such as PubMed and the NCBI suite of databases, should lead also this effort to make Science more available to all human beings.

Eduardo Salido
University of La Laguna, Spain