Open Access News

Among the four major medical journals, the British Medical Journal is my favorite. It has the most extensive news coverage of the fight against the infectious diseases that are ravaging the developing world, a subject in which I take a keen interest. And it consistently prints iconoclastic studies that take on the medical establishment. And, until this year, it was entirely free on the web. That made it distinct from the other big-time journals (the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association), which charge hefty fees to view individual articles of interest if you weren’t a subscriber. But, alas, BMJ’s open access policy went the way of the dodo bird this January, leaving medical consumers locked out of all the major journals. Accessing some of BMJ’s original research articles and all of its news section now require a subscription to the journal. It’s testimony to the poverty of the public policy debate in this country that no one in the mainstream media has yet raised this issue – access to cutting edge medical information – in response to the Bush administration’s push for “consumer-driven health care” through individual health savings accounts. How are consumers to choose wisely when and where to get health care if they are cut off from key sources of information?...[I]f I were to get deathly ill, I wouldn’t trust myself for a minute to have figured out all the options for speeding my own recovery. Even in routine care, I need professional help to sort out the issues. For instance, I had a colonoscopy three years ago and got a clean bill of health. I’m in my mid-50s. Do I need another one? Do I want to make that determination based on the size of my health savings account or some uninformed speculation evaluating my need to save that cash for a rainy day versus preventive medicine? Of course, I could go to the internet for advice. But if I search “colonoscopy frequency” on Google, I find a similar set of unspecific advisories on for-profit and non-profit websites....Before I trusted the internet to help me make this decision, I would prefer to read a solid review of all the most recent studies printed in a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal like the BMJ. But the change in policy doesn’t allow me that option anymore.

But in true BMJ fashion, the latest issue contains a survey of BMJ authors on their response to closing off free access. Sara Schroter, a senior researcher at the journal, reported that 75 percent of 211 authors surveyed considered it “very important” or “important” that articles be freely available to the public when considering where they would publish their studies. A majority said it would make them “slightly” less likely to submit articles to BMJ because of the change, while 14 percent said it would make them “much less likely” to publish there....[T]his strong endorsement of open-source publishing is heartening news. It suggests broad support within the ranks of medical researchers for opening up the medical literature to the consuming public along the lines of the Public Library of Science, the Moore Foundation-funded open-access journal launched a few years ago. Here’s hoping the ill-conceived push for health savings accounts furthers the cause of open access to medical information – and nothing else.

Comment. A common publisher argument against OA to medical preprints is that lay readers aren't equipped to judge them and need the benefit of peer review. Goozner has exactly the right response: OK, so give us OA to the peer-reviewed research!