Open Access News

Increasingly, physicians can find raw clinical-trials data and peer-reviewed, if not necessarily polished, presentations of studies online. Will open-source publishing and online posting of clinical-trials data devalue journals? The only real impact will be an increase in high-quality clinical information accessible to Internet search engines. The need to publish or report clinical-trial data is unlikely to impact journals. Data will either be presented raw or formatted into a scientific article and put through the traditional publishing process-an expansion of journal content. The call to have all NIH-sponsored research articles published through Pub Med Central within 6 to 12 months of original publication is unlikely to significantly impact traditional journals, where there is an urgency to communicate results...."Open-access" publishing, where authors pay to publish and access to content is free (for example, Public Library of Science), is limited to the peer-reviewed, scholarly literature and has yet to demonstrate economic viability. It is an attempt to develop a different business model for journals, not an attack on the journal concept....[PLoS Clinical Trials] will publish trials irrespective of outcome and impact -- possible because PLoS does not derive income from subscriptions. Second, PLoS Clinical Trials is an open-access journal, allowing anyone to read, redistribute and use articles freely for any lawful purpose. This initiative cannot be said to devalue journals but will increase the reporting and public availability and applicability of trial results....Neither of these initiatives [the NIH policy and OA to clinical trial data? one of these and the rise of OA journals?] will significantly affect that role. A major challenge to scientists today is to identify the most critical, accurate and important information within the voluminous amount of published literature. Peer review remains the cornerstone of ensuring that research findings are interpreted correctly and presented objectively....The growing concern over bias in the dissemination of medical knowledge may well highlight the value of the peer review and editorial review offered by high-quality journals. Authors generally want their articles to appear in the most respected journals, not the ones with the lowest barriers to access. Because good reputations take time to develop, most of the best journals are still conventionally financed print publications....That will never change completely. "Conventional" journals will continue to evolve in unconventional ways to preserve their advantage, making more content available free online while capitalizing on the strengths of print and online publishing. Open access constitutes a healthy challenge to journals, not a threat.

Comment. Four quick responses. (1) I fully agree that OA --to journal literature and to data-- is a healthy challenge to conventional jourals, not a threat, and that conventional journals can evolve in unconventional ways to respond to this challenge. My own view is that the most adaptive mutations will involve some forms of OA, new kinds of added value, or both. (2) By suggesting that conventional (non-OA) journals will survive because they perform peer review, the authors imply that OA journals do not perform peer review. This is false, of course. As of today, the DOAJ lists 2047 peer-reviewed OA journals worldwide and adds more almost every day. (3) The authors are right that most OA journals, because they are new, lack the prestige of more established conventional journals. But their conclusion that OA journals will never catch or surpass non-OA journals in prestige is an empty, unargued reassurance. (4) Their view that "authors generally want their articles to appear in the most respected journals, not the ones with the lowest barriers to access" invents a trade-off where there isn't one. Authors want both high prestige and wide access. And they can have both today, either through high-prestige OA journals (like PLoS Biology) or through the combination of high-prestige conventional journals and self-archiving in an OA repository.