An innovative experiment in publishing, by a medical doctor from Mumbai, has sparked off a wide range of academic publications, giving authors hundreds of new readers and a genuine chance to create relevant new knowledge.
Mumbai-based Medknow is an open publishing firm that builds academic (mostly medical) journals, puts them online, and makes them accessible to all.
While sharing all this useful information without a fee, it makes a tidy profit for itself and also builds both journal and authors' readership and credibility.
[Medknow was] started by Dr Dev Kumar Sahoo (33), a medical doctor from the Indian commercial and media capital...."We now have 33 journals being published by us," child-specialist Dr Sahoo, MD (Peds), DCH, DNB and FCPS, told IANS in an interview. Today, Medknow has a staff of 20, and also does a lot of outsourcing.
What's surprising is that this experiment flies in the face of the traditional wisdom -- that if you share your knowledge, you won't be able to earn from it. MedKnow shares its information promiscuously, and not just survives, but thrives.
"Printing and mailing a journal eats up 85-95% of the cost of producing the journal. If you can spend 5-15% more, you can get it online. You won't lose readers or subscriptions (but putting it online). On the contrary, the advantages of increased readership is tremendous," he explains.
"Without open access, there's no scope for a journal (from a developing country in particular) to reach any quality. Even misconduct is more visible in this model," he says, narrating how a plagiarism case was detected via open access....
Once an article if processed, it is published for immediate free access on-line. "This increases visibility, attracts authors and encourages more citations, which are all-important in the academic field," says he.
Some figures are revealing: their first online venture, the Journal of Post Graduate Medicine from India, grew from a 2001 print circulation of 300-400 to about 3-4000 visitors per day....
Likewise, open access won't mean a loss of subscriptions even for smaller journals. "Very few (academic) journals in India have a subscription of over 200-300 journals," says he. "None of our journals that we've published for more than three years have lost subscriptions. In fact, we have gained our print subscriptions."
By being 'open access' journals, they enter into the "virtuous circle of accessibility" (and get noticed via online networks like Bioline, bibliographic database, on OAI complaint servers, search engines, PubMed, and individual web sites). This only boosts the accessibility and impact of these journals....
PS: In most publications, DK Sahoo's name is spelled "Sahu" --in case you want to run searches on his name to learn more about his success at Medknow.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/07/2006 10:00:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
