The People vs. NPG

Science publishing is a curious business. Content is provided for free by working scientists. That content is then peer-reviewed, also for free. Publication and dissemination costs are dropping, as paper publishing gives way to electronic distribution. So of course it only makes sense to increase prices. That's what's happening at the University of California. Nature publishing group are pushing for an increase in subscription costs for UC from an average of $4500 per journal to a whopping $17500 each. A 400% increase. Across the 67 Nature group journals, that's a substantial sum. This is prompting UC to drop subscriptions to NPG journals and to boycott their products altogether.

Nature protests, of course, claiming price increases are capped at 7% per year and the large UC increase is due to deep discounts they receive that are no longer tenable. This may be the case, but given the profitability of science publishing and the fact that the consumers of the product also do most of the heavy lifting (writing and reviewing manuscripts) it's a PR battle that Nature can't win.

One great metaphor for the state of science publishing is Fight Club soap: “We were selling their own fat asses back to them.” Considering UC has contributed around 5300 articles to Nature journals over the past 6 years, the phrase that comes to mind is "biting the hand that feeds."

For a good round-up of news and blog posts relating to the UC-Nature dispute (and open access in general) check out Jim Till's blog: "Be openly accessible or be obscure"

Medical Hypotheses in Hot Water

AC's beloved journal Medical Hypotheses is in a bit of trouble over HIV-denial papers published in its pages, Science is reporting. Medical Hypotheses does not have a peer review process - the only journal in the Elsevier family with this distinction - which allows it to publish some of the wacky papers and bizarre hypotheses that make such good blog fodder. Publication decisions are made by the editor-in-chief, Bruce Charlton, who is now under pressure from Elsevier to either resign or implement some form of peer review. The paper in question was written by Peter Duesberg, a well known denier of the HIV-AIDS connection.

After the paper's publication, prominent HIV scientists John Moore of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and Nobelist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in Paris wrote Elsevier to ask that the paper be withdrawn. Others asked the National Library of Medicine to delist Medical Hypotheses from the MEDLINE database of biomedical literature, and called on scientists to urge their librarians to cancel the journal. (They also took aim at a second AIDS paper by molecular biologist Marco Ruggiero of the University of Florence, which they say was denialist in nature as well.)

The paper has since been pulled by the publisher, but reaction to the reaction has been mixed. Some see it as a good step towards fixing what is seen as a problem with the journal, with others, including Duesberg, decrying the move as censorship or not in keeping with the journal's mission.

About F-ing Time

Someone in the scientific publishing biz is thinking, there might be a better way to format articles, one that isn't based around the printing press, but the so-called "Information Superhighway". Check out the samples here and here. Imagine the possibilities!!!! Could this be the end to the time-honored tradition of re-formatting scientific data into a useless and archaic format when it comes time to publish?

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Moves to Back Open Access Science

Leave it to me to get my science news from a technology law blog, but at any rate I just learned from Geist that the CIHR (Canada's NIH so to speak) has introduced a new policy on open access publishing. It will now be mandatory for researchers to make sure all published CIHR-funded work is available online free of charge within 6 months. Good news. Except when the publisher of an article specifically prohibits this. Not-as-good news.

The new policy has good intentions to be sure - but will it actually lead to an increase in the accessibility of scientific publications, or will the publisher's copyright stipulations prevent this? A quick search of a few life science publisher's copyright policies reveals considerable variability in the freedoms they grant the original authors to share their research online:

Cell, Cancer Cell, etc. - Author cannot archive pre-print. Author can archive post-print on their own server given that the publisher is cited and linked to, but the publisher's print or PDF cannot be used.

Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, etc. - Similar to Cell, but pre-print is allowed and there is a 6-month embargo before post-print archiving is allowed.

Cancer Research - Archiving not allowed. Except for NIH researchers, who can archive 12 months post-print. (Look to see if this exception is also granted to CIHR researchers in light of the new policy).

PLoS Biology, Medicine - Author may archive pre- and post-print under a Creative Commons Attribution License. No restrictions.

Journal of Biological Chemistry - Similar to Cell, but pre-print is allowed.

Blood - Similar to Cell, except Wellcome Trust (British funding agency) researchers may submit to the Biomed Central Repository for a fee.

As it is common practice for scientists to send copies of their articles back and forth and free of charge upon request, I don't see how any of these restrictions are justified; making your article available for download just makes the process more efficient, and makes it easier for non-academic members of the public to read about science with their own eyes.

Meet the Opposition to Open Access Scientific Publishing

Alex Palazzo's daily transcript has some nice info on the publishing industry's anti-open access lobby group, PRISM. What a bunch of spineless bums.