Medical journals: Open access online a positive?
4/21/2004
As the Internet grows, so does the wealth of free information that can be gathered online. Many believe that the free distribution of information online will be of benefit to all, in that it will allow people to become more aware, especially when confronting an illness. But, others believe that such free, massive distribution of information can be inherently dangerous. After all, without the appropriate standards, who will be the judge what information is accurate and which is not. In the terms of medical information, inaccurate information can have dire consequences for a patient.
According to an article published on amednews.com, the prices for serial publications, including academic journals, newspapers and magazines, skyrocketing 215% from 1986-2001. However, there are plenty of places online to get the same information for free, no matter what you are looking for. Says Richard Johnson, director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, “A subscription model may no longer make sense in the Internet environment, and we should look at other ways.”
Some organizations have opened the floodgates by striving to make the free exchange of scientific information a worldwide public resource. The nonprofit Public Library of Science, www.plos.org, was started in 2000 in order to try and do just that. By offering a fee for $500 to $1,500 per study, the group feels it has found a new way to publish articles that will be free for the reader. However, does this kind of business model lead to the publication of the highest quality research? States John Regazzi, PhD, “We’re concerned about what a pay-to-publish model does to the integrity of the process, what it does to the quality, does it get influenced and does it get biased.”
Many other medical journals have become open access to a lesser degree. The Journal of the American Medical Association will now allow open access for articles older than six months and younger than five years. Other academic publications have started pledging free worldwide access immediately or soon after the publication of their journals as well.
As the model for the publication of medical journals changes in the future, we will have to see if medical information becomes just another online commodity of sometimes questionable quality, or a truly free, open and worldwide resource for scientists, physicians and patients to utilize for their benefit.
Related Links
A number of sites offer free access to medical publications and abstracts online. Here are a few examples:
PubMed
Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine
The New England Journal of Medicine
Sites to See
Our “Sites to See” section in our member area has links to hard-to-find articles from all over the World Wide Web for their content related to spondylitis and related disease. The articles contain everything from x-rays of AS patients to articles about improved diagnosis for spondyloarthropathies. Members can click here to view the links now, or you can click here to join today.
References: “Journal free for all: The electronic future of scientific publishing,” amednews.com, April 2004; Public Library of Science’s website: http://www.plos.org.