I've been holding back a concept that I think is a workaround/simple hack around the problem of access to papers that Greg has also mentioned in his blog. I am foregoing possible riches and will reveal it to the public, hopefully for the betterment of the scientific community. In fact, I did submit this to slashdot, but the article was rejected (yet more proof that slashdot does not know good blogs when it hits them straight in the face). The following is the entire submission:
Biomedical journal prices have been increasing at a breakneck pace. As a graduate student, my experiences with accessing journal articles has been horrendous, to say the least. There are too many restrictions and high costs associated with access and it has been made a noticeable dent in my productivity, especially at writing time (i.e. writing my own journal article), a time when I prefer instant access, on my computer, to articles that I have read or that I need to read. This is not to say that the articles aren't available digitally -- they are. And most are digitized in pdf or html format. This problem has plagued me for most of my short graduate student career. Hear me out for what I believe is a possible solution.
My first thought was: we need a Napster for journal articles. That idea was immediately shot down--we all know why. Then, as I was preparing my first manuscript, I was reading through the instruction for authors and I came upon this paragraph:
Authors may post their own published articles on their personal or
university-hosted (but not corporate, government, or similar) websites
without [publisher's] prior written permission provided that appropriate
credit is given (i.e., either the copyright lines shown on the top of the
first page of the PDF version or Copyright ⌐ [Publisher] [insert journal
name, volume number, page numbers, and year] for the HTML version). |
And a search at another publisher's (Science) site reveals:
Papers may be posted after publication on not-for-profit reprint servers. |
And yet another publisher's site:
From 14 February 2002 Nature Publishing Group no longer requires authors
to sign away their copyright. Instead, we are asking for an exclusive
licence. In return, authors will be free to reuse their papers in any of
their future printed work, and have the right to post a copy of the
published paper on their own websites.
In addition, authors - and the institutions in which they work - will be
free to use their papers in course packs. |
I am allowed to publish (i.e. put it on my own website) my written work on my own website (and why shouldn't I?)! As an aside, copyright of biomedical journal articles work almost like music -- the authors sign away all copyright ownership to the publisher (for most publishers). So these paragraphs were music to my ears! Rather than have a Napster-like utility to trade the actual pdf or html files, all we require is a Napster that trades URLs which point to where these articles can be found. This type of URL publishing is not new -- a google search on RSS/RDF will show this. This is such a simple solution that there must be someone, some project out there that is already implementing it.
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I submitted this months ago and was milling about whether or not I should start this service on my own. Alas, I realized that the possible benefits of this service to the public far outweighed my selfish desire for monetary gains. This type of service is very simple to implement at pmbrowser.info or at nodalpoint. All they need is an additional module that allows original authors of papers to submit URL's to their papers on their personal website. For example, Holcombe or Eagleman, surfing through pmbrowser.info or nodalpoint could submit their paper published on their personal website. And when a user searches for their article at either pmbrowser.info or nodalpoint, the URL to that paper is returned along with all the other information that PubMed supplies. Heck, an even simpler hack would have the author submit the URL as the first comment in the forum -- thus allowing each subsequent reader to be able to read the paper in its original form (and more if the author wishes) and then allowing a public forum for online commentary in the same place!
I would definitely like to hear your thoughts on this proposal. As a matter of fact, if you need help hacking up the module to implement this service on your site, let me know.
Posted by johnvu at May 13, 2003 12:24 PM
I just punched the air reading that penultimate paragraph. That's a great idea.
When I wrote this: http://www.pmbrowser.info/hublog/archives/000172.html I noted that *very few* of the publishers allowed reprints (rather than pre- or post-prints) to be made available in central archives. As you point out though, quite a few of them do allow papers to be made available on the author's own site, with attribution (full list here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm )
One problem - how do you know it's a link to the author's website, and not an unauthorised copy of the paper. I could set this up right away in HubMed, but will a disclaimer of liability for outgoing links be enough to pass the responsibility for copyright clearance to the person posting the link?
This is a cool work-around to the whole journal copyright/access issues, well done. The figures on the journal numbers (roughly %50) allow for self archiving. As to the url publishing service, it doesn't sound hard to implement and could be very useful.
I don't think you can get around the problem of link authenticity to easily. One solution that comes to mind is to have paper authors provide pgp signed copies of of the papers. Or submit their links using their pgp key ?
Posted by: Greg Tyrelle on May 14, 2003 05:40 AMThe pgp suggestion sounds interesting. I was thinking about this issue of authenticity of the URL and another thought came to mind.
For this idea to work, we have to be good "sneezers" (see http://ezine-tips.com/list-tips/list-promotion/20000824.shtml to see what I mean). There has to be a strong grassroots effort to entice/coerce/convince authors that putting their papers on a personal website and announcing this URL to others is a beneficial action. Why did this thought come to mind when I was thinking about authenticity? Well, just about all new published papers have on the first page a corresponding author listed with his/her email and other contact information. The site developers of HubMed and Nodalpoint (I'm assuming alf and Greg?) could develop a standard letter that can be sent to the corresponding author touting the benefits of having an easily accessible paper online (cite the Holcombe and Eagleman letter and the Lawrence paper that demonstrated that freely available online articles are cited more often). If the author replies using the email listed in the paper as the correspondence email, this partially satisfies the authenticity issue -- i.e. the correspondence is probably valid.
Back to the grassroots effort issue. Let's say I was searching through HubMed, and found a paper that I really liked to read or discuss (a paper not my own). As a user, I can take the initiative to ask the corresponding author to put the paper up on a personal website, by using the standard letter that HubMed developed (assuming that it will be written -- of course, the entire community can have a hand at writing it). This is a simple way of marketing the discussion boards, while at the same time it can increase the number of available papers (win-win situation for just about everyone). Eventually, if usage meets a certain threshold, then the issue of authenticity will have to be revisited and addressed to ensure that those authors who are not directly solicited are truly one of the listed authors on the paper. Am I making any sense? Just trying to throw some ideas and thoughts out there.
Posted by: John Vu on May 14, 2003 12:33 PMI've started a wiki page for a standard letter here: http://www.pmbrowser.info/wiki.pl?Author_PDF_Request
If you'd like to make some contributions and corrections, please hack away as you see fit.
Posted by: alf on May 20, 2003 11:12 PM