What if we could turn medical journals into essential tools of knowledge, without discriminating those who could not afford access?...In some ways, they couldn’t be less alike, the medical physicist and the radiologist. But Prof Ng Kwan Hoong and Assoc Prof Dr Basri J. J. Abdullah are definitely on the same wavelength when it comes to starting revolutions. Their brainchild, the Biomedical Imaging and Intervention Journal, is poised to challenge the traditional norms of academic journal publishing by breaking down the invisible barriers of access, as well as creating a new experience in journal-reading. A multidisciplinary, open access, fully online journal, the BIIJ caters to all disciplines involved in medical imaging. It is freely accessible by anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and an interest in the field of medical imaging....“Traditionally, print journals are very expensive. A one-year subscription, for six issues a year, can go up to US$10,000 (RM37,700),” says medical physicist Prof Ng, one of the two honorary editors of the journal along with Dr Basri. When subscription fees are so prohibitive that not even universities and libraries are able to afford it, a lot of academicians and professionals in the field are left out in the cold. “What’s happening now is that if you don’t have the money, you can’t subscribe to these journals and you don’t have access to such information,” says Dr Basri, a consultant radiologist. “Knowledge is supposed to be free for all,” Prof Ng asserts. Is he being idealistic? Or merely reinforcing the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which arose from a meeting convened in December 2001 as an international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the Internet? It is more likely to be the latter, which has been the driving force behind this project....BIIJ goes one step beyond the usual PDF version and takes full advantage of the Internet’s multimedia capabilities, such as audio, video, animation, and simulation. "In an article, we could have lots of images or movies. For example, in an article about ultrasound in obstetrics, we can see a video of the baby moving,” Prof Ng describes. Static photographs and diagrams are becoming passé, particularly in the field of imaging, where “we are moving more into 3-D, real-time (images) – not just taking an x-ray – because that’s where the diagnostic information is,” he adds. To further exploit the potential of multimedia, BIIJ also has a Resources section that contains recorded presentations from meetings, as well as teaching materials.
An unsigned story in the same issue of the Malaysian Star gives more background on the BOAI. Excerpt:
The initiative defines “open access” [to research literature] as “its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.” The initiative has been signed by 3,863 individuals and 326 organisations, and a growing number of individuals and organisations from around the world who represent researchers, universities, laboratories, libraries, foundations, journals, publishers, learned societies, and kindred open-access initiatives. Other initiatives supporting the open access movement include the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the UN World Summit on the Information Society Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Declaration on Access to Research Data From Public Funding. Thanks to these initiatives, there is now a growing number of open access journals in all academic disciplines, from astronomy to zoology [PS: as well as a growing number of OA repositories]. Search for these journals at the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/30/2005 09:23:00 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.
