EHP is one of the premier academic peer reviewed journals in the world. It ranks second among 132 environmental science journals, and fifth among ninety public environmental and occupational health journals. If it were considered among the general medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, it would rank tenth. Early signs indicate that this year, all those rankings are likely to increase. Its value and uniqueness stem, in large part, from its status as a publicly managed journal. For example, EHP's independence directly enhances the quality of the work it publishes. Their conflict of interest policy is among the strictest of peer-reviewed journals. Such a policy might be compromised if the journal was privately published. In addition, its public funding source allows it to be an open access journal, which means anyone with Internet access can get any EHP article 24 hours after it is accepted for publication. That is essential because the vast majority of published research is available only through increasingly costly journal subscriptions, institutional license fees, or per-article purchases. This closed system leaves the American public -- including physicians, public health professionals, patients and patient groups, students, teachers, librarians and scientists at academic institutions, hospitals, research laboratories, and corporate research centers -- under-informed about important, timely research results they helped finance....Privatizing EHP is unnecessary and unwise. It would yield miniscule cost savings while exacting a large cost to public health.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/19/2005 12:12:00 PM.
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.
