Open Access News

A group of 46 senior scientists accused the Royal Society this week of putting its own considerations above those of science by adopting a negative stance on the issue of open access publishing, in which scientific literature is made freely available via the Internet. The letter-writers argue that the Royal Society is disparaging open access to protect the interests of for-profit publishers – including the Royal Society itself -- while the Society accuses petitioners of harbouring their own conflict of interest....A spokesman for the Royal Society, which currently has 1274 Fellows, told The Scientist that the scientists' letter had been organized by BioMed Central (BMC), an open access publisher (and sister company to The Scientist). "We feel that is a piece of information that people should be aware of," he said. The spokesman noted that neither the letter nor the BioMed Central Web site made it clear that the publisher was behind the letter. The Royal Society has written to all letter signatories to point out this fact, he said. A spokeswoman for BioMed Central told The Scientist there was "no secret" the organization was involved. She said that the idea to coordinate the letter had emerged from widespread dissatisfaction among Fellows and the research community. In response, BMC and another open access publisher, Public Library of Science (PLoS), agreed to jointly coordinate the letter. BioMed Central drafted the letter, contacted some of the signatories and established the Web site where the letter is posted, the spokeswoman said. Robin Lovell-Badge, a researcher at the National Institute for Medical Research in the UK and signatory to the letter, told The Scientist he was contacted about the letter by Harold Varmus, Nobel laureate, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and co-founder of PLoS. Lovell-Badge said he hadn't been aware that the letter was coordinated by the publishers, but knowing so makes no difference. "In fact it's rather insulting to [suggest] that I've been manipulated by BioMed Central, because I haven't." He added that science is "moving forward and the Royal Society will have to change or they'll be left behind."

(PS: Note this correction from Matt Cockerill. "Just to correct one minor factual error: the initial draft of the letter actually came from PLoS, not BioMed Central. It then went through redrafting involving input and changes from BioMed Central and from several FRSs.")