Open Access News

For centuries, journals have been the means both of disseminating scientific knowledge and building scientific careers. Accordingly, the journals atop the hierarchy draw the highest-quality submissions, which reinforces their lofty reputations, which in turn enhances the status of the scientists who publish there. This positive feedback loop puts the power in the hands of the journals, even though their existence depends entirely on the scientists who write, edit, and serve as reviewers, usually without compensation. Meanwhile, their colleagues can gain access only through subscriptions that their institutions pay for, sometimes dearly. (A yearly subscription to Brain Research, for instance, costs more than $20,000.) Worse, most of the public – scientists in developing countries, faculty and students in underfunded colleges, high schoolers, patients – have no access at all, even though taxes fund the government grants that support much of the research. Varmus asks: Shouldn’t this ancient system have changed with the Internet, which allows information to be disseminated cheaply and immediately searched, mined, archived, reviewed, and improved?...

“Our mission [at PLoS] is to transform how science publishing is done,” Varmus says. “We aren’t trying to torpedo the industry. But we are definitely going to change it.”...

Varmus is gratified that PLoS has established itself so quickly, but he’s frustrated at how slowly the scientific community is embracing his ideals. On the positive side, more scientists are sharing their work through listservs, preprint archives, and other informal networks that can be easily accessed through new searching and sorting tools like Google Scholar. On the other hand, the scientists at elite universities who can put the most pressure on the journals to change their policies have the least immediate incentive to do so, since they already have access to most of what they require through the subscriptions paid by their institutional libraries. Varmus also acknowledges that it’s easier for a scientist at his exalted level to call for career sacrifices, and things like boycotts, than it is for those still in the trenches to respond.

Behind Varmus’ office desk is a blowup of a photo taken 30 years ago of him paddling a raft down Wind River Country in Wyoming. He wears a fishing vest, his beard is bushy and wild, and he looks ecstatically happy. The picture was shot after his Nobel-worthy work with Michael Bishop appeared in Nature.  “I’d like to think that if I could do it over again, I would publish it in an open-access journal,” he says - adding, however, that he knows the thrill of appearing in the most prestigious journal. “The change will come when scientists understand that they are in control. The publishers need us more than we need them.”

Update. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a short summary of the Wired article in its June 5 issue (accessible only to subscribers).