Science leaders advocate measured progress on open access to the scientific literature

New York Times op-ed conflating the value of scientists’ manuscripts with that of the vetted, edited, published, and archived articles that ultimately appear in journals. Now the Times has presented responses from Jeffrey M. Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and from Gene D. Sprouse and Joseph W. Serene, the editor-in-chief and treasurer-publisher, respectively, of the American Physical Society.

Both letters note the importance of widening the public’s access to the scientific literature. Drazen writes that his journal “has for more than a decade provided all its research articles (not just those financed by the federal government) free to the public after six months.” The APS authors report that their organization “feels strongly that the public should have access to all of the physics research” that APS publishes and that APS allows “public libraries access to every paper we have ever published, beginning in 1893, for free use by anyone in the library.”

But both letters also emphasize the actual costs of transforming raw manuscripts. Drazen objects that Eisen “understates the value added to medical research articles by journals such as” Drazen’s, and declares peer review “invaluable in selecting the highest impact medical research and improving its quality before publication.” He adds, “There is also important value added by our staff editors, statisticians and graphic designers, among others.”

Sprouse and Serene charge that “Eisen’s implication that the peer review process is essentially free is not correct” and note that the “management of the peer review process for [their] 10 large journals requires 50 full-time professional editors with a Ph.D. in physics.” They write, “We need to sell low-cost subscriptions to pay for the peer review process and to publish excellent journals that serve the worldwide scientific community.” After adding that APS also has “three journals whose costs are explicitly paid for by article-processing charges” and that “these journals are open access and freely available,” they assert that scientific societies “play an important role as low-cost publishers.”

Eisen’s op-ed opposed the Research Works Act, a bill in Congress that would roll back the federal open-access policy for articles based on research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Drazen’s organization takes no position on the bill. The APS authors say they “do not support” it.

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.