Open Access to medical research for lay readers
"Ray Corrigan has posted a draft book chapter to his blog on the subject of OA to medical information. He welcomes comments. Excerpt by Peter Suber OA News Blog (28 February 2006):
"In 1998 the British Medical Journal (BMJ), based on the principle of facilitating free and unrestricted access to scientific information, decided to make the entire contents of the journal freely available on the Internet. By January 2005, due to a drop in income, the journal partly reversed that decision, making some of the contents accessible online only to paying subscribers, though many elements of the journal such as a selection of research articles remained freely available at bmj.com. In February 2006, the BMJ published the results of a survey ‘To determine whether free access to research articles on bmj.com is an important factor in authors' decisions on whether to submit to the BMJ, whether the introduction of access controls to part of the BMJ's content has influenced authors' perceptions of the journal, and whether the introduction of further access controls would influence authors' perceptions.’ It was a relatively small survey with a little over 200 authors participating but the results suggested free online access was important to a large majority (75%) of them, so the publishers agreed to retain their partial open access policy for the time being. Other important medical journals, like The Lancet, only provide online access to paying subscribers... So is putting complex personal healthcare decisions in the hands of the individual a good idea?... What about if I have a bit more time to do some research and find out a bit more about say an ongoing chronic condition? A friend of mine with a hip complaint went to great lengths to research his condition and ended up impressing his doctor with the depth of his knowledge on the subject. But supposing the materials he read had not been as freely available as they had been and he had to pay The Lancet, the BMJ and hundreds of other sources a hefty fee for each article he read, would he have had the ability to make the decisions he did about his treatment? Doctors could justifiably claim that most lay people are insufficiently well trained to understand even the language of medics or the reliability of the sources, especially on the Internet, from which we might derive much of this medical ‘information.’ And if the truly reliable peer reviewed sources like the BMJ do gradually move towards a subscription only service, where is the average patient going to get access to important medical information required to make informed healthcare choices?"
"In 1998 the British Medical Journal (BMJ), based on the principle of facilitating free and unrestricted access to scientific information, decided to make the entire contents of the journal freely available on the Internet. By January 2005, due to a drop in income, the journal partly reversed that decision, making some of the contents accessible online only to paying subscribers, though many elements of the journal such as a selection of research articles remained freely available at bmj.com. In February 2006, the BMJ published the results of a survey ‘To determine whether free access to research articles on bmj.com is an important factor in authors' decisions on whether to submit to the BMJ, whether the introduction of access controls to part of the BMJ's content has influenced authors' perceptions of the journal, and whether the introduction of further access controls would influence authors' perceptions.’ It was a relatively small survey with a little over 200 authors participating but the results suggested free online access was important to a large majority (75%) of them, so the publishers agreed to retain their partial open access policy for the time being. Other important medical journals, like The Lancet, only provide online access to paying subscribers... So is putting complex personal healthcare decisions in the hands of the individual a good idea?... What about if I have a bit more time to do some research and find out a bit more about say an ongoing chronic condition? A friend of mine with a hip complaint went to great lengths to research his condition and ended up impressing his doctor with the depth of his knowledge on the subject. But supposing the materials he read had not been as freely available as they had been and he had to pay The Lancet, the BMJ and hundreds of other sources a hefty fee for each article he read, would he have had the ability to make the decisions he did about his treatment? Doctors could justifiably claim that most lay people are insufficiently well trained to understand even the language of medics or the reliability of the sources, especially on the Internet, from which we might derive much of this medical ‘information.’ And if the truly reliable peer reviewed sources like the BMJ do gradually move towards a subscription only service, where is the average patient going to get access to important medical information required to make informed healthcare choices?"
posted by Israel Scholar | 1.3.06
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