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E-biomed
Dateline: 08/02/99
By Alan Bruzel
Science has availed itself of the newest technologies – telescope, microscope, chromatograph, cyclotron – and research has benefited as a result. No such technological revolution has visited scientific data publishing, until now.
Harold Varmus, director of the US National Institutes of Health, has thrown down the gauntlet to publishers of traditional print journals in his May 5, 1999, proposal for E-biomed: a freely accessible Internet publishing site for scientific research papers.
Like e-print – the Web site hosting preprints for the physics research community – E-biomed promises access to the latest discoveries, hypotheses, and commentaries from worldwide laboratories. Its special province will be, understandably, biology and medicine, but a similar approach to chemistry research publications must be anticipated.
The proposed E-biomed site differs from most current print and online journals in several aspects. Retrieving all archived information will be free of charge; page charges may be required from those submitting papers. Submitted articles may be either routed to a yet-to-be-named Governing Board for peer review, or immediately posted with only an appraisal for appropriateness. Copyright is retained by the authors.
Publishers of scholarly work are apprehensive of the powers wielded by the proposed Governing Board, the public's ability to draw educated conclusions from readily accessible clinical data, and the implications of transferring repositories of scientific knowledge from the private sector to a site coordinated by the US government.
Some critics have taken Varmus's admission that printed material "has served the scientific community well for over 300 years" as a reason for maintaining the status quo. The truth is that printed journals have not served the community "well"; they have survived simply due to the absence of a better way. It is time to leave behind outmoded publishing techniques and accept electronic methods of communicating scientific data. If the current suppliers of technical literature are slow in moving toward the goals outlined by Harold Varmus, then they should not be surprised by the diminution of their market by a government-sponsored enterprise.
Recommended Web resources for additional information:
APS Commentary on E-biomed
American Physiological Society lists its objections to E-biomed proposal.
Comments on E-biomed
National Institutes of Health site provides a page for comments by supporters and
detractors of the proposed E-biomed initiative.
Critics Query Financing
of Proposed 'E-biomed'
Global E-journal Must Take
Radical Approach
Short critical pieces from the Society for Scholarly Publishing.
E-biomed: A
Proposal for Electronic Publications in the Biomedical Sciences
May 5, 1999 draft and June 20, 1999 addendum by Harold Varmus, National Institutes of
Health.
e-print
Electronic archive for submitting and retrieving technical reports in physics,
mathematics, and related areas. From the Los Alamos National Laboratory, US Department of
Energy.
Mixed Response to NIH Plan for Global
Biomed Web Journal
Nature reports input of some scientific publishing houses to E-biomed debate.
NIH "E-biomed"
Proposal
New England Journal of Medicine editorial by Arnold S. Relman views E-biomed as
an unacceptable publishing tool for clinical medicine research.
Varmus Pushes Hard
for E-biomed
Article by Madeleine Jacobs in Chemical & Engineering News describes reaction
of chemistry (and science) publishing community to E-biomed proposal.
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