Open Access: Original Research Powers Your Choices
Not everyone has the time or even wants to slog through research reports to find out where the cutting edge of medical research is taking us. However, often enough we find ourselves needing to make a decision, or wanting to make a change, that we need to feel really sure about. That’s when we want to read the research. A fresh wind of generosity, of open access to information, is blowing open what used to be the closed doors of science. Open Access is a new model of independent publishing that makes research available to everyone.
| The traditional business model for scientific publishers depends on limiting access to published research. This model requires the information be sold, to pay for the costs of the publication process. Digital technologies have completely changed the cost of publication. The old business model is good for the information sellers, but is not in the best interests of research authors, or the institutions that pay for the research to be done. It is not good for the scientific community as a whole and most importantly, it is not good for you. The public needs open access to information, to be able to be fully functional partners in health care decisions. BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com) is one such independent publishing house committed to providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed biomedical research. PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), the internet arm of the National Institutes for Health, is another easy to use service. The open access publishing model treats publication of study results as the last phase of the research process. Article processing charges (APCs) cover the cost of the publication process, allowing free and immediate access to the research articles. APCs make sure you can see who is paying for what and make your own judgments about how valuable the study is to you, based on who paid for the information to be produced. This also requires that publishers compete to provide the best service at the best price.While we should all read carefully and critically, there is no doubt that professional expertise is essential to the quality of research. Peer review- that is, a critical examination of a researchers ideas and methods by fellow scientists- is a basic requirement for good research. Open access systems will let you examine their peer review policy. Many traditional scientific journals operate traditional anonymous peer review; the authors and the reading public do not know who decided how valuable a particular paper is and thus whether you even get to see it. “Open peer review”, in which reviewers are asked to sign their reviews, is the new, preferred method. You get to decide how useful the reviewers opinions may be. If the reviewers of research saying a new drug is great also happen to work for the drug company that will profit from selling the drug, you’ll keep that fact in mind when deciding to use that drug or not.
Freely distributed research articles made available by open access publishers is a wonderfully positive development in the scientific community; it links the work of research to the heart of why research exists at all- to ask questions and design solutions for the best ways humans beings can live positive, creative contributing lives. |
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