EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE

OPEN ACCESS: IMPLICATIONS FOR EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE

Author: Barbara A. Epstein, MSLS, Pittsburgh, Pa Section Editor: Lisa Marie Bernardo, PhD, MPH, RN

ave you ever read an abstract for the perfect research article, only to find that you have no access to the article? Frustrating, right? You imagine a world in which articles describing research results were freely available on the Internet. You wouldnt have to bother with journal subscriptions, license restrictions for electronic resources, or interlibrary loan requests. Emergency nurses, health professionals, and students from remote or economically deprived areas would have ready access to the same evidence-based information available in the most advanced medical centers. This is the premiseand the promiseof open access publishing. In an article in Library Journal, Van Orsdel and Born comment, [Open access] has been touted as the liberator of information that wants to be free, the arbiter of shared intellectual property rights, and an engine that can drive discovery, invention, cures and economies. It has also been vilified as an assault on capitalism, a catalyst for the collapse of responsible publishing and the rise of junk science, and a nave invention of some pointy-headed idealists who have no idea how the real world works.1 Open access is a new model for dissemination of royalty-free information, defined as information produced by scholars without expectation of payment. Open access journals are digital, online, and free of charge to readers. There are no price barriers, such as fees for subscriptions, licenses, or pay-per-view. While authors must be properly acknowledged and cited, most copyright and licensing restrictions are removed, permitting users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. While the concept of free distribution of information is not new, interest in open access publishing gained support in the 1990s, prompted by the realization that the
Barbara A. Epstein is Director, Health Sciences Library System, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. For correspondence, write: Barbara A. Epstein, MSLS, 200 Scaife Hall, 3550 Terrace St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; E-mail: bepstein@pitt.edu. J Emerg Nurs 2008;34:561-3. Available online 6 September 2008. 0099-1767/$34.00 Copyright 2008 by the Emergency Nurses Association. doi: 10.1016/j.jen.2008.07.009

rapidly expanding Internet had the ability to deliver information instantaneously to anyone with a computer and a network connection. As the Internet grew, journal publishing migrated from print to electronic format, broadening access for authorized users who no longer had to visit the library to find articles, while limiting access for the unaffiliated and the general public. Even as users appetite for information was expanding, mergers and acquisitions among publishers of scholarly journals reduced competition and led to annual inflation rates of 8% to 10%, forcing libraries and individuals to curtail journal subscriptions, particularly in the sciences. Pricing models for electronic journals often are based on the size of the institution and bundled packages, rather than the single copy subscription model from the older print world. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; www. doaj.org) lists free, full-text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in all subjects and languages that do not charge readers or their institutions for access. On July 8, 2008, DOAJ listed 3487 journals, with 1185 of these journals searchable at the article level. There were 344 titles in Biology and Life Sciences and 1037 titles in Health Sciences, including 24 in Nursing. The quality ranges from prestigious titles such as Public Library of Science and BMJ to lesser-known journals from developing countries hoping to find a global audience. Not surprisingly, open access publishing has generated intense controversy. Publishers are protective of their income stream and point to the value they add by organizing the peer review and publishing processes, investing in software and hardware to distribute their product, and marketing their brands. Authors and editors provide labor and intellectual content for little or no compensation. Libraries have almost no control over rising costs and are caught between users demand for information and their own shrinking budgets. Scholarly societies are hesitant to embrace open access, because they often derive substantial income from their non-profit publishing operations, allowing them to provide more member benefits and avoid raising membership fees. And a growing consumer movement argues that because a substantial amount of research is governmentfunded, taxpayers should have not have to pay twice for access to the results of publicly funded research.

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TABLE

Helpful information resources

Web site Description

SPARCs Web site is a primary source of up-to-the-minute information about all aspects of scholarly publishing, including information about open access and authors rights; SPARC is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Action by SPARC in collaboration with stakeholdersincluding authors, publishers, and librariesbuilds on the unprecedented opportunities created by the networked digital environment to advance the conduct of scholarship The Open Access Toolkit of the Association of This Web site has links to information concerning key issues and initiatives Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL); surrounding the process of scholarly communication; these include legislawww.usc.edu/hsc/nml/aahsl/open_access_toolkit tion, copyright, management of authors rights, and position papers and newsletters concerning open access National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access; This Web site has full information about the NIH Public Access policy, inhttp://publicaccess.nih.gov/ cluding how to comply, instructions for authors to submit manuscripts, and a list of journals that will submit the final published articles without author involvement; the Frequently Asked Questions section is particularly helpful Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC); www.arl.org/sparc/

Economic Models: Who Pays the Bills?

Publishing a scholarly journal is expensive, even if the costs of maintaining subscriber lists and producing and distributing print copies are eliminated. Creating and managing digital information is labor intensive, requiring well-designed Web sites and navigational aids, high-quality hardware, stable network connections, and reliable archiving. A variety of economic models support open access publishing in the absence of subscription income. The most widely known economic model is authorpay, in which authors of accepted articles pay the costs for editing and distribution from research grants, institutional funds, or personal resources. Author charges can be thousands of dollars, although many publishers will reduce or waive fees for those who can prove they are unable to pay. Some funding agencies, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will provide supplemental funding to support open access fees, while the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) may allow grantees to use existing grant funds for this purpose. If the author-pay model becomes widespread, however, it could unfairly burden the largest research universities with payment of millions of dollars in author fees. Other open access journals employ a subsidized model, receiving support from institutions, universities, societies, and foundations. Others offer membership programs with discounted fees for authors from member institutions. Many open access journals use a hybrid model, charging

subscription fees for current information and offering free access after a specified embargo period. Still others provide open access only to articles reporting on groundbreaking research. Most open access titles use some combination of all of these models. A sustainable economic model to support open access publishing has not yet emerged.
U.S. National Institutes of Health: Public Access Policy

On December 26, 2007, the U.S. President signed into law a requirement that all reports of research funded by NIH must be publicly available within 12 months of journal publication. Researchers must deposit electronic copies of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts, including graphics and supplemental materials, into Pubmed Central (PMC), the online archive of the National Library of Medicine. Note that this policy is titled Public Access rather than Open Access. Literature considered to be open access is not only free of charge but also free of most copyright restrictions. While articles in PMC are accessible at no cost, they are still subject to the restrictions of U.S. copyright law and thus are not truly open access. The NIH policy applies to all articles accepted for publication after April 7, 2008. Because NIH calculates that approximately 80,000 articles published each year report on its funded research, this new mandate will dramatically increase the amount of research literature available through open access. The full impact of the policy will not be felt until the second quarter of 2009, when the first

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articles are released for access in PMC after the allowable12-month embargo period. It is clear that the open access movement is revolutionizing the staid world of scholarly publishing. The Table lists helpful information resources for learning more about open access and its impact on scholarship. The predictable, well-understood, and dependable system of information distribution is being buffeted by changing economic models and user demand for ubiquitous electronic access. Traditional publishing and open access will likely co-exist for some time. But it is clear that you, as well as your emergency nurse colleagues, students, and scholars, will

enjoy expanded opportunities for access to information in the future.

REFERENCE
1. Van Orsdel LC, Born K. Embracing openness. Library J 2008 Apr 15;53.

Submissions to this column are welcomed and encouraged. Submissions may be sent to: Lisa Marie Bernardo, PhD, MPH, RN LBE100@pitt.edu

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