Future e-access to the primary literature

Scout Report Selection
introduction (full text)
The topic of this Nature forum — the impact of the Web on the publishing of the results of original research — has, since the emergence of the Internet, filled volumes in the reports of conference proceedings and reams of individual articles. The main aim of this forum is to bring some of the substance of this Brownian motion of Internet issues to a broader grassroots audience and debate the implications for the future dissemination of scientific information. We have invited leading representatives of the main groups of stakeholders and observers from the mainstream Internet industries to express their views in 1,000-word articles. We hope to help identify some of the best opportunities offered by the Internet, and explore what the best public and private strategies might be, in economic and other terms, to ensure that science reaps the most benefits.

Declan Butler, European correspondent & Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature (5 April 2001)
(view full text of introduction)

From Nature 14th February:

Soros offers open access to science papers
Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature

The 15% solution for majority health concerns
David A. Shaywitz & Dennis A. Ausiello

From Nature 6th September:

The future of the electronic scientific literature
Opinion, Nature

From Nature 16nd August:

E-optimism on a tide of red ink
Opinion, Nature

From Nature 2nd August:

Public library set to turn publisher as boycott looms
Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature

From Nature 5th July:

Los Alamos loses physics archive as preprint pioneer heads east
Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature

From Nature 28th June:

Defending tax-funded navigation
Opinion, Nature

Budget proposal casts doubt over physics portal's future
Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature

latest contributions

18 October 2001
Lessons for the future of journals
Carol Tenopir & Donald W. King,
School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee
& School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

18 October 2001
The best and worst of times
David R. Worloc, Chariman, Electronic Publishing Services Ltd

18 September 2001
A view from the news industry
David Allen, Managing Director, International Press Telecommunications Council

18 September 2001
The Public Library of Science and the ongoing revolution in scholarly communication
Andrew Odlyzko, Director, Digital Technology Center, University of Minnesota

18 September 2001
Higher education needs may determine the future of scientific e-publishing
Hans E. Roosendaal et al. University of Twente, Netherlands

the points of view of:
the public library of science
Public Library of Science Open Letter
librarians
Higher education needs may determine the future of scientific e-publishing
Hans E. Roosendaal et al. University of Twente, Netherlands
(18 September 2001)
Evolution and scientific literature: towards a decentralized adaptive web
Rick Luce, director, Research Library of Los Alamos National Laboratory
(10 May 2001)
What price 'free'?
Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian, Yale University
(5 April 2001)
not-for-profit science publishers
When allegory replaces rational thought, science had better watch out
Richard T. Kaser, Former Executive Director, National Federation of Abstracting & Information Services
(18 September 2001)
No Free Lunch!
Martin Frank, Executive Director, American Physiological Society
(20 August 2001)
Whither competition?
Richard K. Johnson, Enterprise Director, SPARC
(15 June 2001)
Authors willing to pay for instant web access
Thomas J. Walker, Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Florida.
(31 May 2001)
Innovation and service in scientific publishing requires more, not less, competition
Michael Keller, Publisher, HighWire Press
(25 May 2001)
Electronic access to journals: the views of the American Physical Society
Martin Blume, Editor-in-Chief, The American Physical Society
(12 April 2001)
Boycott!
Frank Gannon, Executive Director, European Molecular Biology Organization
(5 April 2001)
Setting Logical Priorities
Ira Mellman, Editor of The Journal of Cell Biology
(5 April 2001)
Impacts of free access
Martin Richardson, Journals Publishing Director, Oxford University Press
(5 April 2001)
Position statement by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Robert D. Wells, President, ASBMB, and Herbert Tabor, Editor, J. Biol. Chem.
(5 April 2001)
for-profit science publishers
Digital archives: how we can provide access to ‘old’ biomedical information
Richard R. Rowe, Chairman, RoweCom.
(14 August 2001)
Information access: what is to be done?
Robert Campbell, President, Blackwell Science Ltd
(27 April 2001)
Content and context in one service, tailored to meet the needs of scientists
Derk Haank, CEO, Elsevier Science
(5 April 2001)
databases & repositories
Evolution and revolution: pragmatism versus dogmatism
Ed Pentz, Executive Director, Publishers International Linking Association
(28 August 2001)
Tailoring access to the source: preprints, grey literature and journal articles
Walter Warnick, Director, The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), US Department of Energy
(3 May 2001)
The self-archiving initiative
Stevan Harnad, Intelligence/Agents/Multimedia Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
(26 April 2001)
GenBank - a model community resource?
Jo McEntyre & David J. Lipman, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
(5 April 2001)
E-Biosci: a European approach to handling biological information
Les Grivell, Director, E-Biosci
(5 April 2001)
PubMed Central decides to decentralize
Edwin Sequeira, Johanna McEntyre & David Lipman, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
(5 April 2001)
technology developers
Text markup and the cost of access
Jon Bosak, Sun Microsystems
(28 August 2001)
Distributed and centralized technologies: complementary tools to build a permanent digital archive
Matt Cockerill, Technical Director, BioMed Central Limited
(28 August 2001)
Scientific publishing on the 'semantic web'
Tim Berners-Lee — the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — and James Hendler — Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, and responsible for research on agent-based computing at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
(12 April 2001)
scientists
Healthy warning: "This journal supports full text, tariff-free archives"
Colin Hopkins, Professor of Molecular Cell Biology, Imperial College, London, UK

(18 September 2001)

Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact
Steve Lawrence, NEC Research Institute.

(31 May 2001)

Blurring the boundaries between the scientific 'papers' and biological databases
Mark Gerstein & Jochen Junker, Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry Department, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520
(7 May 2001)
Should the scientific literature be privately owned and controlled?
Michael Eisen & Pat Brown, Public Library of Science
(4 May 2001)
observers from other sectors
A view from the news industry
David Allen, Managing Director, International Press Telecommunications Council
(18 September 2001).
The Public Library of Science and the ongoing revolution in scholarly communication
Andrew Odlyzko, Director, Digital Technology Center, University of Minnesota
(18 September 2001).
Science must ‘push copyright aside’
Richard Stallman, , founder of the GNU project
(8 June 2001).
Information wants to be valuable
Tim O'Reilly, founder and president of O'Reilly & Associates.
(18 May 2001).
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Feedback from the public is now available
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Coming soon:

Librarians
Dale Flecker, Associate Director for Planning and Systems, Harvard University Library
Tom Sanville, Executive Director, Ohiolink

for profit science publishers
Eamon T. Fennessy, Chairman and CEO of The Copyright Group, Inc.
Fiona Godlee, Peter Newmark, and Matthew Cockerill, Biomed Central Limited

not for profit science publishers
John R. Inglis, Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Stuart Weibel, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

databases and repositories
Amos Bairoch, cofounder of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and GeneBio
(Geneva Bioinformatics SA)
Harold Abelson, (MIT OpenCourseWare project), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

technology developers
Russ Altmann, Stanford Medical Informatics, Stanford University Medical Center, and President, International Society for Computational Biology
Lawrence Hunter, Director, Center for Computational Pharmacology, University of Colorado

scientists
Bruce Stillman, Director and CEO, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

observers from other sectors
Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley, and a leading economist on the 'new economy'