The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) refers to a movement started around the '90s to guarantee free access to scientific information by removing the barriers to research results, especially those related to the ever increasing journal subscription prices. This new paradigm has reshaped the scholarly communication system and is closely connected to the build up of institutional repositories (IRs) conceived to the benefit of scientists and research bodies as a means to keep possession of their own literary production. The IRs are high-value tools which permit authors to gain visibility by enabling rapid access to scientific material (not only publications) thus increasing impact (citation rate) and permitting a multidimensional assessment of research findings.Scientific Institutes for Research, Hospitalization and Health Care (IRCCS) of the oncology area within the Italian National Health Service . They were asked to respond to a questionnaire intended to collect data about institutional archives, metadata formats and posting of full-text documents. The enquiry concerned also the perceived role of the institutional repository DSpace ISS, built up by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) and based on a XML scheme for encoding metadata. Such a repository aims at acting as a unique reference point for the biomedical information produced by the Italian research institutions. An in-depth analysis has also been performed on the collection of information material addressed to patients produced by the institutions surveyed.A survey was conducted in March 2010 to mainly explore the managing system in use for archiving the research finding adopted by the Italian The survey respondents were 6 out of 9. The results reveal the use of different practices and standard among the institutions concerning: the type of documentation collected, the software adopted, the use and format of metadata and the conditions of accessibility to the IRs.research institutions in the field of oncology are moving the first steps towards the philosophy of OA. The main effort should be the implementation of common procedures also in order to connect scientific publications to researchers curricula. In this framework, an important effort is represented by the project of ISS aimed to set a common interface able to allow migration of data from partner institutions to the OA compliant repository DSpace ISS.The Italian  Publishing exists to support research; research does not exist to support publishing"- Derek Law ["erek Law Science publishing definitely represents a big deal. Market forecast in this field predicts millions of print and electronic journals as well as millions of customers, research staff, health personnel and public at large seeking for quality of health information. This generates a huge yearly turnover for commercial publishers. According to some studies carried out in the United States and cited by Danilo Di Diodoro , health What is a scientist supposed to do once his/her paper has been published in a journal? He/she, as the intellectual owner of his/her creative work, as well as the institution which has provided all the products and services required to support the scientist's work, are totally alienated from their own "creation". In contrast with all the laws regulating economy, the costs needed to product the goods are separated from profit. Not only the intellectual product is given away for free together with the all relating rights, but in many cases a journal may charge authors with publication fees. The assignment of copyright is required by 69% of publishers before the peer-review process, in which the publisher adds value to the scientific output. In this respect, it should be remembered that the referees too, in most cases, provide their advice for free. 15% of publishers even claim: "I reject your submission and do not grant permission to publish your work elsewhere". While 90% of publishers require the total assignment of rights, 6% claim for exclusive licenses and just 4% agree to subscribe for non-exclusive licenses .Brain research is considered, it should be noticed that the amount to be paid in 1983 was 2,100 US dollars, while currently the charged subscription is over 20,000 US dollars. These costs are particularly burdensome for the less developed countries [This means that neither the author nor the institution are allowed to make papers freely accessible online, for example, by posting it on their own website or in a digital repository. They cannot even provide copies of the work to students during a course and not even the authors can share the work among colleagues. In addition to that, every single part of the article (i. e. tables or figures) cannot be reused by the authors without the permission from the publisher. The only way for both the author and institution to get access to the work is represented by the payment of a high-cost subscription to the journal in which the article appears. In this regard, if the subscription to In the framework of the publishing process as a whole, is this organizing model still acceptable? In the Internet era the dissemination of scientific contents is mainly based on the use of online platforms superseding the strategy of commercial publishing used in the past to produce print journals and circulate them within the research community worldwide. At present, the innovative technologies of production and transmission of information in the net have generated models of scientific communication founded on the concept of free access to knowledge within a global context. In this regard, libraries, academies, learning societies and research institutions are increasingly committed to promote advocacy actions intended to gain free access to research findings - especially if resulted from publicly funded studies - beyond all types of barriers .This is the scenery in which the principles of open access publishing movement flourished. The scientific communication system starts to contrast the hegemony of commercial publishing and moves forward direct transmission of research results to the users (readers) by claiming free access to scientific knowledge, thus opening to a mechanism of disintermediation .Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder [Briefly, open access literature is commonly recognized as synonym of free and unrestricted online availability of contents. A concise, but effective definition of open access is given by Peter Suber in "A very brief introduction to open access": t-holder . The OA Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) launched in 2002 which represents a milestone of the open access movement. Other initiatives like the Bethesda Declaration and the Berlin Declaration in 2003 have occurred since the launch of the BOAI, all claiming free access to research output.There exist two complementary strategies to achieve open access to scholarly journal literature: self-archiving which refers to the deposit of journal articles by the same scholars in digital archives compliant to OA standards (OA green route); publishing on open access journals which are freely accessible online but usually charge publication fees to authors wishing to publish on them (OA golden route). Both routes are stated in the Open Access to science information: policies for the development of OA in Southern Europe [National Research Anagrafe; guarantee high quality standards of the OA journals; reduce the cost of publications by moving from the paper to the digital publishing; define common standard to facilitate the gathering and aggregation of metadata.More recent perspectives of the OA movement were discussed during the seminar held in Granada in May 2010, n Europe , attendeBerlin 8 Conference on Open Access held in Beijing in October 2010 and intended to implement OA strategies is about to be launched by OASIS (Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook) in 2011: The open access map [Moreover, a new service announced at the cess map  a world As far as Italy is concerned, an important breakthrough for the academic world was marked by the Messina Declaration, in 2004, the first institutional action on the part of the chancellors of the Italian universities in favour of OA. This event represented the starting point of an action towards the statement of policies requiring researchers to deposit their papers in institutional repositories and to publish research articles in OA journals.Italian wiki on open access [Open access in Italy [Open Access in Italy: report 2009 offering a wide overview on the ongoing projects and experiences [Among the most recent Italian initiatives aimed at promoting the OA philosophy, it is worth mentioning the launch in 2008 of the in Italy  while theriences .A decisive impulse to the unrestricted availability of research results (scientific publications and data sets) is represented by the OpenAIRE Project (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) . This PiAnother ongoing project centered on the strategy of linking experiences and innovations under the umbrella of OA access to quality health information is NECOBELAC (Network of Collaboration Between Europe & Latin American-Caribbean countries) ,13. Its Along with the spread of OA initiatives, some commercial publishers gradually realized that the traditional publishing system would have no chance of survival thus leading, sooner or later, to a financial crisis in scholarly publishing industry. Therefore some open-access publishing pioneers as BioMed Central (BMC) decided to adopt new market strategies as that of replacing subscription charges to scholarly journals with article publication charges. This implies that the author is recognized as the copyright owner in the published text, and the scientific works become quickly available online for all to read, download, print and distribute, provided that the work's integrity and the author's intellectual property is respected. BMC, along with many other OA publishers, has joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)  which haAnnals of Oncology, offer an hybrid model which, besides the usual subscription one, foresees the option to pay a supplementary fee in order for the author to maintain the ownership of the copyright in the published work.Some traditional publishers as Oxford University Press, which publishes Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving) [Journal Info [Many publishers have therefore been forced to give up under the pressure of the OA movement, thus allowing free self archiving of pre prints (author's manuscript version before peer review) together with post prints  even though in some cases a period of embargo from the publication date of an article is envisaged. Authors can check publishers' policies concerning conditions and restrictions for the self archiving of their papers by browsing the service RoMEO (chiving)  or Journnal Info . CurrentGuidelines on the establishing of academic institutional repositories [On the role of institutional repositories (IR) in pursuing the free and timely distribution of scientific information, it is worth mentioning the activity of the Conference of Chancellors of Italian Universities , through its Open Access Group acting within the Library Commission, which has recently established sitories .Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) [DOAR, Directory of Open Access Repositories [Ranking Web of World's Repositories [The issue concerning the institutional repositories is intimately related to the concept of free access to research results to increase visibility, impact and sharing of scientific information. Academic and research institutions worldwide increasingly adhere to the open access paradigm through the establishment of institutional repositories aimed to fully maximize the visibility of their research outputs. The two main tools collecting timely data on the number of such digital archives are the s (ROAR)  and Opensitories  respectisitories . The buisitories , are calInstitutional repositories, as digital containers of research output, have definitely to be conceived as strategic tools to manage, spread and preserve research information within an institution. They essentially work as stable windows online to timely show up the resources produced by the scientific community. In this respect, the awareness of researchers as authors and readers of scientific literature is fundamental, as each individual publication is by now, in the Internet era, part of a global information network. Repositories, in fact, nowadays often represent only means of performance appraisal used for the distribution of research funds. This perceived bias may generate suspicious about the real objective of such tools, that is to enhance the global access to scientific information.The institutional repositories built up to storage the scientific literary production of the research bodies in Italy are mainly intended for evaluation purposes in view of the annual activity report and for assigning funding to research investigations. They are not properly used, as they should be, for their characteristics of information richness meant to provide high visibility to the national scientific output and to enable to search for scientists competences and specializations. There should be a need for promoting these digital archives through governmental policies as they definitely represent fundamental tools for integrating free access scientific resources at national level. As far as the production of research literature in Italy, it should be considered that it is retrievable thanks to powerful indexing services as PubMed managed in the US. So there is great expectation regarding the development of digital archive dedicated to the Italian research in the field of public health. Such a realization may represent the solution to overcome the gap between Italy and other countries which can rely on already existing centralized services. ISS DSpace could permanently store and make accessible worldwide online the national scientific production.E-ms , Ilithia (Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma), Istituto Superiore di Sanità Digital Repository (DSpace ISS) and Open Archive Siena (OASi). No matches were found in the same period by launching a query in ROAR Advanced search by combining "Medicine" as subject and "Italy" as country, over 62 Italian repositories indexed by the Registry. DSpace ISS is indexed as Research Cross-Institutional under the class "Repository type" in ROAR. Anyway, leaving apart the results of the search by subject area that could be biased by the fact that the repositories set up by universities are multidisciplinary, the majority of them, sorted by "Italy", belong to universities and not to research institutions.As far as the existence of OA compliant repositories set up by biomedical research institutions in Italy, the scenario is still poor. A research performed on OpenDOAR, in December 2010, resulted in just four repositories managed by Italian institutions classified under "Health and Medicine", over 59 Italian repositories indexed by the Directory: Haematologica and Rare Tumors.The figures concerning the OA journals searched in DOAJ in the same period (December 2010) resulted in 63 journals ranked under "Oncology" of which just two titles resulted as issued by Italian publishers: Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (JECCR), founded in 1982. In 2008, in order to offer a more rational and cost-effective system for scientific communication, the JECCR became an open access online publication, published by BioMed Central (BMC). It, as already said, is an independent publishing house committed to providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed biomedical research and was chosen on the basis of its prestige as witnessed by over 180 online open access journals covering the whole of biology and medicine.The research community of oncologists in Italy take advantage of a recognized source represented by the official journal of the "Regina Elena" National Cancer Institute in Rome: the Moving from traditional printed copy to online editing, represented for the Journal a quantum leap in terms of: number of annual submissions (over 70%); rapid publication and higher visibility ; in particular the immediacy index (impact factor computed in the same year of publication) has grown from 0,048 in 2007, to 0,127 in 2008, reaching 0,308 in 2009.Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research experience confirmed that online open access ensures a wider dissemination of the research accompanied by a good cost-effectiveness.Also the manuscript tracking during and after the publication process, for instance the number of times the article is viewed or downloaded is more and more growing. In conclusion, the National Service for the Welcoming and information with the collaboration of the Italian Cancer Voluntary Association Federation (FAVO). In particular, Cignoweb.it intends to achieve the following objectives:As far as the information tools addressed to lay people, an interesting open access resource in the field of oncology and public health is represented by Cignoweb.it . It cons1 - Check for all information material in any support, produced in Italy and addressed to patients; assess the quality of the information retrieved and make it accessible on the web through a single, user-friendly and integrated interface;2 - Make available an authoritative source of information to the benefit of the lay people, aimed at improving the communication between citizens and health facilities in Italy, thanks to the creation of reference points for the spread of information;3 - Lower barriers to the access to reliable information for citizens-patients and contribute to promoting a culture based on the concept of a critical evaluation of information;4 - Promote an appropriate use of the available services and resources in order to better tackle disease problems and make informed decisions face clinical trials or innovative therapies.The software prototype has been just implemented and, at the moment, it allows for free access to resources and documentation based on paper, electronic or multimedia support. This information material is mostly in Italian and written in plain language and includes: booklets, brochures, articles, mailing lists, books containing testimonies relating to health facilities, associations and help lines, forums, blogs and social networks. The most of it concerns the subject area of oncology, but other fields of biomedicine are foreseen for inclusion. The distinctive feature of all material considered for indexing in Cignoweb.it is represented by the quality assessment performed on the entered material.The Cignoweb.it editors hope that the prototype could support other European countries in enhancing the structure and organization of the patient health information produced in their own national languages. In this way, Cignoweb.it will contribute to support ideas and actions aimed at building a common health information portal in the European Union. In particular, Cignoweb.it is trying to collaborate with the EU project EUROCANCERCOMS . This EURepositories contain metadata, say "meta information" (data about data). They can be defined as structured data which describe the characteristics of a data set and how the data themselves are formatted. Metadata refer, for instance, to authors, abstract, subject, rights and other elements describing an item in a standardized format. According to Ed Simons "Metadata allow us to describe and classify research information in a systematic way, and as such they are indispensable for searching and finding academic publications and other results of research." In addition to traditional metadata  commonly used in repositories, new types of metadata should be considered for inclusion: the context metadata. They add high value to the single lists of publications shown in a repository as they lead to discover all the information around a publication, for instance the institutions and the researchers involved, the research project, the publication results from, the funding program, patents etc. These additional metadata allow the user to surf the Internet from a link to another, starting from a single publication posted in a repository, to a researcher curriculum or to the data concerning the institution which produced the research or to other related data, thus enabling an effective navigation through different types of information. In order to fulfil this aim an important effort to be made is the standardization of different formats in use to describe the same item. So, it is relevant the adoption of thesauri for indexing the information by concept, but also the use of permanent identificators relating to authors or institutions. Beside the DOI  mostly used for articles, the DAI  and the DII , already adopted by some European projects (CRIS/CERIF) may become relevant tools to mark data in a standardized way.Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies of the National Research Council (CNR), in Rome [Context metadata are the core elements of the so-called citation based networks, the privileged domain of interest and activity of the communities working in a CRIS (Current Research Information System) environment. One particular type of CRIS standard for information systems is the CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) standard, proposed by the European Union and developed and maintained by euroCRIS. This relevant perspective for the future of repository technology was recently debated at international level during a Workshop organized by the  in Rome .Turning to the ongoing Italian initiatives with metadata storage and supply in the biomedical field, the experience gained by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità is worth to be mentioned. In 2004 the ISS launched a project aimed at creating a digital archive compliant with the aims of the Open Archives Initiative. In 2006 the ISS built up its own repository, DSpace ISS based on the DSpace platform . The priThe primary goals to be achieved were to store digital information and index it by assigning descriptive metadata in order to keep research material accessible and to preserve content in a safe archive, according to an internal policy  available from the home page of DSpace ISS website. Content retrieval based on the adoption of MeSH terms in the indexing of DSpace ISS items has also featured the repository from the very beginning . MeSH  acting in the field of oncology. These institutions are devoted to biomedical research to the benefit of the patients and to the medical community. They are: Istituto Tumori Giovanni Paolo II, Bari; Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan; Fondazione Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori, Milan; Istituto Nazionale per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Genoa; Istituto Regina Elena, Rome; Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, Aviano; Centro di Riferimento Oncologico della Basilicata, Rionero in Vulture; Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Giovanni Pascale, Neaples; Istituto Oncologico Veneto, Padua.The questionnaire was e-mailed to the librarians of each institution. The survey was basically intended to identify: the archive holdings  and the system in use to support archive operations (software or paper-based system). Such information would serve the purpose of providing a baseline to explore the feasibility of a standardized workflow of data from partners joining DSpace ISS.In the subject area of oncology, the Italian research institutions surveyed in this study represent a privileged point to go in depth with the analysis of strategies to collect and disseminate relevant information to the benefit of both the scientists and the general public.The respondent institutions were six out of nine and precisely: Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milano; Istituto Regina Elena, Roma; Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, Aviano; Centro di Riferimento Oncologico della Basilicata, Rionero in Vulture; Istituto Nazionale Tumori Fondazione Giovanni Pascale, Neaples; Istituto Oncologico Veneto, Padua. As far as the Unit responsible for managing the publications, in three cases it was the " Scientific Direction", while in two cases it was the Library and in one both Units together.Other as a different type of material different from the mentioned ones in the questionnaire [Figure With regard to the type of material considered, all participants in the survey declared they archive journal articles, with or without impact factor (IF); five institutions out of six declared they describe their own series . Conference proceedings were included in the material archived by only three institutions, as well as training material, clinical trials, information material addressed to patients and rationales or synthesis relating to research projects. As last, two respondents consider books or book chapters for inclusion in their archives, whereas just one institution includes guidelines and another one selected e Figure .In the majority of cases (4 out of 6) the entries are represented by bibliographical citations; in 2 of them the full text is posted together with the bibliographical reference.All respondents answered they use an electronic system to manage the publications: both Word and Excel resulted the software adopted by three institutions out of six, whereas just one uses RefWorks, another one uses Reference Manager and the remaining one mentioned an in-house software ad hoc, not specified, and a not specified software tool.Respondents were also asked to indicate the metadata used to describe publications in their databases. In terms of quantity of metadata envisaged, the answers were variable. Only one institution selected almost the total of metadata listed on the questionnaire, including conference data: title, venue and date Figure .As far as the author's name, four institutions answered they enter both last and first names, one close to the other, in the author(s) field within a record, thus without envisaging separate fields for surname and first name. No answers on this point came from two institutions. The format for entering personal author name follows different rules: Rossi M; Rossi,M; Rossi, M.; Rossi M. (2 institutions). The problem of the standardization of the metadata format is relevant in order to permit a sound organization and a good retrieval of information, especially in the context of digital archives sharing metadata.Another indicator the participants in the survey were asked about was the level of accessibility to their publications databases. In this regard, four respondents said that only the "Scientific Direction" is allowed to access data, while in two cases the contents are available to internal researchers on Intranet.As far as institutional series published by the research centers participating in the survey, all of them, except one, experienced the production of reports, newsletters and other official information material made freely available online with the only exception of one institution which did not provide access to its ceased internal bulletin.All institutions agreed to the proposal of sharing their publications in DSpace ISS by establishing communities and collections of their own documents; some of them (IRE and CRO) already joined the ISS digital archive.The situation is in progress. While this article is going to press, the Istituto Regina Elena decided to adopt RefWorks for its own institutional archive, in order to set up a good collection of standard metadata and achieve a better organization of the archive.Thanks to the existing online platforms, institutional policies mandating self-archiving in institutional repositories are definitely needed, mainly for papers describing research activity financed by public funds. This represents an ineluctable process as underlined by Stevan Harnad , one of Some studies show evidence that open access journal articles are cited more and quicker and are downloaded more often ,33. BesiThe digital archive set up by the ISS, DSpace ISS, represents a real opportunity to make Italian research output in the field of public health freely accessible online, beyond the traditional "colonial" dependence from foreign indexing services and databases. DSpace ISS relies on a steady structure of metadata including also Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) adopted by PubMed for subject indexing.Italian National Health Service be finally filled in Italy. Strategic tools as institutional repositories are able to ensure appropriateness in health care delivery and to favour a decisive development of research through the access and exchange of knowledge. Another aspect should be considered: electronic items are much more exposed to "weather conditions" of our virtual time than the paper based ones. A publishing house which ceases its activity may entail the loss of its electronic archive, thus the loss of all the scientific heritage stored in it. Hence, the importance of the archiving procedures in institutional repositories in order to safeguard the knowledge. Due to their non-commercial nature, these online deposits tend to be more stable and their contents are available for free reproduction on a print basis for long lasting. Peter Suber, one of the founder of the open access paradigm, states: " So far, paper is the only commonly used medium that we know can preserve text for hundred of years" [It is desirable that the gap due to poor information infrastructure development within the f years" .The authors declare that they have no competing interests.EP, GC, IT and CDB designed the questionnaire (see Appendix), processed and described the data resulting from the survey. All authors participated in the work for appropriate portions of the content and approved the final version of the manuscript.Pilot survey edited by the Questionnaire Working Group:G. Cognetti, E. Poltronieri, C. Di Benedetto, I. TruccoloThis questionnaire aims to gather information on collecting information methodologies, preservation techniques, assessment and access strategies to scientific literature produced by IRCCS institutions in the field of oncology.Chief librarians or professionals acting in other units of the institution in charge of managing scientific publications in the IRCCS.The survey aims to:- explore the organization, collection methods, preservation techniques and contents of the archiving systems in use to describe scientific literature;http://dspace.iss.it/dspace/.- launch a feasible plan concerning the adoption of standard procedures for the aggregation of free-access scientific resources in the field of biomedicine, through the digital platform provided by DSpace ISS The results of the questionnaire, processed by the Questionnaire Working Group solely for statistical purposes, will be reported in a paper hosted by an open access journal.cognetti.bib@ifo.it)Gaetana Cognetti Elisabetta Poltronieri Corrado Di Benedetto Ivana Truccolo  • Books or book chapters • Conference proceedings (abstracts or papers) printed or online • Posters (image format) • Training material  • Clinical trials • Guidelines • Educational material for patients • Patents • Research projects approved and funded (summaries or reports) • Other material  Specify_______________________________4. The material deposited in the repository is archived as Bibliographic citation  Full text 4.1 The archive format used is: print  digital 4.2 If it is only print, describe how data are structured:4.3 If it is digital, specify the software in use:Word  Excel  Access Software tools for publishing and managing bibliographies   Specify________________________________________________In-house software Other software  Specify__________________________________________Type of metadata (bibliographic data) used in the repository:5. • Title Specify the format of data stored • First author or editor  ___________________________________________________________________• Two separated fields, respectively for Name and Surname, are provided: yes  no • All the authors or editors (corporate authors - as working or study groups - included) et al) • Other kinds of authors' listings  • Year • Volume • Issue • Pages • Abstract • ISSN • ISBN • DOI • PMID (PubMed identifier) • URL • Conference name/title • Conference venue • Conference date • Publisher • Publication language • Publication type  • Journal impact factorSpecify : raw impact factor  rank-normalized impact factor • Indexing terms as text words • Indexing term as descriptors of a controlled vocabulary  Specify the terminology in use___________________________________• Research line to whom the publication is related Besides data of the institutional repository transferred to the Italian Ministry of Health workflow, they are accessible:6. • The Scientific Directorate of the Institution only • The internal research staff of the Institution only • Freely on Internet Does your Institution publish any institutional series  ?7. yes  no  - If yes:Title___________________________________________________________________Title___________________________________________________________________Title___________________________________________________________________7.1 Specify whether the publications are open access (free access on Internet)yes  no  - If yes:Enter the website address________________________________________________Does your Institution agree to make its own scientific production freely accessible online on the open archive DSpace ISS http://dspace.iss.it/dspace set up by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità? yes  no 8. 9. Please leave here any comments or notes if needed to clarify the answers given (by specifying the number of the related answer):Name and signature of the chief librarian or the person in charge at managing the publications produced by your InstitutionName_______________________________________________________________________Signature____________________________________________________________________Tel._________________________________________________________________________E-mail_______________________________________________________________________Date ________________________________________________________________________Print the questionnaire and send it to_____________________fax number _______________within_____________________________Thank youNotice provided according to the terms of art. 13 of Italian Legislative Decree no. 196 of 30 June 2003 for the protection of personal datahttp://dspace.iss.it/dspace/.The data provided in the Questionnaire will be processed by means of automated equipment, only to fulfill the following tasks: to build up a unique reference access point to scientific information produced by the institutions surveyed through the digital archive DSpace ISS Does the user grant her/his permission to processing their personal data according to the above mentioned tasks?Yes  No


A journal is always judged based on the quality of papers, such as original papers, reviews, editorials, letters to the editor, being published and these articles play a most crucial role in research process. A high-quality publication is a means of science communication and collaboration of scientists in their field of expertise. High-quaJ Young Pharm. is now indexed with Caspur, Chemical Abstracts, DOAJ, EBSCO Publishing’s Electronic Databases, Expanded Academic ASAP, Genamics JournalSeek, Global Health, Google Scholar, Health and Wellness Research Center, Health Reference Center Academic, Hinari, Index Copernicus, OpenJGate, PrimoCentral, ProQuest, PubMed, Pubmed Central, SCOLOAR, SCOPUS, SIIC databases, Summon by Serial Solutions, and Ulrich’s International Periodical Directory. We are aiming at inclusion in Institution of Scientific Information (ISI) during this year. J Young Pharm. is also expecting SJR Ranking by the end of this year as we are already in SCOPUS.To achieve leading positions in academics and scientific field, academic and research institutions worldwide are now strongly encouraged to improve the quality of research studies and to publish papers in peer-reviewed journals visible in most prestigious indexing databases. J Young Many of the articles submitted to JYP have been observed for the inaccurate and incomplete references, failing to locate the source for further information about the submitted manuscript. It makes our reviewers more concerned on correctness of these references. Uniform reference locators (URLs) or digital object identifiers (DOIs) are very useful in locating references on the Web, and authors are requested to provide the link/DOI in their reference list, which will further smoothen the peer-review process. Hence, JYP submission in the year 2011 will ask for DOI (if available) or full text link for the all the references cited in the submitted manuscripts.J Young Pharm. We acknowledge them fully for their contribution and we have published a list of all of our reviewers in page 73. We are presenting a brief report on the performance of J Young Pharm during the year 2010 [J Young Pharm.On behalf of the editorial board members, I would like to thank all the reviewers who have helped us in refining the papers submitted to ear 2010 . PerformMembers of our board take a posture of being supportive and nurturing to authors who submit papers to the journal. Instead of making our mark by citing how many papers we reject, we want to be known for helping authors become better writers and researchers. To this end, our reviewers work with the editorial leadership team as part of an editorial community which unconditionally accepts all authors who submit their papers to the journal. In turn, we ask these authors to participate wholeheartedly in the editorial process of writing and rewriting. In this approach, reviewers and editors become mentors to the authors, and as a team, we work collaboratively to produce the best papers and journal possible.An editorial board member will be expected to perform the following responsibilities:review two to three new papers per quarter;review the revised manuscripts;produce supportive and useful reviews;participate in internal quality improvement activities ; andcommunicate with editors in a timely and professional manner.Benefits of the position include the following.Joining an exciting virtual community dedicated to improving qualitative research scholarship and scholars.Collaborating with an international editorial leadership team.Mentoring authors from around the world.Learning a novel and effective approach to reviewing scholarly papers.Receiving editorial reviewing resource materials.Participating in research projects to improve the editorial process.Learning to use new software applications for reviewing and editing.Improving your own scholarly writing.Acquiring knowledge on the latest innovations in qualitative inquiry.Gaining a valuable credential for tenure and promotion review.J Young Pharm. will be expanding its editorial board during the year 2011. Active reviewers will be now included as editorial board members. Interested authors can write to us along with their brief profile for possible inclusion.J Young Pharm. is an official publication of InPharm Association and is being managed by self-funding. Our site (http://www.jyoungpharm.in) is fully dynamic, and the papers being published are now available in multiple formats such as PDF, Full text, ePUB, Sword repository plugin, eBook, etc.[ook, etc. The presJ Young Pharm. papers and utilize them in their research writings. Our citations are available in multiple formats from our website (http://jyoungpharm.in/currentissue.asp?sabs=n) and Citeulike page (http://www.citeulike.org/user/jyoungpharm) as well.I would like to list all the most cited papers from the year 2009.–10 I enc


Journal of Translational Medicine show that this is not the case. Journal of Translational Medicine in affiliation with the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer demonstrates how private and public organisations can work together for the advancement of science.In December 2011 the United States House of Representatives introduced a new bill, the Research Works Act (H.R.3699), which if passed could threaten the public's access to US government funded research. In a digital age when professional and lay parties alike look more and more to the online environment to keep up to date with developments in their fields, does this bill serve the best interests of the community? Those in support of the Research Works Act argue that government open access mandates undermine peer-review and take intellectual property from publishers without compensation, however journals like  Journal of Translational Medicine is an open access journal published by BioMed Central that aims to optimise communication between basic and clinical science. Now in its 10th year of publication the journal is successful in its aim for fostering communication from bench to bedside.Journal of Translational Medicine was built. The bill states:A new bill, the Research Works Act , has bee"No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that:(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work."If passed, this bill would force the retraction of the public access policy of the National Institutes of Health , who manIt is argued ,4 that rWhen peer-reviewed information and data is made freely available online, text and data mining can help speed up advances by analysing and trending multiple datasets that would previously have taken years to achieve. As more information is made available, such investigations become more accurate and more meaningful.Health care providers regularly access online resources including research to keep up to date with developments or to assist specific patients . The samJournal of Translational Medicine discusses outcomes from a summit called by the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), which included representatives from both public and privately funded organizations from across the globe. They discuss various hurdles that hinder the progression of promising cancer immunotherapies to clinical application, although these hurdles may well resonate within other areas of translational medicine.A recent commentary article  publisheOne hurdle discussed relates to the exchange of information between different groups of people stating: "...it is becoming less feasible for a single group to have the detailed knowledge and resources to investigate, analyze, select and implement the best strategies to move forward in clinical trials for any given indication." This higJournal of Translational Medicine. They are one of a growing number of societies affiliated with or publishing open access journals in their fields. There are currently believed to be over 530 societies publishing at least one open access journal [Science[The SITC is affiliated with the "Tumor immunology and biological cancer therapy" section of  journal , a figur journal . Maybe o journal , several [Science, and Nat [Science.Belief in the benefits of open access publishing continues to grow demonstrated by a reported 47% growth in open access articles published in 2011 compared to 2010 and 24% growth in the number of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals . Over 50While author choice is fundamental in the publication process, given the importance of wide access to all research, whether public and privately funded, should we stop funders from requiring the results of their funding be as visible and transparent as possible?Journal of Translational Medicine.Lisa Phelps works for BioMed Central, publisher of Journal of Translational Medicine.The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) is affiliated with the "Tumor immunology and biological cancer therapy" section of


One traditional problem of access to the literature faced by researchers and academics in developing countries has been the inability of their institutions to afford journal subscriptions, which can run into the thousands of dollars per publication. But things have been changing, with the last 10 years having seen important efforts to make the world’s peer-reviewed scientific journals available to these members of the research community either free or at a much-reduced price. Top-flight open-access journals have also come into being, theoretically making the papers they contain free for all to use. But is purchase price the only obstacle hindering the entry of the developing world’s researchers into international scientific dialogue?Summer 2011 saw the tenth anniversary of six major biomedical publishers  coming together under the coordination of the World Health Organization (WHO) to announce the launch of HINARI . HINARI’s mission was to provide free or very low-cost online access to some 1,500 biomedical and social science journals for public, nonprofit institutions in emerging nations.The need was clear: a WHO survey undertaken in 2000 showed that 56% of institutions in countries with a gross national income per capita (GNIpc) of under US$1,000 had no current subscription to any international journal.The HINARI program grew, and with 160 publishers on board it now provides some 8,000 health and biomedical information sources  free to the institutions of 63 countries with a current GNIpc of US$1,600 or less.Sister program AGORA , involving more than 40 publishers and managed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in partnership with Cornell University, was launched in 2003 and now provides online access to more than 1,200 food science–related journals under the same conditions. In 2006 OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), involving more than 150 publishers and managed by the United Nations Environment Programme in partnership with Yale University, began to provide the same type of access to over 3,000 journals covering the environmental sciences. And in 2009 the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched its Access to Research for Development and Innovation program, which offers low-cost access to more than 200 science and technology journals from 12 publishers to eligible patent offices and research institutes.EHP and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) stable of publications, have also improved access to scientific information.Together, HINARI, AGORA, OARE, and WIPO, collectively known as Research4Life, are now making journals available to more than 5,000 user institutions.“Access to information is the key to unlocking the participation of scientists in low- and middle-income countries in the global scientific discourse,” explains HINARI program manager Kimberly Parker, who is based in Geneva, Switzerland. “Without the latest evidence relevant for their work and research, our colleagues in the Global SouthThe Research4life website holds a telling testimonial written by Shehu U. Abdulahi, vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria: “A few years ago we carried out an experiment for surgical operations of some livestock animals, and as we thought it was excellent research we wrote a manuscript on the findings for publication in a journal. However, after a review of the manuscript it came back with the comment that the drug which we used as anaesthesia for the animals had been banned about five years earlier. Had we had access to up-to-date published literature through such resources like AGORA, this would not have happened.”Journal of the Nepal Paediatric Society, points to the public health benefits conferred by access to the literature. “A couple of years ago universities, libraries, medical colleges, and research organizations in Nepal did not have easy access to medical literature relating to research from most of the peer-reviewed journals,” he says. “Previously one could only access the abstracts found in PubMed/MEDLINE®. With access to HINARI the vast repository of medical literature suddenly opened up for us, and there was no looking back.” Neopane says this access has helped medical personnel in their clinical and community practices and indirectly is even helping the country achieve its Millennium Development Goals.Arun Neopane, editor-in-chief of the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, who with a colleague runs workshops in China on how to get published in top Western journals. “In some institutions a computer may need to be shared between a large number of people, so access time may be limited.”But simply making journals affordable and available online may not be enough. To view an online journal you first need a computer and an Internet connection that can cope with the data flow. “Computer availability can be a real stumbling block in some countries,” explains Sue Silver, editor-in-chief of The sharp end of this problem can be severe: a 2007 report indicated that Internet cafes were the main point of connection to the web for postgraduate doctors in Lagos Teaching Hospital in Nigeria and Yaoundé University in Cameroon.EHP, which publishes a Chinese edition as part of its International Program,Connection speeds can indeed be a serious problem. Generally speaking, the situation is improving, with broadband Internet access becoming more widely available, more affordable, and faster. “New undersea cables are providing Africa with more international Internet bandwidth,” explains Vanessa Gray, senior information and communications technology analyst at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva. “With more and more countries in Africa launching 3G mobile broadband services, an increasing number of people have access to the Internet at high speed.”But although these services help increase coverage and offer mobility, Gray says they usually provide only limited data access at lower speeds, which makes them unsuitable for intensive users such as researchers or institutions. So-called fixed broadband services, which are much faster, are usually limited to urban areas and remain very expensive, she says, explaining, “ITU’s tariff data suggest that the cost of an entry-level fixed broadband connection in Africa often exceeds the average monthly per-capita income.”Even when they have a good connection, researchers may need training in how to use online resources. “Researchers who have had limited Internet access may simply not know how to search for information or even know that PubMed [and other resources] exist,” Silver says. A 2010 report showed that researchers’ ability to utilize electronic resources at four African universities was limited by the use of unsophisticated search strategies.The solution may be training. “Research4Life focuses on information training needs by providing a range of options from running short courses to self-paced training modules as well as some distance education courses,” Parker says. “[But] in the end, it will be regional and local organizations such as ITOCAAccess to the literature, however, is not just about being able to see it; it’s also about contributing to it. At the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists Research4Life reported that its three initiatives had spurred a dramatic rise in research output by scientists in developing countries.Although some authors have questioned the reliability of these numbers,Unfortunately, lack of training in proper manuscript preparation remains an important hurdle to many researchers in developing countries.Ghana Medical Journal has partnered with The Lancet, Malawi Medical Journal with JAMA, and Mali Médical with EHP. Such partnerships have raised awareness of these journals’ existence and enhanced their quality and therefore their chances of becoming indexed.The African Journal Partnership ProjectEHP contributes toward its partner’s visibility by hosting the online version of the Malian journal, providing training in online publishing, and sending lecturers to Mali to conduct regional workshops on manuscript preparation, peer review, and publishing. “Thanks to the partnership project, Mali Médical has had its own website, managed by EHP, since 2004, and the journal has been indexed in MEDLINE and PubMed since 2008,” says Siaka Sidibé, editor-in-chief of Mali Médical. “With these two steps, Mali Médical is more and more visible, and the journal is disseminated worldwide.”For instance, Other initiatives, such as the Journals Online Project, overseen by INASP’s Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information,Ten years after the start of HINARI, access to the scientific literature would now appear to be less of a problem for researchers in developing countries—but the problem has not gone away altogether. Only with further infrastructural and economic development at the national policy level and appropriate training might it be truly removed, Al-Shorbaji says. This, and understanding that the scientists of developed nations have no monopoly on ideas and knowledge, should be encouragement enough to search for new ways to improve the engagement of our colleagues in the Global South.


Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders enters the exciting world of open access publishing. The Journal will now be published by BioMed Central, (part of Springer Science+Business Media) as a fully open access journal. This change will mean that all articles will be made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, will be available to readers throughout the world without subscription charges or registration barriers, and be indexed in both PubMed and PubMed Central.With the publication of the first articles of this 2012 volume, the http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/copyright). Authors submitting from BioMed Central Member institutions have article processing charges covered in full or in part by their institutions  and authors from countries in low or low-middle income categories (as defined by the World Bank) may have charges waived . Other waivers may be available on a case by case basis.In line with BioMed Central's copyright and license policy, authors will retain the copyright to their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate their articles, as long as the integrity of the original work is maintained and it is correctly cited (Given the high relevance of the work published in this journal to families, clinicians and researchers throughout the world, we are committed to this new and equitable approach to dissemination of scientific findings in our field.The Journal provides a unique forum for the integration of knowledge across a number of neurodevelopmental disorders, underlying pathogenetic mechanisms, and scientific disciplines relevant to understanding the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders.In the Foreward to the inaugural issue of the Journal, Tom Insel, Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, wrote "There has never been a better time for this integration and never a greater need" . The mosThe latest research in the field suggests the need to go beyond contrasting disease states with typical development, instead comparing and contrasting the overlapping phenomenology across conditions and asking such questions as - What are the commonalities and differences in social cognition between autism and schizophrenia ?; and WhJournal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders is poised to make an important contribution to our field. We hope you share our enthusiasm for these advances. We encourage you to consider submission of your work to the Journal.These are truly exciting times for scientists working to unravel the basis of neurodevelopmental disorders. The tools we have at hand for both the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge are unprecedented. By bringing together multiple perspectives on the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders in this new Journal, together with cutting-edge approaches for distributing this new knowledge throughout our scientific community, the


A published paper should not be the final step in the half-life of a scientific manuscript and critical analysis, post-publication, through post-publication peer review (PPPR), should be part of a new and dynamic process that should be embraced by scientists, editors, and publishers alike Hunter,  as one fAnthurium tissue culture literature deserves particular attention since it reveals how the loss of honesty and/or QC can result in the “academic corruption” of the literature, thus weakening the trust in its findings  the originality of the data set and study; (b) the ability of the author–editor–peer triad to detect and correct as many errors as possible to ensure academic integrity. Understandably, different levels of research and of QC by peer reviewers, editors, or publishers from different cultures may lead to multiple interpretations of issues related to publishing quality and/or ethics such as authorship, self-plagiarism, or duplication. However, reliability of and responsibility associated with the traditional three-step publishing process can be eroded or lost. How then does the scientific community correct or improve the scholarly record once the publishing process has traditionally been perceived to be complete, i.e., a published paper? Once again, this relies on the responsibility of the authors, editors, peers, and publishers. If this first step of the process is flawed, then most likely all ensuing latter steps of QC will also be flawed. For example, a scientist that has falsified data might not necessarily be honest or forthright about their dishonesty, even if errors are discovered in a PPPR. Or an editor, EIC or peer reviewer that has shown bias or poor QC during the peer review process might not wish to admit—following PPPR—to error and failure in the process of academic QC. Finally, a publisher that has assumed that all aspects leading up to the publication of a paper have been well conducted, namely ethical and academic standards, either because it was led to believe that integrity was in place, or because it wanted to believe that such integrity existed, might not be willing to assume responsibility for the entire process for which in fact it was originally responsible. By doing so, a publisher would in essence have to allow an across-the-board PPPR of any paper published in its journal fleet which could overload an already strained publishing process. How then can errors, fraud, or bias be judged if the key players are part of the problem?Without in fact considering issues such as metrics or the debate of the impact factor, which add “noise” to the erratum, even if the authors are in disagreement. The true risk to academic and publishing integrity ultimately lies when non-academic or scientifically unsound literature is referenced by scientists in other scientific papers. When the level of errors is limited, or where issues, concepts, or data are open to debate or multiple interpretation, a PPPR challenge should also be published alongside the original paper  or as a letter to the editor. Ideally, such a PPPR should include the PPPR criticisms or queries, including verifiable proof, a response to those claims by the authors, and the formal position of the EIC and/or editors and publisher. To be fair and balanced, where data is in question, original data sets should be published as annexes, as should the original peer reviewers' reports.The only realistic solution is through PPPR. Although still at a nascent phase for plant science, PPPR can and should only be conducted by specialists in the field. This would allow for a peer who should be independent of the entire process related to a paper's publication history and is thus not be influenced by bias, to critically judge some or all aspects of that paper that have undermined QC as relates to the traditional publishing process. What the PPPR reviewer in fact does is to step in to cover the QC gaps that the authors, peer reviewers, editors, EICs, or publishers have in fact failed to address. Understandably, a paper from a predatory OA publisher might present multiple linguistic, academic, or scientific errors  by any of the parties the reviewer is questioning. It is then incumbent on the latter three parties to take such reports seriously and to launch and complete a detailed investigation into the claims. Incorrect challenges or misinterpretation by the PPPR should also be noted. Where the parties involved are unresponsive, alternative forms of PPPR are possible, preferably in OA format: (a) independent, self-published critiques; (b) scientific forums such as Retraction Watch or other similar blogs, PubPeer, or the new prototype PubMed Commons. Such forums for open critique of the literature will no doubt increase over time as PPPR becomes the new norm.Even though there are still extremely few retractions in the plant science literature, there are still no rules or precedents for PPPR in plant science publishing. This concept should, however, be rapidly accepted by the plant science community and integrated as an established industry norm. This will involve a concerted effort by peers to dedicate freely of their time to carefully scrutinize the The trend is absolutely clear. Unless peers who feel strongly about errors in the scientific literature step forward and make a pro-active, concerted effort, unless publishers who claim ethical standards and peer review support the notion of open-ended publishing and QC through PPPR, and unless we embrace, as plant scientists, that there are serious problems in plant science and in plant science publishing, and that academic and ethical errors in the literature need to be urgently addressed, the efforts of those to publish good, honest, and valuable research will very rapidly be dwarfed by the ever-expanding pool of fraud and/or false information that is becoming increasingly abundant in the literature, but as yet poorly critiqued and quantified.


The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is dedicated to advancing human knowledge at the intersection of computation and life sciences. On behalf of the ISCB members, this public policy statement expresses strong support for open access, reuse, integration, and distillation of the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature, and for the infrastructure to achieve that goal.Knowledge is the fruit of the research endeavor, and the archival scientific and technical research literature is its practical expression and means of communication. Shared knowledge multiplies in utility because every new scientific discovery is built upon previous scientific knowledge. Access to knowledge is access to the power to solve new problems and make informed decisions. Free, open, public, online access to the archival scientific and technical research literature will empower citizens and scientists to solve more problems and make better, more informed decisions. Attribution to the original authors will maintain consistency and accountability within the knowledge base. Computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature will produce new and as yet unforeseen knowledge.http://www.iscb.org/iscb-policy-statements/software_sharing). We support open database access, standards, and interoperability. We also recognize that databases are complex dynamic entities, with ongoing roles and needs that cannot be treated properly within this statement. In contrast, the publicly funded archival research literature, addressed here, is the static historical record of publicly funded research outcomes.We strongly encourage open software, data, and databases, issues that are not addressed here. A prior ISCB public policy statement on sharing software provides very clear support for open source/open access  access by person or machine to the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature; and (ii) computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature into higher-order knowledge elements.Immediate access is preferable, and when access is at an interval following publication, that interval should not exceed one year.At a minimum, every scientific journal should offer an open access option to every published research paper, as does every official or affiliated journal of the ISCB.Copyright licenses explicitly should permit computational reuse, integration, and distillation, using standard existing language that eliminates the need for manual or legal review.The format of the available article should be easy to parse by both human and machine . Ideally, a plain text version should be available as well , to facilitate computational reuse and integration .Computational reuse, integration, and distillation should give attribution to the original authors.The possibilities latent in the digital information age make it essential to achieve open access, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation, of the publicly funded archival research literature. The public benefit from open access to the world's online information via the publicly funded Internet provides a good model of expected impact.The scientific fertilization from open access to genomic information via the publicly funded Human Genome Project provides a good model of expected scientific benefit.Open access policies by the US National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wellcome Trust provide good models of feasibility and acceptability.The Creative Commons Attribution License and the Science Commons Open Access Data Mark provide good models of legal mechanisms for computational reuse, integration, and distillation.Existing open access models show high impact, scientific benefit, feasibility, and acceptability. Open literature access, reuse, integration, and distillation will enable a whole new generation of innovative computational tools and processes. The literature will be endowed with enriched commentary and usability. It will be connected seamlessly, by proper semantic links, to relevant Web sites, data, databases, and algorithms. Creating a web of knowledge around publications is an important consequence of semantic enrichment of the research literature. Such tools already are being built by publishers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and others. The further development of these tools should be supported aggressively. Removing all barriers to literature open access, reuse, integration, and distillation is critical to achieving such a knowledge-level transformation.Supplementary data and methods should be openly available online, in sufficient detail to replicate the reported research results and facilitate reuse. Such material should be deposited in appropriate public repositories, in compliance with accepted community standards, and in accord with the existing ISCB public policy statement on sharing software. It should allow for application of other computational methods to the data and application of other data to the computational methods.Publishing high-quality peer-reviewed scientific literature incurs costs. We recognize that cost recovery is a serious issue that must be addressed carefully if open access is to be a mandated policy.Open-access policy details—which version, where stored, how annotated and organized, what incentives, etc.—must be considered carefully. However, it has now become essential to put forward a broad policy mandate for public access to, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation of, the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature.Remove barriers to open access and subsequent computational reuse, integration, and distillation.Encourage public, private, and philanthropic funding organizations to establish policies that mandate free, open, public, online access to, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation of, the research results funded from their public, private, or philanthropic support.Promote the body of publicly funded archival research literature as a public investment that bears interest, and not as an ongoing access cost to the public.Establish copyright licenses in standard terms that permit literature access, reuse, and integration.Specify a format that is easy to parse by both human and machine ; and, ideally, also provide a plain text version  to facilitate computational reuse and integration.Recognize the need to fund activities of peer review, copy editing, and publishing.Provide fairness to several groups, including the developing world and its health concerns, unfunded or under-funded researchers, and others.Provide fair interim support or compensation, if and where needed, to facilitate making transitions and adaptations to new models for publishing and sustaining essential revenue.Be consistent with government laws, patent requirements, other existing regulations, and research dissemination through viable commercial mechanisms.This statement is intentionally neutral about any specific funding policy. Many implementations all may achieve the same essential goal. Acceptable funding policies should: The expected cost of complete open access to the publicly funded archival research literature is only a very small percentage of the entire publicly funded international research endeavor. Nevertheless, it is undesirable to divert funding from current research and thus risk underfunding basic science. New funding should be made available for open-access policy implementations.Currently, scientific advancement is limited by article availability, access costs, copyright restrictions, document formats, bulk download limits, etc. All such barriers should be removed.The publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature represents a substantial investment by the public, governments, foundations, non-profit institutions, publishers, individuals, and others. We in the ISCB are committed to the continuous enhancement and leveraging of society's knowledge resources. One of our primary missions is the computational integration of individual pieces of knowledge from the research literature and databases, in ways that provide powerful new ideas and insights for next-stage research, for the benefit of the scientific community and society in general.To achieve these public benefits, we strongly advocate free, open, public, online access to the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature, and the computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature into higher-order knowledge elements.The example scenario shown in An automated malaria Web site might access location-specific information from thousands of publicly funded malaria research articles daily, and then integrate that information into a free online interactive world map. Such a map might be annotated with up-to-date information about disease occurrences, drug resistance profiles, current best control practices, etc., as distilled from the research literature extracted for and attached to each local region. A hypothetical user might be a public health official in the developing world responsible for controlling a sudden malaria outbreak in a remote area. Such a Web site should encounter no barriers while performing this free, useful, and potentially essential public service.Example Discussionhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/). The publicly funded portion of these 55,000 “malaria” hits should be freely available in bulk to this hypothetical malaria Web site, using technologies well suited to bulk tasks, for purposes of (i) the initial bulk literature download; (ii) regular updates; and (iii) intermittent bulk repeat downloads to reinitialize an improved knowledge base. The relevant copyright permissions should permit computationally recombining the publicly funded portion of these 55,000 texts into whatever final form is most useful and informative to the user.A search for “malaria” in the US NIH/NLM PubMed literature database yielded more than 55,000 hits Click here for additional data file.Text S2General Background Material, Other Statements, and Materials(DOC)Click here for additional data file.


Emerging Infectious Diseases helped pioneer open-access publishing by launching free online and print editions simultaneously in 1995. A decade later, perhaps half of the 50,000 scholarly journals are available online; however, access to the contents generally requires a subscription. Although many journals are experimenting with enhanced-access models, such as offering open access to a small selection of articles  or making archived articles freely available 6–12 months after publication , only ≈20% of all research articles are open access, and many of these are available only as self-archived manuscripts on authors' personal websites. Meanwhile, journal subscription rates continue to escalate, strapping library budgets and restricting circulation.In this book, John Willinsky, professor of literacy and technology at the University of British Columbia, argues that access to the results of research and scholarship are a public good: information shared is not diminished; in fact, only when shared does it become knowledge. The access principle states that a commitment to research entails a responsibility to circulate the results as widely as possible.Each chapter in the book presents this principle from a different perspective, making a case for open access on philosophical, ethical, practical, economic, and technical grounds. In each instance, the contentions of open-access critics are carefully dissected, exposed, and refuted with timely and relevant data. Individual researchers concerned about losing prestige and officers of professional societies concerned about losing subscription revenue might find these arguments particularly interesting. For example, the evidence from physics, a field with well-established open-access publishing conventions, suggests that open-access articles are cited more often  than those available only to subscribers. Analyses of scholarly association budgets and journal management economics, which appear among the useful appendices at the end of the book, suggest that alternative publishing models could be more cost-effective than the status quo.The author does not overlook the irony of publishing this work as a book that costs $34.95, but I tend to agree that the book is still the best medium for a "thoroughgoing treatment of an issue in a single sustained piece of writing." This book is for scholars and professionals who are interested in the idea of open access but are not yet convinced. Those who read it are likely to be surprised, engrossed, informed, and perhaps persuaded.


Nature a cri de coeur on the tyranny (sic) of reviewers [eLife – a short manifesto in which they explain what the journal is intended to achieve, and why, and how it will be done.Earlier this year, Hidde Ploegh published in eviewers ; more reeviewers ) generaleviewers  to the nMeanwhile, our most viewed article for the past year has been Virginia Walbot's 'Are we training pit bulls to review our manuscripts?' .eLife is intended to address: the success of a postdoctoral Fellow in finding a good academic position is perceived to depend, and to a large extent probably does depend, on his or her having published a paper in one of the three highest-profile general biology journals; but getting a paper into one of those journals can be extraordinarily difficult because – it is widely felt  – ref – refeLiVirginia Walbot  has suggeLife is to ensure quality, speed and justice by deploying a high-powered editorial board who will oversee the reviewing process and 150 highly selected biomedical experts who will do the reviewing; to avoid iterations by making a yes-or-no decision on first review; and to promote fairness and transparency by publishing the (anonymous) referees’ reports. This is not very different in principle from the way that at least some other general biology journals operate; and the stated aims of eLife – to deliver quick, fair and intelligent  decisions – are, I imagine, shared by all journals aspiring to the selective publication of papers with claims to general interest.The solution proposed by Why are these aims not (apparently) being met by the journals in which postdocs feel they must publish?eLife is that it should be professional scientists who make decisions on publication, and the perceived problems arise when they are made by professional editors. There are obvious reasons  to expeeLife are unaware of.Clearly I am an interested party in this argument, so before presenting a few points bearing on the issues, I should like to state that I think a perfectly good case can be made both for professional editors and for professional scientists as the ultimate adjudicators on scientific submissions, and it is a good idea to have journals operating on both systems. I should also add the disclaimer that I am sure there is nothing in what I have to say that the funders and extremely distinguished professionals at present engaged in launching eLife  demands a breadth and depth of knowledge, with the sagacity to apply it appropriately, that are in limited supply, as is the time of professional scientists, especially knowledgeable and sagacious ones.It is clear that scientists will be better equipped to evaluate scientific papers, and indeed one anothers’ evaluations of scientific papers, than professional editors with a scientific background. But to meet the aspirations of The main arguments in favor of professional editors are that they can make a full-time commitment to their editorial role, and they are less likely to be influenced by personal scientific prejudices and history (their own and those of close colleagues) than are field scientists. Their effectiveness however depends entirely on their willingness to draw on the scientific community for expert advice, not only as referees, but also for perspective on difficult decisions and adjudication in cases of conflict or dispute. Woe betide the professional editor who thinks she or he can judge the issues without reference to the real experts.Cell, so it is not, I hope, invidious to cite him as an example of a professional editor  with the vision and understanding to launch what was and is now by any criterion an egregiously successful and high-quality journal. Benjamin Lewin has long since retired from  example  of full Of course, some professional editors are better than others. So are some scientists, in an editorial capacity. The main difference is that research scientists constitute a community within which the quality of an individual can reasonably reliably be judged by consensus criteria, whereas no such community or consensus criteria exist for editors.However, it seems to me that the problem that is actually at the root of the frustrations with publishing in the biomedical sciences is the scarcity of expertise, breadth and sagacity relative to the number of papers on which their authors have a right to expect they will be exercised. This simply makes it very difficult to achieve consistently fair and intelligent decisions, and it is even more difficult to couple this with speed.Worse, once a journal has become one of the high-profile, high-impact-factor few in which all ambitious postdocs hope to publish, there is a danger not only that the number of submissions will exceed any reasonable capacity for consistently making good quick decisions, but that the incentive to editors to ensure such decisions concomitantly decreases, since the reputation of the journal is by that time sufficient to ensure its continued success in the absence of anything but egregious and consistent lapses. (And possibly even then.)In this way, aspiring young authors can become the victims of the journals’ success.I don’t think there is an infallible formula for getting the publishing process right. But there are certainly useful guidelines. Apropos of which, I promised to return to our own experiment in the pursuit of perfection in the editorial process.When we initiated the policy of allowing authors to choose whether their revised manuscripts were subjected to a second scrutiny by their referees, our main fear was not the risk of publishing invalid science, but that of losing good referees. This fear proved unfounded .How have authors responded? Roughly half of all authors choose not to go back to referees after revising their papers. As editors, if we are in doubt about the validity of the revised paper, we generally reject it. In that case, authors sometimes appeal and ask us to consult the referees again, and on one or two occasions, the referees have proved more tolerant than we were .Often, authors would prefer on balance to have their revised manuscripts ratified by the reviewers, but want to avoid delay: in that case, we generally offer to consult referees again with the proviso that if they don’t respond within a week we will make a decision without them.In the interests of avoiding delay to the publication of papers at least some of whose results are valid and worthy of publication, even if they do not quite meet the strongest claims of the authors, we also often offer authors the alternatives of strengthening their paper for possible publication in BMC Biology, or resubmitting to one of our subject-specific sister journals of the BMC series where it may be acceptable with only minor or no revisions to meet the existing referees’ criticisms. We consider this an extremely important service to authors submitting to a journal that maintains a threshold based on a judgement of the importance or general interest of the papers submitted to it, and not just their scientific soundness.Do we, in consequence of our policy, make more mistakes than other journals? It’s much too soon to say.Finally, I should like to return to more general issues, and to endorse strongly one remark of Hidde Ploegh , and to vide supra.)It is very important, as Ploegh recommends , that edPetsko, I think, is a little unfair in castigating the high-profile journals for publishing a relatively high proportion of papers that turn out to be seriously wrong. Journals with a claim to general interest should be prepared to take risks on non-mainstream papers, and they will inevitably sometimes prove wrong. I also have some comments on the issue of length and the absence of page limits; but enough is enough, and they will have to wait for another editorial.


The last 20 years have brought two major changes in the field of addiction. First, the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) encouraged recognition of a spectrum of alcohol and other drug use that affects health and is not limited to those with the highest severity . UnhealtAddiction Science & Clinical Practice (ASCP). We see this focus as unique among journals that address addictions.Although drug and excessive alcohol use clearly have social and other environmental determinants and consequences, there is little doubt that health care should play a major role in addressing them. In the health-care sector, attention to unhealthy substance use cannot be limited to highly specialized care settings; most patients with these conditions appear in general health settings where such problems are all too often ignored. In 2006, the IOM urged improvements in the quality of care for substance use conditions . RespondAddiction Science & Clinical Practice was founded in 2002 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an agency of the US National Institutes of Health and the largest funder of drug-abuse research in the world. In 2011, NIDA discontinued ownership of the journal and transferred editorial control to us. We hope to see all of their subscribers and authors continuing the dialogue they established so well. Under NIDA's stewardship, ASCP excelled at bringing researchers and clinicians together to better translate science into practice and back again--to blend the two by publishing reviews and roundtables. We aim to take the next steps in this thematic direction: to serve as a forum for clinically relevant research and perspectives that contribute to improving the quality of care (prevention and treatment) for people with unhealthy alcohol, tobacco, or other drug use and addictive behaviors across a spectrum of clinical settings--from emergency departments to prisons, from primary-care offices to the Internet, and from general hospitals to specialty care programs.To achieve these aims, we have moved firmly into the cutting edge of 21st-century publishing practices by teaming with BioMed Central. Although some feel tied to print publications, we realize that, in 2012, most scientific reading occurs online. We are interested in having a broad reach and large impact, and online open-access journals are best able to meet these goals. In this publishing model, authors pay the costs to publish their work, which funders of research recognize as legitimate and expected. For an initial period, we are grateful to have support from NIDA that allows us to defray those costs for authors.ASCP continues to be listed in Medline, to have articles deposited in national and international repositories, and to make our content freely and permanently available around the globe at no charge. Articles will be published immediately upon acceptance and listed in PubMed shortly thereafter. Because they are widely indexed, articles in ASCP are easily and freely discoverable through Internet search engines. We seek to have an impact beyond the usual calculations of citations; we want our articles to benefit people receiving care.With BioMed Central as publisher, We appreciate the contributions of our exceptional group of Associate Editors and world-class Editorial Board who represent a range of disciplines , research approaches , and countries and offer their expertise on a variety of substances .ASCP as it embarks on its next phase. We know all the articles we publish will benefit from the wisdom, creativity, and hard work of our international, multidisciplinary substance use research colleagues.We look forward to reviewing your quality work and appreciate in advance your willingness to peer review submissions that, in some dimension, will improve the quality of health care for individuals with unhealthy substance use. It is with great humility and honor that we accept the task of providing thoughtful, timely, and responsive reviews for all submissions to


Publication was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Open Access Publishing Fund of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.