In March 2011, as part of the background research to the FP7 Eurocancercoms project, the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) conducted an online survey of its members working in Europe to discover their experiences of and attitudes to the issues surrounding academic publishing and Open Access. This paper presents the results from this survey and compares them to the results from a much larger survey on the same topic from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP). The responses from both surveys show very positive attitudes to the Open Access publishing route; perhaps the most challenging statistic from the EACR survey is that 88% of respondents believe that publicly funded research should be made available to be read and used without access barriersAs a conclusion and invitation to further discussion, this paper also contributes to the debate around subscription and Open Access publishing, supporting the case for accelerating the progress towards Open Access publishing of cancer research articles as a particularly supportive way of assisting all researchers to make unhindered progress with their work. In 2010 EACR conducted a survey on professional communication activities across its European membership [While the survey had not focussed on Open Access specifically, comment banks and discussions at consensus meetings following the publication of the survey results highlighted the issue of access to subscription journals, the barrier to essential and urgent information that a ‘paywall’ creates, and the need for free access. Recognising this issue to be an important one EACR completed a second survey picking up on the issue of Open Access publishing in March 2011. This paper publishes the results of that survey, which was again conducted across the European membership of EACR, and cross references responses with selected data from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) 2011 [In 2010, the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) as a member of the Eurocancercoms FP7 project conducted a survey on professional communication activities across its European membership [While the survey had not focussed on Open Access specifically, comment banks and discussions at consensus meetings following the publication of the survey results highlighted the issue of access to subscription journals, the barrier to essential and urgent information that a ‘paywall’ creates, and the need for free access. A second survey picking up on the issue of Open Access publishing has now been completed. This paper shares the results of that survey, which was again conducted across the European membership of EACR, and cross references responses with selected data from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) 2011 [As a conclusion and invitation to further discussion, this paper also contributes to the debate around subscription and Open Access publishing, supporting the case for accelerating the progress towards Open Access publishing of cancer research articles as a particularly supportive way of assisting all researchers to make unhindered progress with their work.The comment banks from the survey can be found in The professional experience of respondents working in cancer research was well balanced across categories: 31% (18%) had less than 5 years experience, 38% (40%) 5–14 years and 31% (42%) 15 years or more. The figure for the Biological Science respondents to the SOAP survey is given in italics and leans towards greater experience. This is most likely due to the overall profile of EACR membership which includes a high number of students and early career researchers.Recognizing the importance of access to published findings highlighted in the earlier report, respondents were asked first how easily they could gain access to peer-reviewed journal articles of interest to their research. A quarter experienced some difficulties or could rarely access the articles they needed. The cancer researchers’ experience was similar to that of the Biological Science respondents to the SOAP survey (29%).Following this line of inquiry, respondents were asked how often the articles they wished to consult were unavailable because they did not have free access to a particular subscription journal. Over 68% experienced this problem sometimes or often and over 40% could rarely or never compensate by finding the article in an Open Access repository. As a result of this situation, almost 59% of respondents indicated that a lack of access sometimes or often slowed down their work.The comment banks also revealed that research is being hindered by a lack of access to the articles that are required and that valuable time is spent on attempts, sometimes futile, to find what is needed. Comments show that some solutions could be found informally but required resourcefulness, persistence and placed great reliance on informal international networks of friends and colleagues.Respondents were then asked about where they were published and their experience of and attitudes to Open Access publishing.When respondents were asked how many peer-reviewed research articles they had published in the last five years (Open Access and not Open Access), 41% (39% SOAP) had had 1–5 articles published but there were also 33% (42%) with 6–20 articles published and 13% (13%) had published more than 20 articles; 12% (5%) of respondents had not published in the last five years.Fifty-eight per cent (65%) had published 1–5 research articles in Open Access during the same period, and 15% (11%) had published 6 or more. The proportion who had not published in Open Access during the same period amounted to 27% (19%).The distinct similarities between the EACR and the SOAP survey data are more significant than the relatively minor variations, variations that are likely to be due to the relatively more experienced profile of the SOAP respondents which were alluded to earlier. With 73% of EACR respondents already publishing in Open Access journals, there is clearly growing acceptance of and engagement with this route to publication.When respondents were asked which factors were important to them when selecting which journal to submit to for publication, a combination of ‘Journal Impact Factor’ and the ‘Prestige/Perceived Quality of the Journal’ was seen as the most important. Over 95% (94% and 90%) regarded these issues as important and more than 50% indicated (48% and 41%) that they were ‘extremely’ important.These factors were closely followed by the importance of the journal to academic promotion, tenure or assessment with more than 85% (73%) highlighting this factor as important. At 85% (90%), this rating was matched by the relevance of the journal for the researcher’s community. Also important to respondents with scores of over 80% were the speed of publication of the journal, the likelihood of acceptance and a positive experience with the publisher/editor of the journal.Over 30% regarded the policy fit of the journal with the researcher’s organization, journal copyright policy and personal recommendation of the journal as important factors, with ‘irrelevant’ ratings never exceeding 25%.The Open Access nature of the journal was seen as important by over 40% when choosing a journal to publish in, and less than 10% regarded this as irrelevant.These are particularly interesting statistics as the three factors cited as most important in choosing a journal are related to impact, high esteem and quality: factors that reflect well on the author and support job security and career progression. Unsurprisingly perhaps, only a handful of respondents see any of these factors as irrelevant. The choices are pragmatic and well embedded in the professional culture.Set against this, the score for Open Access offers encouragement for those who hope to see this form of scholarly publishing continuing to grow quickly in the future. Very few cancer researchers see the choice of Open Access as irrelevant and approaching half see it as important. This reflects the earlier concerns about the difficulty of access to articles as a reader when you need the information to advance your work and suggests that if Open Access can address any remaining concerns over esteem and quality, authors will progressively move across to this model.Money to meet publication fees and the opportunities for publication in Open Access journals come from a variety of sources; 33% of respondents were able to publish without being charged a fee, 23% had money for publication included in their research funding and a further 24% had their fees paid by their institution, and 4% of respondents paid the fees themselves. SOAP did not enquire about Open Access publication without paying a fee so direct comparison of data is not possible here. However, it was also only a small percentage in the SOAP data that met their own costs (6%).The EACR survey went on to explore how many researchers were mandated by their funding body to publish in an Open Access repository after a certain time had elapsed following publication in a subscription journal. Only 13% indicated that they were required to follow this route, with the others divided between those who were not required to follow this route and those replying ‘Don’t know’. Of the small number required to comply, a third found it difficult or very difficult to do so.The survey also explored how long an embargo was considered reasonable before an article published in a subscription journal could be placed in an Open Access repository; 71% of the respondents were closely divided between suggesting the reasonableness of 3- and 6-month embargos with 17% of respondents believing that it should be the publisher’s decision when to release.The most challenging statistic from the EACR survey is that 88% of respondents believe that publicly funded research should be made available to be read and used without access barriers: a figure just a little lower than the (90%) score recorded by the ‘Biological Sciences sample’ in the larger SOAP survey. Such a high score is a direct challenge to those involved in subscription publishing, as are the responses that indicate attitudes to Open Access are very positive. Respondents feel that articles that are available by Open Access are likely to be read and cited more often than those not Open Access 73% (67%), with only 10% (11%) disagreeing; 77% (74%) believe researchers should retain the rights to their published work and allow it to be used by others.There are a number of key areas of concern in respect of Open Access publishing, and paramount among these is the perception that paying publication fees will mean less money available for research 66% (53%) and that this could penalize research intensive institutions with a large publication output by making them pay high costs for publication 40% (28%). However, only 19% (11%) and 22% (14%), respectively, believe that Open Access publishing undermines the system of peer review or leads to the publication of poor quality research.There is only one real reason why most publishers have not fully embraced Open Access publishing as a business model and moved from the subscription model: Open Access will not and cannot generate the level of income and profit that is presently produced by the current business model.Cancer research is funded by the public through taxation or charitable donations. The output is then published with no requirement on the publisher to compensate the author or funder of the research.A peer review process is essential, and the cooperation of senior researchers in various capacities is essential to the process.Contracts between the author and the publisher are drawn up that protect the publisher’s interests by securing the article behind a ‘paywall’.Public money comes into play again as journal subscriptions are purchased by librarians and resource managers. This provides selective access for most but by no means all of the researchers active in cancer research.Subscriptions provide online access not only to newly published papers but to the archive as well, but if the archived articles have not been placed in an Open Access repository following a period of embargo or for any other reason, access to the archive will be lost by the subscriber if the subscription is cancelled.The traditional subscription model is simply too attractive to publishers but completely out of balance for the funders of research, the authors of research articles and the subscribers:No reasonable person would deny that the investment of the major publishers in the IT infrastructure for their journals is impressive and that a return is required for such an investment, but that return does not have to be secured through the restrictive practices of ‘paywalls’ and copyright licenses.The research funder includes money to meet publication fees if they are required.The publisher accepts that the income from journal publication will fall but that there is ultimately no alternative as the landscape and expectations are rapidly changing in the digital age—not as dramatically yet as in access to recorded music and news publishing, for example, but the changes will not go into reverse. Publication fees will provide income and perhaps we can trust, at least initially, that free market competition will keep downward pressure on publication fees.Publication costs are defrayed in some manner by website advertisements or by using a ‘community’ as a basis for market research as is the case with the website Doctors.net.ukOpen Access journals may offer free publication and access if provided with a funding stream from a foundation or other interested organization but many will only be able to function if a publication fee is charged. However, there should not be any difficulty with a ‘pay to publish’ model if,The ‘Green route’ to Open Access offers the opportunity to see more articles reach those who need to read them but only after a period of embargo imposed by the publisher of a subscription journal. Not all publishers allow this route to be taken and where they do, legal complexities around copyright and licensing abound, with the definition of which version of a paper may be released post-publication being just one.Authors themselves can do without the additional burden of managing the journey of their article into the Open Access domain after the publisher’s embargo period—and many apparently do, as underlined by Robert Kiley  who indiThe ‘Hybrid’ model also has a superficial allure where established subscription journals accept articles on an Open Access basis with a publication fee for inclusion. However, it is certain that an unbalanced business model will obtain where librarians, and others paying the subscription charge of a journal, will be buying access to some journal content to which access has already been purchased using public money. The Wellcome Trust is one body that has expressed its concerns about Open Access fees being paid twice .The publisher may of course on grounds of fairness reduce the price of the subscription proportionately, as has been done by OUP for its hybrid journals  and for Publishing of cancer research articles is a valuable service provided by publishers. However, publishers are driven by the profit motive and must necessarily satisfy their shareholders. Their business is entirely dependent on public money, and that from the charitable giving, that funds the research and then pays for the published results.In ‘Will open access compete away monopoly profits in journal publishing?’, Bergstrom and Bergstrom present a concise and cogent view of the ethical and economic argument for Open Access publishing stating in their conclusion, ‘A powerful technological reality looms over this entire discussion. With electronic access, the marginal cost of allowing an extra person to read a scholarly work approaches zero. When publishers—even non-profit operations interested in maximizing circulation—rely on subscriptions to generate revenue, distribution is inefficient because potential readers are excluded though it would cost nothing to allow them access. Open access publishing is one way of realizing the enormous potential gains that the internet offers’ .In ‘The Access Principle – The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship’, John Willinsky states that ‘commitment to scholarly work carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible’. He sees that in the digital age, that responsibility includes exploring new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. He argues that Open Access benefits all, from the established and well-supported researcher to those struggling hard to find resources .Change is inevitable as funders challenge the extraordinarily restrictive and profitable business models and choose different directions. A positive recent example is the approach to be taken by three important partners.Cell, Nature and Science. They will publish the first issue of the as-yet unnamed online only publication for biomedical and life sciences research in summer 2012. Authors will not be charged fees and anonymous reviewer comments will be published …. It is unusual for research funders to get involved in journal publishing. The group says that the move is an attempt to resolve scientist frustration with the publishing models used by the top journals’ [‘The Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute are set to launch an open access research journal that will attempt to compete directly for submissions with ournals’ .There is a moral imperative for Open Access, the internet provides the platform for its realization and funders, and other interested bodies can provide the means to accelerate change.The responses from the cancer researchers in EACR, particularly when married to the complementary data in the SOAP survey, give significant support to a new model that will allow researchers to access the latest published findings in their community as soon as they are available. The strongly supported view that publicly funded research articles should not be placed behind a ‘paywall’ should also help maintain the momentum for change. One doubts that members of the general public, funding cancer research through taxation and charitable giving and hoping for advances to combat the disease, would be any more sympathetic to the restrictive practice of subscription publishing.http://eacr.org/about/eurocancercoms.phpThe full survey data can be found on the EACR website at:


Scientific publishing is undergoing significant changes due to the growth of online publications, increases in the number of open access journals, and policies of funders and universities requiring authors to ensure that their publications become publicly accessible. Most studies of the impact of these changes have focused on the growth of articles available through open access or the number of open-access journals. Here, we investigated access to publications at a number of institutes and universities around the world, focusing on publications in HIV vaccine research – an area of biomedical research with special importance to the developing world.We selected research papers in HIV vaccine research field, creating: 1) a first set of 50 most recently published papers with keywords “HIV vaccine” and 2) a second set of 200 articles randomly selected from those cited in the first set. Access to the majority (80%) of the recently published articles required subscription, while cited literature was much more accessible (67% freely available online). Subscriptions at a number of institutions around the world were assessed for providing access to subscription-only articles from the two sets. The access levels varied widely, ranging among institutions from 20% to 90%. Through the WHO-supported HINARI program, institutes in low-income countries had access comparable to that of institutes in the North. Finally, we examined the response rates for reprint requests sent to corresponding authors, a method commonly used before internet access became widespread. Contacting corresponding authors with requests for electronic copies of articles by email resulted in a 55-60% success rate, although in some cases it took up to 1.5 months to get a response.While research articles are increasingly available on the internet in open access format, institutional subscriptions continue to play an important role. However, subscriptions do not provide access to the full range of HIV vaccine research literature. Access to papers through subscriptions is complemented by a variety of other means, including emailing corresponding authors, joint affiliations, use of someone else's login information and posting requests on message boards. This complex picture makes it difficult to assess the real ability of scientists to access literature, but the observed differences in access levels between institutions suggest an unlevel playing field, in which some researchers have to spend more efforts than others to obtain the same information. Sharing the results of research through peer-reviewed publication is intrinsic to the scientific process and to progress in science. It is also widely appreciated that access to scientific findings can lead to important advances in health care by providing the evidence upon which to base sound public policy, and by bringing together researchers from the developed and developing world, thereby fostering new collaborations and building capacity. Moreover, it is in everyone's interests if the public, which provides a large proportion of the funds required for scientific research through taxes, and many of whom chose to volunteer for clinical trials, is actively aware of and engaged in the activities of the research community. Although the public can't be expected to have the same technical expertise as the scientific community, an engaged public that knows that the scientific community is accountable and transparent will likely be more supportive of research and will be more likely to agree to serve as trial volunteers in silico advances have been matched by newer technologies capable of generating very large and complex datasets . There is, therefore, both an urgent need and an opportunity for a harmonized infrastructure and culture for the sharing of data and publications. The volume of scientific publications has been growing at an exponential rate and is stressing the budgets of university libraries, a situation referred to as the ‘serials crisis’ Recent advances in information technology and computational techniques have created new opportunities to share both data and publications rapidly. At the same time, these PLoS Pathogens and Retrovirology, but the exact impact of these changes is not yet clear. For these reasons, we set out to use the field of HIV vaccine research as a barometer to measure the degree to which scientists have access to published research that is of critical importance in this fast-moving field.Rapid access to data and publications is of particular importance to the developing world. Infectious diseases such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis disproportionately affect people in the developing world - out of 33 million people estimated to be living with HIV in the world, 26 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia Our approach was as follows: We assessed the literature related to HIV vaccine research through two sets of papers. The first set, “recent papers”, was created by searching for “HIV vaccine” in the NCBI database on December 6, 2010 and selecting the 50 most recently published articles, checking for relevance and excluding special-issue publications containing collections of articles. The second set, “cited papers”, was created by randomly selecting 20 papers from the first set and then randomly selecting 10 citations from each of those papers, resulting in a dataset of 200 papers. We assessed the ability of researchers at a number of institutions around the world to access both sets of papers online either by reviewing lists of institutional subscriptions (when available) or by directly asking researchers to attempt to download these papers.In the recent Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) conducted by the European Commission, 89% of scientists viewed open access as beneficial and conducive to scientific progress, but at the same time only 25% were willing to publish in open access journals Grant policies of many funding organizations, including the NIH (the largest funder of HIV vaccine research), require that papers resulting from their financial support become freely available within 12 months after publication Institutes and universities have to make choices when selecting journal subscriptions. These decisions are presumably based on the budget of the library and the research interests of the scientists. As a result, subscription patterns vary widely amongst institutions and do not necessarily provide access to all subscription-based literature. We decided to compare the level of access at several research institutes and universities around the world, focusing on those that are involved in HIV research.We first looked at literature access at Rockefeller University. Rockefeller University has a very active research program, including several laboratories working on HIV, and maintains an extensive library. Interestingly, despite an annual subscription budget of approximately one million dollars, the university still does not have access to all the articles in our datasets. In both “recent” and “cited” sets, only 80–85% of papers requiring subscription were accessible through the Rockefeller University library website . This obSub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected by HIV. This region of the world also includes countries with some of the lowest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Thus, institutions in this region would not be expected to afford journal subscriptions on par with Rockefeller University or other institutions in North America and Europe. Fortunately, the WHO-supported Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) provides free access to registered institutions in many countries in the region, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and others We chose to look at the access issue in South Africa for several reasons: First, South Africa has the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest rates of incidence of HIV in the world. Second, South Africa has an especially strong scientific community by both African and international standards and South African scientists at public institutes and universities actively collaborate with investigators in the North and are involved in a wide array of HIV-related research projects. Third, South Africa is one of the more prosperous countries in the region and hence does not qualify for access through HINARI. As shown in The economies of Brazil and Russia (in both absolute numbers and per capita) are similar to each other, and both countries are facing a growing HIV epidemic. Brazil's University of Sao Paolo had the highest level of access among all institutions we surveyed, surpassing Rockefeller University with access to 90% of “recent” papers and to 82% of “cited” papers . In contWe considered two institutions in Thailand, a country which has been actively engaged in HIV vaccine research. Through the Thai Ministry of Public Health, over 16,000 Thai citizens participated as volunteers in RV144, a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine regimen which was the first trial to show partial, transient efficacy in the prevention of HIV transmission In the past, before the growth of the internet, requesting a reprint from authors via post mail was a common way to obtain a copy of a paper. We investigated whether such requests, but now through email, can compensate for the lack of institutional subscription. We contacted the corresponding author  with a request for a reprint using a sender email address not affiliated with any institution and with a name unknown to the authors in order to mirror a common situation in which the researcher is not familiar with the person requesting the article. For “recent” papers, we sent out 40 requests and received 24 positive responses (60% success rate) . For “ciIn this study, we have presented a data-driven, global comparison of access to the scientific literature. We chose to focus our attention on HIV vaccine research - an area of intense research activity with special relevance for the developing world. We found that 20% of recent articles in this field were published in open-access journals. This proportion is a larger fraction than the 10% found in the recent SOAP study Our survey of institutional subscriptions around the world resulted in widely varying levels of access, with researchers at some institutions having access to only 20% of subscription-based publications while researchers in other institutions had access to 90% of these publications. The WHO-sponsored HINARI access program at institutions in low-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, has undoubtedly had a very significant impact on publication access at these institutions, providing scientists in those countries access on par with that available at major research institutions in the North. It is important to note that HINARI is only available to not-for-profit and governmental institutions. However, it has been argued that for-profit companies in the private sector are also essential for the growth of scientific capacity in the developing world and for the development of products required for controlling diseases that preferentially affect the developing world Our results suggest that even well endowed research universities in the North lack access to all of the HIV vaccine research literature. Therefore, the research community must use other strategies besides an institutional subscription if they wish to access the entire body of literature. Anecdotal responses from researchers whom we contacted suggest that the research community uses a variety of approaches to access the scientific literature when they lack access at their own institutions . ResearcInterestingly, contacting authors directly no longer appears to be a common approach to obtain reprints of publications. Our experience may provide some clues as to why this is the case. The response rate to reprint requests of only 50–60% and the not uncommon long delay in response make contacting authors a very unreliable and time-consuming way to access articles. Moreover, even though contact information of the corresponding author is usually available for recently published articles on the journal's website, it is frequently missing for older literature, creating a “catch 22” situation in which only those individuals with access to the paper online or in hard copy know the contact information of the corresponding author. Even when this information is available, it can be outdated. The decay of emails www.eprints.org) allows anyone to setup a “green access” repository of scientific papers to which authors can contribute preprints and postprints. The software also simplifies the process of obtaining reprints from authors by providing an automated request to which the author can reply with a single click of a mouse. If widely adopted, this approach would save time and effort for both researchers in need of the manuscript, and authors, who would be more likely to respond to such requests.The “green road to open access” relies on researchers archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts on personal websites or in institutional repositories The focus of this study was on HIV vaccine research, an area of biomedical research that is especially relevant to researchers working on global health issues and to researchers who live and work in those areas of the world preferentially affected by the AIDS epidemic. It would be of interest to investigate whether other areas of research that preferentially affect the developing world follow a similar pattern. While this study is small and preliminary, it reveals the complexity of the issue. We observed large differences in the level of subscription-provided access amongst institutions globally, but it is not immediately clear how these differences in access affect the conduct and pace of research at these institutions. Access to the latest results is essential for progress in science. Clearly, if scientists around the world are to contribute fully to the global efforts to control and eradicate diseases that preferentially affect the developing world, they must do so on as level a playing field as possible.


This perspective explains the mechanics of copyright and scholarly publishing and warns authors who support open-access publishing about a new pseudo open-access publishing model in which authors pay but publishers still retain commercial reuse rights. Scientific authors who pay to publish their articles in an open-access publication should be congratulated for doing so. They also should be aware that they may not be getting full open access from some publications that charge for publication under the “open access” label. Two features define an open-access publication: (1) the published contents are freely accessible through the Internet, and (2) readers are given copyright permission see  to repubFor those with an appetite for more details on copyright's mechanics, here goes. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights given to authors to control most reuses of their work without their permission, subject to certain limitations and exceptions to these rights. The theory that justifies copyright is that authors will use these rights either to self-publish or to entice a publisher to remunerate the author and to invest in publishing and distributing the work without fear of unauthorized republication by others. Authors automatically receive copyright at the moment they fix their work in some digital or analog media. Under US law, authors can transfer all or part of their copyright if they do so by signing an agreement to this effect. Subscription-based journals usually require authors to transfer all or part of their copyright to the journal as a term of the publication agreement, and usually designate one author as the “corresponding author” who signs on the others' behalf. This is because the subscription model requires publishers to restrict access to paying customers and to use the threat of a copyright infringement lawsuit as a means of deterring competing publications from republishing or reusing the journal's content without a license.Alternatively, the grant of copyright permission,  can be done verbally or by conduct indicating that permission has been granted. In the case where authors never sign a publication agreement, the publisher has a non-exclusive license and the authors retain copyright.The open-access model uses this permission model to grant readers broad reuse rights to encourage the widespread republication and reuse of articles. Open-access publishers do not need to police the behavior of readers or rival publishers except to the extent that journal content is reused without giving the author or the journal proper credit. The standard means for granting readers permission is through a Creative Commons Attribution license With respect to scientific articles, the “author(s)” who get the copyright are sometimes different than the persons listed as authors on a scientific article. Scholarly norms about who receives authorship credit vary by discipline and usually are based on some measure of contribution to a collaborative research undertaking. The extreme case is in high energy physics, in which one article boasts 2,926 authors For copyright purposes, however, authorship is limited to the persons who translate facts and ideas into expression by writing text, creating figures, structuring the data, creating data visualizations, and so on. Within this subset of contributors who count as authors in copyright's eyes, there is one copyright shared equally by the authors responsible for these forms of expression if they had a mutual intent to create an integrated work. Otherwise, if, for example, a figure were created for independent purposes and was then later included in an article, there would be two copyrights owned independently by the respective creators—one in the figure and another in the text.Traditional copyright is premised on the idea that the authors' and publishers' incentives are aligned because both seek to profit from the publication and distribution of the authors' work. However, this one-size-fits-all approach does not fit scholarly communication—at least in journal form—in which author royalties are the extremely rare exception. Authors write for impact. As scientific publishing has migrated to digital networks, full open access better achieves scientific authors' goals than does the traditional publishing model designed for the production and distribution of printed artifacts.Full open access content is* Easily accessible onlineAND* Available to anyone free of chargeAND* Available for re-use without restriction except that attribution be given to the source.No one of these alone qualifies content for an open access label.Getting open access right matters because the new publishing model is designed to increase the pace and impact of scientific communication through the power of the Internet. Immediate, free publication increases the audience for scientific research and overcomes the increasingly high price barrier to access imposed by the traditional, subscription-based publishing model Pricing of traditional, subscription-financed scientific journals is highly inefficient. The growth in digital technologies and in digital networks should be driving down the price of access to the scholarly journal literature, but instead prices have increased at a rate greatly in excess of inflation e.g., . MoreoveThe economic roots of the pricing problem are not difficult to discern. Journal publishers provide a platform between authors of journal articles and their readers. In these situations, the go-between can choose a mix of prices to each side of the relationship, usually charging more to the party that is more dependent on the go-between. The traditional subscription model charges readers through subscriptions only, but a number of publishers have added page charges or color charges on the author's side as well. Academic and other research-related libraries rather than the readers are the primary purchasers of these journal subscriptions. Journal publishers have extracted generous profits from libraries because their demand is relatively inelastic for two reasons. First, libraries are mission-driven to acquire as broad a swath of the literature as they can afford to serve their patrons effectively. Second, subscriptions for academic journals within a given field are not readily interchangeable, unlike, say, subscriptions to news magazines, because each academic journal publishes unique research. Having their subscribers over a barrel, commercial publishers have steadily consolidated to reduce their costs while increasing profits through uncompetitive pricing The open-access model fundamentally shifts the balance of power in journal publishing, and thereby greatly enhances the efficiency and efficacy of scientific communication. In its most common form, the model shifts the costs of publication entirely to the author-funder side of the relationship so as to broaden access as far as the Internet reaches and to remove the need for any lingering usage barriers. By shifting the costs of publication entirely to the author-funder side, journals must compete head-to-head on quality and price without diminishing impact through price or usage barriers because authors have greater choice over where to publish than libraries have over whether to subscribe. This increased competition will reduce the overall costs of scholarly communication while broadening access and reuse of the literature.Granting readers full reuse rights unleashes the full range of human creativity to translate, combine, analyze, adapt, and preserve the scientific record, whereas traditional copyright arrangements in scientific publishing increasingly are inhibiting scholarly communication. Traditional copyright law was designed with the subscription-based publishing model in mind. Authors receive copyright when they write their first draft of an article. Authors then transfer this copyright, or grant an exclusive license, to a publisher in exchange for publication. The publisher relies on copyright to police the behavior of readers and competitors who may seek to obtain or redistribute the content without a subscription.By shifting the financing away from subscriptions, the open-access model realigns copyright to enable broad reuse while assuring authors and publishers that they receive credit for the work they have done. This is done through open licensing by the copyright owner. Initially, the authors of an article automatically own a copyright in the article as soon as it has been drafted. If the authors sign an agreement that transfers the exclusive rights to the publisher, the publisher becomes the copyright owner. The standard means for achieving open access with respect to copyright is for the copyright owner (author or publisher) to use the Creative Commons Attribution license Recently, however, some commercial publishers have waded into the open access waters by charging authors a publication fee to substitute for subscription revenue while limiting reuse. Having been paid for coordinating peer review, editing and laying out the text, and the like, these publishers nonetheless limit readers to making only non-commercial reuses, or even also requiring reusers to use the same license for any adaptations, while reserving to the publisher the rights to make any commercial reuse.  This is pseudo open access. Authors who pay for publication in these pseudo open access publications are not getting their money's worth. For example, text or figures subject to these more restrictive licenses cannot be uploaded to Wikipedia, which uses the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.Presumably, these publishers retain commercial reuse rights either to derive additional revenues from certain potential reusers or to block competitors, who may exercise these reuse rights to earn revenue through some kind of value-added service or publication. This latter option is possible only if the competitor discovers a market that the original publisher overlooked. Such entrepreneurs should be rewarded rather than controlled.I suspect that these publishers have commercialized text mining in mind as one of the kinds of reuse they would like to control. This is an illusion. One of the great benefits of open access is that researchers can use any web-based search tool to engage in machine-aided analysis of the published literature. Publishers who lock their content behind a firewall use contracts and technology to limit or prohibit machine-aided research.Once on the open web, however, even content under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license can be freely mined for commercial purposes because the license applies only to uses covered by copyright, and copyright does not regulate text mining—at least in the United States. Copyright attaches only to the author's expression, rather than underlying ideas or facts. The copyright owner has the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt, and otherwise communicate the work to the public, subject to certain limitations and exceptions, such as fair use. However, most scientific data are facts that are not covered by copyright except to the extent that an author has exercised minimal creativity in the selection or arrangement of data. This minimal creativity standard might prevent the republication of some tables or figures, but in no case would copyright restrict the reuse of the underlying data if arranged in a different format or in a new figure. Text mining software makes temporary copies of full text. These temporary copies do not count for copyright purposes because of their transitory duration, and the durable outputs of text mining—factual data—are not covered by copyright.The other use case that may inspire publishers to retain commercial reuse rights is to sell reprints to private sector entities, particularly for life science publishers I offer one example to illustrate the danger, but many others abound. Imagine an evolution in digital formats and a pseudo open-access publisher that has gone bankrupt. The journal's content is on the web but its host site will soon be shut down. A new, for-profit venture sees value in republishing the defunct journal's content in the new format. However, while the journal has died, its copyrights live on (for the life of the author plus another 70 years!). Because the journal demanded the commercial reuse rights even after collecting a hefty publishing fee from the author, the new venture would likely lack the legal right to copy and republish this piece of the scientific record in the new format to the detriment of those authors and the research community at large. We are living through a moment of fundamental opportunity. Let's be clear. Only those publishers willing to fully seize this opportunity deserve to call their publications “open access.”


Kenneth N. Timmis (Editor-in-Chief), Environmental Microbiology Laboratory, Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, Inhoffenstrasse 7, D-38124Braunschweig, Germany. Tel.: +49 531 6181 4000; Fax: +49 531 6181 4199;kti@helmholtz-hzi.dee-mail: Juan L. Ramos, Estación Experimental del Zaidín – CSIC, C/ Prof. Albareda, 1, E-18008 Granada, Spain.Tel.: +34 958 181 608; Fax: +34 958 135 740;jlramos@eez.csic.ese-mail: Willem M. de Vos, Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, Dreijenplein 10Building 316, 6703 HB Wageningen, The Netherlands.Tel.: +31 317 483 100; Fax: +31 317 483 829;willem.deVos@wur.nle-mail: Willy Verstraete, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (LabMET), Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. Tel.: +32 9264 5976;Fax: +32 9264 6248;willy.verstraete@ugent.bee-mail: Martin Rosenberg, Research & Development, Promega Corporation, 2800 Woods Hollow Road, Madison, WI 53711-5399, USA.martin.rosenberg@promega.come-mail: REVIEWS AND SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORJuan L. Ramos, Estación Experimentaldel Zaidín, Granada, SpainWEB ALERTSLarry Wackett, University of Minnesota, St Paul, USALars Angenent, USASteven A. Banwart, UKShimshon Belkin, IsraelGiovanni Bertoni, ItalyIan Booth, UKUwe Bornscheuer, GermanyMichael Bott, GermanyHarald Brussow, SwitzerlandRita Colwell, USAMilton Costa, PortugalJiri Damborsky, Czech ReplublicCraig Daniels, CanadaEduardo Diaz, SpainGerrit Eggink, GermanyThomas Egli, SwitzerlandRomilio Espejo, ChileManuel Ferrer, SpainJulia Foght, CanadaJim K Fredrickson, USAMichael Galperin, USAJose Luis Garcia, SpainHarry Gilbert, UKBernardo Gonzalez, ChileGuido Grandi, ItalyMiguel G. Guerrero, SpainCarlos A. Guzman, GermanyKen Hammel, USABernhard Hauer, GermanyTerry C. Hazen, USAMichael Hecker, GermanyHermann J. Heipieper, GermanyMonica Höfte, BelgiumKarl-Erich Jaeger, GermanyDieter Jahn, GermanyJunichi Kato, JapanStaffan Kjelleberg, AustraliaTodd R. Klaenhammer, USAAlexander M. Klibanov, USARob Knight, USATino Krell, SpainOscar Kuipers, The NetherlandsRobert Larossa, USASang Yup Lee, Republic of KoreaDaniel van der Lelie, USASteven Lindow, USAMark van Loosdrecht, The NetherlandsVictor de Lorenzo, SpainJosé M. Luengo, SpainBen Lugtenberg, The NetherlandsMohamed A. Marahiel, GermanyAngel T. Martínez, SpainMichael McInerney, USARainer U. Meckenstock, GermanyJan Roelof van der Meer, SwitzerlandDiego de Mendoza, ArgentinaGabriella Molinari, GermanyJens Nielsen, SwedenPer Halkjær Nielsen, DenmarkFergal O'Gara, IrelandSven Panke, SwitzerlandDavid Payne, USAMiguel A. Peñalva, SpainDietmar Pieper, GermanyKorneel Rabaey, BelgiumLutgarde Raskin, USAFernando Rojo, SpainWilfred F.M. Röling, The NetherlandsEliora Z. Ron, IsraelSima Sariaslani, USAUwe Sauer, SwitzerlandBernhard Schink, GermanyClaudia Schmidt-Dannert, USAAna Segura, SpainRoland J. Siezen, The NetherlandsDouwe van Sinderen, IrelandHauke Smidt, The NetherlandsGloria Soberón Chávez, MéxicoAlexander Steinbüchel, GermanyBas Teusink, The NetherlandsSvein Valla, NorwayErick Vandamme, BelgiumJos Vanderleyden, BelgiumL. A. M. van der Wielen, The NetherlandsRene H. Wijffels, The NetherlandsRoland Wohlgemuth, SwitzerlandThomas K. Wood, USAGary Woodnutt, USAMichail Yakimov, ItalyLiping Zhao, ChinaMicrobial Biotechnology publishes papers of original research reporting significant advances in any aspect of microbial applications, including, but not limited to biotechnologies related to:microbial communities: structure:function relationships and communal behaviorGreen chemistryPrimary metabolitesFood, beverages and supplementsSecondary metabolites and natural productsPharmaceuticalsDiagnosticsAgricultureBioenergyBiomining, including oil recovery and processingBioremediationBiopolymers, biomaterialsBionanotechnologyBiosurfactants and bioemulsifiersCompatible solutes and bioprotectantsBiosensors, monitoring systems, quantitative microbial risk assessmentTechnology developmentProtein engineeringFunctional genomicsMetabolic engineeringMetabolic designSystems analysis, modellingProcess engineeringBiologically-based analytical methodsMicrobially based strategies in public healthMicrobially based strategies to influence global processesOpen Access and Copyright. All articles published by Microbial Biotechnology are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. All Microbial Biotechnology articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and allows the commercial use of published articles.Microbial Biotechnology is retained by the author(s). Authors grant Wiley a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher. Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified. Further information about open access license and copyright can be found on http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/details/content/12f25db4c87/Copyright--License.html.Copyright on any research article in a journal published by Use by commercial ‘for-profit’ organisations. Use of Wiley Open Access articles for commercial, promotional, or marketing purposes requires further explicit permission fromWiley  and will be subject to a fee. Commercial purposes include:Copying or downloading of articles, or linking to such articles for further redistribution, sale or licensing;Copying, downloading or posting by a site or service that incorporates advertising with such content;The inclusion or incorporation of article content in other works or services  that is then available for sale or licensing, for a fee ;Use of article content  by forprofit organisations for promotional purposes;Linking to article content in e-mails redistributed for promotional, marketing or educational purposes;Use for the purposes of monetary reward by means of sale, resale, licence, loan, transfer or other form of commercial exploitation such as marketing products;corporatesales@wiley.com.Print reprints of Wiley Open Access articles can be purchased from Disclaimer. The Publisher, Society for Applied Microbiology and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher, Society for Applied Microbiology and Editors; neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by the Publisher, Society for Applied Microbiology and Editors of the products advertised.Wiley Open Access articles posted to repositories or websites are without warranty from Wiley of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law Wiley disclaims all liability for any loss or damage arising out of, or in connection with, the use of or inability to use the content.


Dear Colleagues,Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal (RMMJ) has now been published online at www.rmmj.org.il.We are delighted to announce that the fourth issue of the new peer-reviewed open-access journal RMMJ is freely accessible via the Internet for immediate worldwide, open access to the full text of articles and fulfills the terms of the Creative Commons attribution license under which everyone is free to copy, distribute, and display the work, free of charge, for non-commercial personal and educational purposes.This Journal, while sponsored by Rambam Medical Center, represents an international initiative with active participation of leading international figures in medicine, biomedical science, and the ethical and philosophical aspects of health care. RMMJ is guided by the highest standards of scientific quality and integrity, professional responsibility, and human compassion in accordance with the Rambam’s (Maimonides) scholarly and ethical legacy.The editorial policy of RMMJ focuses on a wide spectrum of clinically relevant biomedical research and other issues central to the provision of optimal health care, disease prevention, and environmental health and provides a vehicle for original articles on basic and translational research that bring discoveries from the bench to the bedside and from the bedside to the community.As you may have noticed in the previous issues, RMMJ will be published along with the original article author’s reply. This kind of extended “Letter to the Editor” will enable an appropriate and comprehensive public discourse regarding various issues.The present issue contains our regular sections “Nobel Laureate Perspective”, “The Maimonides (Rambam) Heritage”, and the “Rambam Grand Rounds”. The last-mentioned includes a special article of major current relevance on treatment of crush injuries caused by earthquakes. The “Rambam Forum” section deals with the current issue of the societal and religious considerations in the practice of organ donation. Two articles on major findings regarding diabetes are included in the “Horizons in Diabetes and Metabolism” section. Two new sections have been added, “Education, Practice and Organization of HealthCare in the 21st Century” and “Readers’ Opinions and Comments”, in which readers’ full-length articles that have been submitted as a response to an article previously published in Journal has had an outstanding exposure demonstrated by more than 11,000 new visits, and 59,000 articles downloaded, from 109 countries and territories. The Journal is a CrossRef member, and articles are indexed by Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals.During the nine months that have passed since the inauguration, the RMMJ. We would be grateful if you could also assist us by notifying your friends about the Journal. This can be easily done through our home website, by clicking the “Notify a Friend” button, or by sending us your friends’ email addresses through the “Contact Us” section.We call upon you to join us in this endeavor and cordially invite you to submit a paper to Journal will be assured.With your help, the scientific and clinical excellence of the Sincerely yours,Editor-in-ChiefOn behalf of the EditorsShraga Blazer, MD


Cancer Medicine aims to publish novel, scientifically sound, research that advances our understanding of the occurrence, causes, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. As an open access publication, articles appearing in Cancer Medicine will be available to everyone, free of charge. This is made possible by authors, institutions, and research funders paying an article publication charge [Cancer Medicine will be assessed by double-blind peer review.n charge . To provCancer Medicine aim to establish and maintain high standards of data integrity and publication ethics in all the papers we publish. To do this, we have set detailed guidelines for authors and reviewers [Scientific progress depends on the integrity of research publications. The editors of eviewers , and we Cancer Medicine will undergo full peer review.All research articles published in Cancer Medicine will initially be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief; articles found to fit with the scope of the Journal will be reviewed by at least two suitably qualified experts.Research articles submitted directly to Cancer Medicine will be subject to “double-blind” peer review: the names of the authors, their addresses, and affiliations will not be revealed to the reviewers.Manuscripts submitted directly to Cancer Medicine from partnering journals will be assessed using the original peer-review reports from those journals; however, the Editor-in-Chief will critically review these peer-review reports and may choose to send manuscripts out for additional double-blind review.Most submissions transferred to All publication decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief on the basis of the reviews provided.Members of the editorial board lend insight, advice, and guidance to the Editor-in-Chief generally and assist in decision making on specific submissions. When the Editor-in-Chief requests advice from editorial board members about a specific manuscript, the names of the authors, their affiliations, and nationalities will not be revealed to the editorial board members.Cancer Medicine maintains the integrity of peer review and delivers rapid and efficient publication to authors and reviewers.The managing editor and editorial assistant provide administrative support to ensure that It is important to correct errors, whether they are inadvertent or deliberate, because they can lead to inappropriate allocation of credit, waste researchers’ time and resources, and may even put patients at risk.Cancer Medicine will publish the retraction, and include a full explanation for why it is doing so.If readers raise concerns with us, we will take action promptly, in accordance with the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics . AlthougInstructions for preparation of figures are set out in the Author Guidelines . In addiDuring online submission, authors must indicate that:all authors have seen the submitted manuscript, and the nature of their contributions are indicated;all those who have contributed to the publication are listed either as authors or in the acknowledgments;all funding sources are acknowledged;potential conflicts of interest are declared;primary source data will be provided on request for papers that are accepted for publication;experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant human and animal ethics regulations, and the relevant ethics committees are named;clinical trials are registered with the appropriate body.Cancer Medicine on submission of a new manuscript.All authors will be notified by Cancer Medicine will only publish manuscripts if the authors agree to make all data including novel nucleotide sequences, structural data, or data from large-scale gene expression experiments freely available, where possible in public databases [Authors must make available to other researchers, or provide alternative sources, for all novel reagents described in the experiments. This includes viruses, cells, nucleic acids, and antibodies. Experimental organisms  must also be made available, but if this is impracticable, the means to reproduce them  must be provided. Human patient samples and data should be made available in accordance with the relevant ethical standards. Costs incurred in producing and transferring the materials should be borne by those who make the request, and provision would be subject to Materials Transfer Agreements at the discretion of the provider. atabases .The text of all submitted manuscripts will be submitted to CrossCheck to detect matching or overlapping text, in an effort to prevent publication of materials that may have been plagiarized. Appropriate action will be taken on manuscripts where CrossCheck identifies a high percentage of similarity or overlap with previously published materials or other materials identified on the Internet. All figures in accepted papers will be screened for compliance with the author guidelines prior to publication.Cancer Medicine. If the authors agree the correction, we will endeavor to publish it quickly. If there is no agreement over the nature of an error, the authors are in dispute, or cannot provide a satisfactory explanation, the editors will handle the matter in accordance with the COPE flowcharts, which will most likely involve alerting representatives from the host institution, and possibly the relevant national office or ombudsman for research integrity.If authors become aware of an error after publication, or if readers have concerns that errors may exist, they are encouraged to write to the editors of Cancer Medicine have been based in part on those of other journals, and we have tried to build on the experience of COPE and blogs such as Retraction Watch [cancermed@wiley.com.The research integrity policies of on Watch . We encoInternational Journal of Clinical Practice, the global Wiley Open Access journals in health sciences, is Treasurer of Committee on Publication Ethics (a UK-registered charity), and leads the Wiley-Blackwell publication ethics program. D. L. V. sits on the editorial board of Cancer Medicine.C. G. works for John Wiley & Sons, and benefits from the success of the company's publishing program. C. G. publishes clinical and research journals including a number for Societies and Royal Colleges in Australia and New Zealand, the


Dear Readers,Microbial Biotechnology (MBT) is undergoing a number of interesting changes that we would like to report.MBT's transition to open access will significantly benefit both authors and readers, and hence the field of biotechnology as a whole. The Journal will continue to be editorially independent and its editorial team will continue to apply ever increasing standards of peer review, thus ensuring that the journal continues to be the high quality publication we know and value.The first is its transition to an author-pays open access model from 2013. We believe open access will offer the journal a number of advantages, including the flexibility to grow without the constraints of a page budget, and substantial increases in exposure, with all articles being made freely available via Wiley Online Library and PubMed Central. MBT was assigned its first Impact Factor at the end of June and, since that time, has experienced a significant increase in submissions. As has been the case with its sister journals, Environmental Microbiology and Environmental Microbiology Reports, this rise in submissions will translate into an Editor-implemented rise in quality–originality threshold for acceptance, which in turn will positively influence subsequent IFs. Given the steady increase in exciting science we receive, we are confident that MBT will experience healthy increases in IF over the coming years.Another is that MBT is the strength of its Editorial team – its Editors, Editorial Board and army of ad hoc reviewers, composed of leaders in the different sectors of microbial biotechnology, leaders both in the sense of representing the field and in pioneering the way forward. It is these dedicated scientists who set the benchmark for the field and for the papers that are published in MBT. They do this by providing constructive, critical reviews on submissions and by submitting their own work, and thereby ensure that MBT publishes some of the best research from high profile groups. The Editors are deeply indebted to the dedicated selfless support of its Editorial Board and ad hoc reviewers: thank you all for your tremendous support!An important characteristic of MBT is to promote the field of applied microbiology, inter alia by stimulating young researchers to carry out original research on novel topics at the interfaces of the various disciplines that impact on biotechnology. It does so not only by showcasing important developments by leading groups, but also by profiling topics and new developments the Editors consider will lead to ground-breaking discoveries. One means it employs to do this is to publish Special and Themed Issues on such topics, edited by top researchers in the field. Exciting recent ones have been on Microbial Vaccines and Immunomodulators (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mbt.2012.5.issue-2/issuetoc) edited by Carlos Guzman, Ennio de Gregorio, Jan ter Meulen and Martin Friede, and Microbial Resource Mangement (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mbt.2012.5.issue-3/issuetoc), edited by Nico Boon and Willy Verstraete. Another means is the Web Alert of Larry Wackett which assembles the best websites for relevant diverse aspects of applied microbiology. A third is the biannual original, sometimes provocative, Crystal Ball series, in which international experts speculate on the key new developments/theories/paradigms that will drive discoveries in the field over the following years. This feature, which appears in the first issue of the year, always creates considerable interest and, in some cases, amusement. Take a look at the 2013 CB in this issue.The declared goal of MBT (see the MBT website for latest updates) to see who is publishing what in hot interest-generating biotechnology.And finally: check out below the most downloaded and most cited papers in Top downloaded articlesMarine genomics: at the interface of marine microbial ecology and biodiscoveryKarla B. Heidelberg, Jack A. Gilbert, Ian JointBacterial persistence increases as environmental fitness decreasesSeok Hoon Hong, Xiaoxue Wang, Hazel F. O'Connor, Michael J. Benedik, Thomas K. WoodStrategies for discovery and improvement of enzyme function: state of the art and opportunitiesPraveen Kaul, Yasuhisa AsanoNatural products for cancer chemotherapyArnold L. Demain and Preeti VaishnavAnaerobic benzene degradation by bacteriaCarsten Vogt, Sabine Kleinsteuber, Hans-Hermann RichnowTop cited articlesMetabolic engineering to enhance bacterial hydrogen productionMaeda, T; Sanchez-Torres, V; Wood, TKIdentification of furfural as a key toxin in lignocellulosic hydrolysates and evolution of a tolerant yeast strainHeer, D; Sauer, UMicrobial degradation of lignin: how a bulky recalcitrant polymer is efficiently recycled in nature and how we can take advantage of thisRuiz-Duenas, FJ; Martinez, ATMicrobial reporters of metal bioavailabilityMagrisso, S; Erel, Y; Belkin, SIndole and 7-hydroxyindole diminish Pseudomonas aeruginosa virulenceLee, J; Attila, C; Cirillo, SLG; Cirillo, JD; Wood, TKMBT, participate in its upward march to become the flagship of microbial biotechnology research, and your paper may be in one of these lists in future!So, submit your best work to


Journal of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery is at a significant threshold. As a mature, respected, and long-lived entity it has grown from the scientific publication of a small national society  to a major international journal . The process of development has resulted in the evolution of the Journal from paper based manuscript management to an online submission system, and we are now advancing to a completely digital, open access format effective January 2013.The The reasons for the change are several. Open access publishing has advantages that include universal, free, and immediate access to the published content in standard repositories (e.g. PubMed). The single biggest advantage of open access publishing, as it pertains to the Journal, is the potential to increase the impact factor by virtue of higher downloads and citations ,2. FinalWe have chosen to publish with BioMed Central, a pioneer in open access publishing, based on their experience with this model of publishing, substantive logistical support, stringent peer review process, as well as their commitment to a sustainable model from scientific, financial, and environmental perspectives. As such, BioMed Central has committed to permanent accessibility of its content both past and present and has taken measures to ensure that this remains the case in perpetuity.http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/), which will offset a portion of, or the entire cost of the APC. In the case of our Journal certain articles may, at the discretion of the editors, have the APC covered by the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.In brief, the open access publishing model transfers the cost of publishing from the subscribers  to the researchers and funders and essentially makes publishing the final step in the research process, providing free and immediate access to published content. In so doing, the restricted access of the traditional subscription-based model is circumvented. This free and immediate access is permitted by the Article Processing Charge (APC), payable one time only as a flat fee, with no additional charges for colour figures, videos, or large amounts of data. In addition to the potential for research grants to cover the costs of APCs, many institutions have memberships in BioMed Central  that have full or supporter memberships in BioMed Central and are thus eligible for the aforementioned reductions or waiver of the APC. In addition, in order to assist authors from developing and less economically privileged countries, BioMed Central operates a waiver program , which cThere are several advantages that we anticipate realizing as a result of the transition to open access publishing. It is our hope that basic science and clinical research that is funded by national granting agencies will see this as a superior vehicle for dissemination of their research products, thus increasing the content of this peer review funded scholarship in our Journal. In addition, as a result of the increased accessibility and visibility, we fully anticipate an increase in our impact factor in the years to come.http://www.journalotohns.com) remain unchanged from previously. With some slight changes related to different site structure our authors and reviewers will find the peer review logistics to be quite similar. Our peer review process will remain stringent but fair and as constructive as possible. The one change that authors and readers may note is related to one of the advantages of online only open access publishing and that is a faster, more streamlined review and, most importantly publishing process with almost immediate publication of accepted material (once formatting and typesetting has been completed).In terms of content, process, and policy at the Journal we do not anticipate substantive changes. Our Editorship  and Managing Editor (Ms. Stacey Leavitt-Wright) as well as our Associate Editors (To conclude, the Editors and Editorial Board are enthusiastic about our new publishing model and the potential advantages that it affords. Changes and transitions are, of course, times to explore new opportunities and we are contemplating new areas of focus and process once we have successfully solidified the new publishing model. As always we remain indebted to our Society, authors Associate Editors and peer reviewers, without whose hard work, dedication, attention to detail, we could not have reached this point nor contemplated a robust and successful future. We look forward to continuing these strong relationships and to working with our new Publisher.


International Code of Botanical Nomenclature are decided on every 6 years at Nomenclature Sections associated with International Botanical Congresses (IBC). The XVIII IBC was held in Melbourne, Australia; the Nomenclature Section met on 18-22 July 2011 and its decisions were accepted by the Congress at its plenary session on 30 July. Several important changes were made to the Code as a result of this meeting that will affect publication of new names. Two of these changes will come into effect on 1 January 2012, some months before the Melbourne Code is published. Electronic material published online in Portable Document Format (PDF) with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) will constitute effective publication, and the requirement for a Latin description or diagnosis for names of new taxa will be changed to a requirement for a description or diagnosis in either Latin or English. In addition, effective from 1 January 2013, new names of organisms treated as fungi must, in order to be validly published, include in the protologue  the citation of an identifier issued by a recognized repository (such as MycoBank). Draft text of the new articles dealing with electronic publication is provided and best practice is outlined.Changes to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, this article will be published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Brittonia, Cladistics, MycoKeys, Mycotaxon, New Phytologist, North American Fungi, Novon, Opuscula Philolichenum, PhytoKeys, Phytoneuron, Phytotaxa, Plant Diversity and Resources, Systematic Botany and Taxon.To encourage dissemination of the changes made to the  International Code of Botanical Nomenclature  that will take effect from 1 January 2012. These changes will affect everyone who publishes names governed by this Code. As the Melbourne Code will not be published until approximately mid-2012, we felt it would be helpful to outline these changes, particularly those concerning effective publication in electronic media . For a concise report on all the changes to the Code accepted in Melbourne, see 29A.1. Publication electronically in Portable Document Format (PDF) should comply with the PDF/A archival standard (ISO 19005).29A.2. Authors should preferably publish in publications that are archived, satisfying the following criteria as far as is practical :(a) The material should be placed in multiple trusted online digital repositories, e.g. an ISO-certified repository;(b) Digital repositories should be in more than one area of the world and preferably on different continents;(c) Deposition of printed copies in libraries in more than one area of the world and preferably on different continents is also advisable.Article 3030.1. Publication by distribution of electronic material does not constitute effective publication before 1 January 2012.30.2. An electronic publication is not effectively published if there is evidence associated with or within the publication that it is merely a preliminary version that was, or is to be, replaced by a version that the publisher considers final, in which case only that final version is effectively published.30.3. Publication by indelible autograph before 1 January 1953 is effective. Indelible autograph produced at a later date is not effectively published.30.4. For the purpose of this Article, indelible autograph is handwritten material reproduced by some mechanical or graphic process .30.5. Publication on or after 1 January 1953 in trade catalogues or non-scientific newspapers, and on or after 1 January 1973 in seed-exchange lists, does not constitute effective publication.30.6. The distribution on or after 1 January 1953 of printed matter accompanying exsiccatae does not constitute effective publication.Note 1. If the printed matter is also distributed independently of the exsiccata, it is effectively published.30.7. Publication on or after 1 January 1953 of an independent non-serial work stated to be a thesis submitted to a university or other institute of education for the purpose of obtaining a degree is not effectively published unless it includes an explicit statement (referring to the requirements of the Code for effective publication) or other internal evidence that it is regarded as an effective publication by its author or publisher.Note 2. The presence of an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or a statement of the name of the printer, publisher, or distributor in the original printed version is regarded as internal evidence that the work was intended to be effectively published.Recommendation 30A30A.1. Preliminary and final versions of the same electronic publication should be clearly indicated as such when they are first issued.30A.2. It is strongly recommended that authors avoid publishing new names and descriptions or diagnoses of new taxa  in ephemeral printed matter of any kind, in particular printed matter that is multiplied in restricted and uncertain numbers, in which the permanence of the text may be limited, for which effective publication in terms of number of copies is not obvious, or that is unlikely to reach the general public. Authors should also avoid publishing new names and descriptions or diagnoses in popular periodicals, in abstracting journals, or on correction slips.30A.3. To aid availability through time and place, authors publishing nomenclatural novelties should give preference to periodicals that regularly publish taxonomic articles. Otherwise, a copy of a publication (whether published as printed or electronic matter) should be sent to an indexing centre appropriate to the taxonomic group, and publications that exist only as printed matter should be deposited in at least ten, but preferably more, botanical or other generally accessible libraries throughout the world.30A.4. Authors and editors are encouraged to mention nomenclatural novelties in the summary or abstract, or list them in an index in the publication.Article 3131.1. The date of effective publication is the date on which the printed or electronic matter became available as defined in Art. 29 and 30. In the absence of proof establishing some other date, the one appearing in the printed or electronic matter must be accepted as correct.[Existing Note 1 replaced by the following:]31.2. When a publication is issued in parallel electronic and printed versions, these must be treated as effectively published on the same date unless the dates of the versions are different according to Art. 31.1.31.3. When separates from periodicals or other works placed on sale are issued in advance, the date on the separate is accepted as the date of effective publication unless there is evidence that it is erroneous.Recommendation 31A31A.1. The date on which the publisher or publisher's agent delivers printed matter to one of the usual carriers for distribution to the public should be accepted as its date of effective publication.Melbourne Code, so that the names therein are effectively published. We suggest that those publishing in journals or monograph series and books that have online editions communicate with the editors so that best practice can be established across the community as quickly as possible. Many publishers have been carefully addressing the issues involved with the e-publication of novelties for some time  and conMelbourne Code are:Some practices that we feel will help with the initial stages of e-publication of novelties that are according to the New Phytologist or Nature).• Having each article bear the date of publication prominently .• If an online early version is issued that is not the same as the final version (and thus not the place of effective publication), stamp each article with this fact prominently  that participate in the CLOCKSS system  format together with a parallel PDF version. In such cases, the PDF version will be effectively published. The stipulation that the General Committee for Botanical Nomenclature will communicate the acceptability of a new international standard format, should PDF ever be succeeded, means authors of novelties and the community using the Code can remain informed as to advances in the field and that the Code will be protected from obsolescence.Although the new Articles and Recommendations use the terms PDF and PDF/A, this does not mean that publications must be issued not result in effective publication of novelties under the Melbourne Code:Use of the following means of electronic publication will • Publication on websites or in ephemeral documents available over the Internet (there are strict criteria for granting of ISSNs ).• Publication in journals without a registered ISSN or e-ISSN.• Publication in books without a registered ISBN or e-ISBN.The Recommendation approved to advise the deposition of a hard copy of any e-publication in a library suggests to botanists an action, but it does not set out standard practice or a protocol for librarians to follow. Librarians are themselves in a complex transition zone between publication modalities , and botCode approved in Melbourne to take effect from 1 January 2012 is that the description or diagnosis required for valid publication of the name of a new taxon of all organisms falling under the Code may be in either English or Latin. This is the current provision for names of plant fossils, but all new non-fossil taxa have required a Latin description or diagnosis . This has no bearing on the form of scientific names, which continue to be Latin or treated as Latin. Individual journal requirements for Latin and/or English will, of course, be determined by the editors of those journals.The second change to the Code approved in Melbourne relating to publication of names, but one not taking effect until 1 January 2013 (not 1 January 2012 as reported by [A third change to the orted by ), is thaorted by ). This wnot apply to plants or algae; there is no need for authors of new names in these groups to request Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) - or other identifiers - from indexing centers.The requirement for a unique identifier for new names of fungi on or after 1 January 2013 does


An Open Access Publishing Conference was convened in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 7, 2004, by the libraries of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Emory University. Open Access is an emerging publishing model for peer-reviewed scientific research in which authors and their publishers grant free access to their work as long as the authors are acknowledged and the publisher ensures that the work is made freely available in a digital archive  in today's Internet era, the traditional Gutenberg print publishing model is outdated; 2) electronic publishing has the advantages of lower costs, global distribution, content that can be linked to datasets, improved archiving, and full-text searching; and 3) rigorous peer review is possible in electronic and Open Access formats. Open Access publishing challenges include engaging professional societies in this approach, building sustainable business plans, and changing academic culture so that published works are evaluated for content rather than for the journal label. Open Access publishing is typically financed by author fees along with a combination of philanthropic and advertising support. Examples are the Public Library of Science, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and BioMed Central journals. Recent milestones include the Bethesda Open Access Principles meeting  priorities regarding access to, and permanent retention of, the world's biomedical literature. Reflecting growing concerns about high costs of scientific publications, the U.S. Congress recently directed the NLM to report on the impact of rising journal subscription prices relative to access to medical research information and to identify remedies to ensure that taxpayer-funded research remains in the public domain. NLM's Open Access initiative is PubMed Central, a digital archive of freely available life sciences journals. After a slow start, the PubMed Central repository includes 137 journal titles. PubMed Central expects publishers to deposit full contents of each journal issue soon after publication. Supplementary data files are also encouraged. The recent addition of a single article from a journal that is not participating in PubMed Central is broadening the definition of this archive. Another Open Access approach was described by John Nickerson, editor of Emory University's Molecular Vision, which has been freely available on the Internet since its first issue in October 1995. A low-cost operation, Molecular Vision is a refereed open access journal that has achieved scientific recognition in its field.Publishing trends affecting libraries were discussed by Linda Watson, University of Virginia Health Sciences Library, and included: 1) journal subscription price increases outpacing library budgets, 2) publishers' bundling of journal subscriptions into large contracts often not well matched with institutional research interests, 3) consolidations in the publishing industry, 4) restrictive licensing terms overriding copyright and fair use practices, 5) long-term archival access to electronic content, and 6) selective deletions of published articles from databases and e-publications. Presenting a scientist's perspective, CDC's Marta Gwinn noted that the scientific community's overarching responsibility is to ensure that research is conducted with integrity and quality and that access to it is fair, maximizes value to users, and protects the public investment and interests.The open access conference generated discussion about the scientific research dissemination process and the need to strengthen the connections between evidence-based research and healthcare action. With high quality, peer-reviewed scientific research becoming freely available on the Internet, possibilities for more rapid advances in scientific knowledge and ultimately improved public health are important. Collaboration between government and academia is necessary to make progress toward open access to scientific research.http://ada.healthsci.emory.edu/openaccessThis conference was supported in part by the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern Atlantic Region. Conference presentations are available from:


The Israel Journal of Health Policy Research (IJHPR) seeks to promote intensive intellectual interactions among scholars and practitioners from Israel and other countries regarding all aspects of health policy and health care, with a special focus on Israel. During 2012, its first year of operation, the journal succeeded in publishing an impressive volume of policy-relevant articles by a remarkably diverse set of authors. The journal's success to date would not have been possible without the vital contributions of the editorial board, the authors, the reviewers, the readers, BioMed Central , and the Israel National Institute for Health Policy . The challenges ahead include promoting greater reader involvement, and enhancing the journal's policy and educational impact. IJHPR has completed its first year of publication, we wanted to share with you our perceptions of the journal’s accomplishments to date and of the challenges ahead.Now that the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research (IJHPR) seeks to promote intensive intellectual interactions among scholars and practitioners from Israel and other countries regarding all aspects of health policy and health care, with a special focus on Israel. The ultimate aim of these intellectual interactions is to contribute to the development of health policy in Israel and around the world[The he world.IJHPR seeks to fill an important gap in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, which can contribute to both understanding and action. The IJHPR employs an on-line, open access dissemination model to reach as wide an audience as possible and to facilitate interactive reader involvement. A thorough peer-review process, typically involving two reviewers from Israel and two from abroad for each manuscript, ensures both scientific rigor and policy relevance.As such, the IJHPR has consistently published at least four articles every month since its January 2012 launch, for a total of 52 articles. It is exciting that the articles have covered a broad range of topics, from egg cell donations to health care manpower, and from patient safety to obesity reduction. We have also been pleased to publish articles related to several aspects of Israeli health care that are of particular interest internationally, including health information technology, quality monitoring and improvement, emergency preparedness, deliberate priority setting, and managed care. In the year ahead, we hope to develop some of these into article collections.To further its objectives, the Perhaps in part because of the broad range of topics, perhaps in part because of the open access policy, the journal's articles also seem to be reaching a broad audience. By mid-December, 4 of the 52 articles had been accessed over 2,000 times and 13 of them (more than a quarter) had been accessed over 1,000 times – including several that were only published over the last few months. In total, there have been over 40,000 article accesses from 132 countries . These access statistics are considered good for a first year journal, and the experience of other BioMed Central journals suggests a promising future. We have clearly struck a chord among many readers. At the same time, we would welcome suggestions for how to reach an even wider audience and how to promote more active reader involvement.Our sense is that the articles have been consistently solid, and occasionally brilliant. One of our greatest sources of joy as editors has been seeing several promising submissions, which initially needed further development, mature into first-rate manuscripts as a result of detailed, constructive input from peer reviewers and effective incorporation of that input by the authors. Many of our authors have told us that they have been impressed by the seriousness and the helpfulness of the reviews they have received. They also express a great deal of appreciation for the work of the journal's language editor.We believe that publishing commentaries from internationally-recognized scholars has worked well. The commentaries provide our readers with additional insights on the issues raised by the main articles and a deeper understanding of their international significance. The authors of the main articles and the commentaries also benefit from the connections made between them, which in some cases have been continuing. We also know that the commentaries contribute greatly to the journal's status as a prestigious international journal.IJHPR's authors. It has also been gratifying that several authors have now submitted their second or even third IJHPR manuscript, suggesting that their initial experiences were positive. We continue to be eager to see more repeat authors, while at the same time we are looking to editorial board members to help us broaden our circle of first-time authors.We are gratified that, to date, we have received submissions from some of Israel's leading scholars as well as quite a few promising young researchers. Moreover, virtually all of Israel's universities and health services research centers are represented among the Several of the articles published to date have been authored jointly by Israeli scholars and scholars from abroad. Such collaborations can greatly enrich the analysis and enhance its relevance to policymakers in many countries. We hope to see more collaborative submissions in the months ahead.IJHPR for pedagogical purposes.We understand that the articles have started to make their way into course curricula. We would welcome your feedback on the extent to which this is happening and what we might do to promote the use of the IJHPR in 2013 will be to find ways to become even more integrated into the policy process.Several of the articles have already fed into the policy development process in Israel and some have received widespread media coverage. An important challenge for the We want to take this opportunity to thank the National Institute, the journal's sponsor, for its ongoing financial, intellectual, and moral support. We also want to thank the members of the editorial board for their help in soliciting manuscripts and charting the journal's overall direction. We are also greatly appreciative of the strong vote of confidence that the journal has received from the Council of Deans of Israeli Medical Schools.This is also a good opportunity to thank our colleagues at BioMed Central, our publisher, for its ongoing assistance and support. Increasingly, leading foundations, funders, and scientific societies around the world (such as the NIH and the Wellcome Trust) are embracing the open access approach,3 and BiIJHPR reviewers to date will be appearing in a forthcoming IJHPR article.Many thanks to the over 100 scholars from around the world who have participated in the review process and whose input has contributed immensely to the quality of the articles published. Without their contribution the journal would not be what it is today. A full list of IJHPR, there would be no journal. We hope that those of you whose articles have been published in the IJHPR have had a good experience with us and we welcome your feedback. We also hope that those whose submissions have not made it through the process will not be discouraged and will consider submitting other manuscripts to us in the future.Finally, a big thanks to the dozens of authors who have submitted their manuscripts to the journal. We are constantly mindful of the fact that other publication outlets are available to you and that, without your belief in the We conclude by wishing all of us many more years of fruitful cooperation. We are confident that our readers will find ways to use the articles for the benefit of population health in Israel and around the world.