Open Access: A New Model for Publishing in the Pharmacological Sciences

Abstract

CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology (CPT:PSP) is an online-only, open access (OA) journal, which means that anyone, anywhere in the world, can access, download, print out, and read articles published here immediately upon publication on the journal's website at Nature and simultaneous deposit in the public-access repository, PubMed Central. Using a Creative Commons license for authors, CPT:PSP permits authors to retain copyright in their articles and permits readers to download and reuse (with attribution) tables, data, and other elements of a paper. This Perspective provides an introduction to authors and readers of this new ASCPT journal about this approach to publishing.

Background and History of OA Journals

The OA journal movement had its genesis in the late 1990s, when the physical barrier of paper distribution of publications dissolved, thanks to the widespread introduction of full-text online publication.^1,2 “Science wants to be free” became a rallying cry of leading proponents Harold Varmus, Michael Eisen, and Patrick Brown, scientists and opinion leaders who founded the Public Library of Science. Early journals adopting OA policies for the research they published included BMJ and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Specifically in the pharmacological sciences, in 1999, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences launched and self-published two free, online-only, OA journals, The AAPS Journal and AAPS: PharmSciTech, which have several years later reverted to a subscription basis at Springer. Publishers struggled with the economic realities of a business model that, de facto, eliminated their single largest source of publishing revenue, library subscriptions. Gradually, the “author pays” model of funding publication of OA articles became established, driven by the policies of organizations like The Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, with the National Institutes of Health also requiring the deposit in publicly accessible databases (like PubMed Central) of articles that emanate from the research it funds. Many traditional journals now make access to research articles free after an embargo period of 6 months to 1 year. Many, like Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, have moved to a “hybrid” publishing model and now offer authors the option of immediate OA through payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC).

Today, there are approximately 8,000 OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) at the Lund University. BioMed Central, the UK-based OA publishing company (now owned by Springer) publishes a dozen OA journals (out of almost 300 OA journals it has launched in the last decade) in its pharmacology and clinical pharmacology subject collections (see http://www.biomedcentral.com/journals/bysubject). The Public Library of Science journal, PLOS One, lists 1,455 articles in its pharmacology subject collection (http://www.plosone.org/article/browse.action?field=date&day=1). In 2011, PLOS One, which has an impact factor of 4.092, has published close to 30,000 papers (all OA) since its 2006 launch. Nature Publishing Group has been a strong proponent for OA journal publishing and has launched several OA journals (including CPT:PSP) over the last few years.

The publishing industry has entered a phase of synthesis or consolidation, after a decade of vigorous, and often partisan, debate about the virtues and perils of moving the economic basis for journal publishing from the user (subscriber, whether individual or institution) to the author (granting agency, institution, or corporation). Most new journals are launched in the OA model, as libraries continue to struggle with shrinking budgets for the acquisition of new content. Most granting agencies now support funding of OA publication of the research they sponsor, either directly, through explicit support of publishing fees, or indirectly, through permitting researchers to allocate funds from their grants to support publication fees in OA journals. In industry, funding of publication is relatively commonplace. In academia, institutions are diverting funds from library acquisition budgets (for journal subscriptions) to support publication of their faculty members' research in OA journals. OA fees are waived for nonresearch articles, e.g., review articles and other invited pieces, in most journals that are built on the OA model. In addition, APC waivers are common for authors in countries with developing economies, as well as in cases of special needs.

What are the Benefits of OA Publishing?

Discoverability

Indexing OA journals is accomplished very quickly through acceptance by PubMed Central, which typically happens very soon after a journal's launch, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pub/pubinfo/#prereq. After acceptance by PubMed Central, articles will be discoverable on PubMed, with linking to full text on PubMed Central. Although MEDLINE indexing is still an important milestone for new journals, it typically takes over a year. Authors often cite lack of MEDLINE or PubMed indexing as a deterrent to submitting their work to new journals. However, with PubMed Central for OA journals, discoverability and citation will be immediate.

Accessibility

Established, subscription-based journals like Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics are widely available to researchers, faculty, students, and others associated with the institutions that subscribe to them, either directly or through a bundle of journals that are sold to library consortia. New journals, as mentioned above, struggle to gain library subscriptions, and therefore have very limited reach into their intended audiences. It is not unusual for a new, subscription-based, journal to reach an institutional circulation of less than 100 libraries, even several years after launch. OA journals face no such barriers literally, the content can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, whether at an institution or through a personal connection to the Internet. There are no barriers, either of geography or economics.

Increased citability

Thomson-Reuters, the publisher of the Journal Citation Report and Web of Science, which track the citations of articles and the Impact Factors of journals, reviews new journals for possible inclusion in their database after 3 months of consecutive publication, see http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/selection. In recent years, Thomson-Reuters has selected many newly launched OA journals for citation analysis. Criteria for selection include the early citation of articles in the journal, and the citation records of authors and editorial board members. Citation of OA articles is by Digital Object Identifier. Tenure and promotion committees are increasingly comfortable with the new realities of how faculty research is published in the age of OA.

Speed

Because OA journals are published by uploading new articles at very frequent intervals (CPT:PSP, for instance, will upload articles weekly to the journal's website), there are no delays to publication. Within a few weeks of acceptance, the fully edited, formatted, and proofread article is fully published online. This contrasts sharply with many subscription-based journals, where articles may sit in a queue awaiting publication in an issue, for months or even, in some cases, 1–2 years. Using OA journals, authors can get their research out into the world with much more speed and efficiency than is possible in the print journal model.

Environmental responsibility

All the processes involved in publishing an OA journal are electronic, from initial submission of a paper, through peer review, production, and publication. Literally, no trees are harmed in the production of an OA journal. As the population of authors, editors, and readers becomes increasingly aware of the fragility of the global environment, the “greenness” of an OA journal is a very large benefit.

Compliance with government mandates

One of the earliest arguments for OA was that research funded by taxpayers should be freely accessible, once the results are published, to those taxpayers. Recently, public accessibility of science has gained even more traction with government agencies. Fueled by new and forceful policy positions of the Research Council of the United Kingdom and the European Commission, the drive toward OA publishing is accelerating.³ Publishing an OA journal is an important step in developing a sustainable long-term strategy for funded research publication. With government mandates for OA publication, journals that do not have strong OA-supportive policies will ultimately lose the support of their most critical audience: the authors.

Conclusion

The rapid growth in submissions to OA journals since Public Library of Science launched its first journal in 2003 bears testimony to the power both of the Internet and of notions of fairness in the academic community (which should include credentialed scientists in government and industry, who share a common dedication to the value of the universal dissemination of research findings).

CPT:PSP provides its constituents, including the membership of the ASCPT and of the International Society of Pharmacometrics, with a vehicle for publication that is tailored to their interests and that, by embracing the new paradigm for scientific publishing, reflects the values of the research community and the institutions that support it.

Conflict of Interest

The author is a scholarly publishing consultant, one of whose clients is the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.