Some us of know the following phrase by heart:
all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication:
PMR: Why is the “PubMed” bit so important? Why wouldn’t an institutional repository do? Or a departmenal web page? After all, Google will index these and find them, won’t it?
I realise that the following is going to upset some people but I have to tell it as it is….
The reason that PubMed Central is so important to me is thatit is not”just an archive”, not “just an enforcement agency”, not “just a repository”. It is a living instrument of scientific research in a way that the others are not – and won’t be. And it’s evolving rapidly. It will, I predict, overtake commercial abstracting organisations (you know which ones) during the next decade. It will become the single most important scientific information resource in the chemical/biological arena. Together with arXiv and SCOAP in physics, it will be part of the twenty-first scientific information enlightment.
Why do I say this? Because for the last 30? years the NIH has had first calss teams working on the modern practices of informatics. That’s shown by Pubchem, which is now seen by many (not yet all, but most of the enlightened ones) as the first place to look for chemical information on molecules. Why? First because it’s Open, but more importantly because it has a modern approach to information. Pubchem will continue to overtake the conventional molecular databases. That’s why there was such a fuss when Pubchem was launched.
There are many people interested in the “Open” world you are talking about and the majority of them will answer this question with their Open views. I know that before I ask it…however, I believe that the following correct is more appropriate for the majority of users of PubChem…
You say “the first place to look for chemical information on molecules. Why? First because it’s Open, but more importantly because it has a modern approach to information.”
The correct statement is “First, because it’s Free”. Based on my discussions the Open nature of the data is of very little concern to the majority of users of PubChem. They use it because it’s free access and if you asked them to distinguish Free from Open they couldn’t. It’s the same for free Access versus Open Access publications. Most scientists require free access if you ask them. But if you ask on this blog I think you’ll get a biased response because many of us are more engaged in Open vs Free discussions. This is clearly my opinion only…I really don’t know BUT my data gathered conversationally suggests I am right. How could we find out?
(1) Thanks.
In the way that most people use “open”, it necessarily implies “free”. So it’s not really necessarily to specific free. I’ve just finished writing a paper [*] which contains analysis of “free” versus “Open”. In many languages there is a word “libre” whereas english only has “free”. So writing “free” can be confusing. But I’m happy to write “free and open” which is possibly an acceptable pleonasm.
Our DSpace seems to be down as I write and I’m trying to get this mounted elsewhere. But when the Dspace comes up it should be under “Open data In Science” at http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk. Meanwhile if you read “free software” on Wikipedia you will see the various nuances. Libre and gratis are not common english uses but are more accurate. More later…
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You were thinking this would upset me?
It doesn’t.
One of the things that hacks me off (excuse my common phraseology) about IRs is that the technology is brain-dead to the bone, so brain-dead it’s almost impossible to build decent 21st-century discovery and reuse mechanisms atop it.
If PMC provides better, then PMC ought to outcompete IRs.
(4) No, I didn’t expect it to upset you.
But a lot of people at the meetings I go to think that IRs and/or self-archiving are the answer. In science they are not. If the article is in the literature and in scope Pubmed will have it. If Pubmed ar allowed to mount the fulltext they will. If they aren’t and the fulltext is in some IR pubmed won’t know about it and they won’t point there. So self-archiving doesn’t work when Pubmed is seen – as it should be – as the first place to go for scientific information.