g o v e r n m e n t & policy
VARMUS PUSHES HARD FOR E-BIOMED NIH director's online publishing proposal gets some kudos, but many commercial and scientific society publishers are up in arms Madeleine Jacobs C&EN Washington
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t's hard to believe National Institutes of Health Director Harold E. Varmus is getting any work done this summer. Ever since May 5, when he posted his idea for an electronic publishing site titled "E-biomed," the energetic Nobel Laureate has been getting an earful of comments from interested scientists, concerned commercial and nonprofit scientific publishers, and the scientific and general media. Varmus, of course, is not shy about giving as good as he gets, and that's just what he did late last month at two forums. The first was held at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington D.C., on June 24 and was called "a summit of electronic publishers." That meeting was attended by representatives from many scientific societies, including the American Chemical Society, which publishes C&EN and 32 other journals and magazines. On June 30, Varmus, along with representatives from three publishing organizations, talked to science writers at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. Although the NAS meeting was closed to the media, sources present at both meetings told C&EN that Varmus gave virtually the same presentation. And at both sessions, an adversarial tone dominated discussions between Varmus and his audience, with Varmus expressing surprise at the vehement reaction coming from some publishers. At one point with the science writers, he derisively called a publisher's comments about E-biomed "paranoic." To understand why this proposal has riled so many people, one must first understand what Varmus has suggested in "E-biomed: A Proposal for Electronic Publications in the Biomedical Sciences" (http://www.nih.gov/welcome/ director/ebiomed.ebi.htm). The draft
Varmus: forging ahead
proposal, prepared by Varmus with assistance from a number of people, takes up a mere six single-spaced pages when printed from the web site. However, they are a revolutionary six pages. In his proposal, Varmus notes that "electronic communication is making dramatic changes in the way information is exchanged among scientists. But "despite these welcome and transforming changes, the full potential of electronic communication has yet to be realized. The scientific community has made only sparing use thus far of the Internet as a means to publish scientific work and to distribute it widely and without significant barriers to access." He devotes just one paragraph to extolling the virtues of the current system of scientific publishing, which he acknowledges has worked well for more than 300 years. Among these virtues are peer review, the ability of journals to confer status and grounds for career advancement, attractive formats, and convenience. In the plan he envisions, "E-biomed
would transmit and maintain, in both permanent online and downloaded archives, reports in the many fields that constitute biomedical research, including clinical research, cell and molecular biology, medically related behavioral research, bioengineering, and other disciplines within biology and medicine. The essential feature of the plan is simplified, instantaneous, cost-free access by potential readers to E-biomed's entire content in a manner that permits each reader to pursue his or her own interests as productively as possible." Authors would retain copyrights of articles posted to E-biomed, and articles could be freely downloaded but reproduced only with the permission of the authors. E-biomed would have two sites for authors: In one, reports would be submitted to editorial boards, which could be identical to those that represent current print journals or composed of some other newly formed group. "Other reports," Varmus writes, "would be posted immediately in the E-biomed repository, prior to any conventional peer review, after passing a simple screen for appropriateness." Appropriateness is not clearly defined in the original proposal, but Varmus notes that "each report would need to be approved by two individuals with appropriate credentials" who presumably would ensure that the articles are related to the subject areas of E-biomed and are not too "extraneous or outrageous." Varmus cites the following advantages of E-biomed, among others: • Open access to scientific reports and assembly of personalized journals, with reports searchable by a single search engine. • More rapid dissemination of scientific information by speeding up both the review and production processes currently used in scientific publishing. • Reduced costs, especially to users, who would have free access to E-biomed. Varmus concludes the proposal with an invitation to the scientific community to submit comments. In the ensuing weeks, hundreds of pro and con comments— literally the cyber equivalent of reams of paper—flooded in, dozens of which are now posted on the E-biomed web site. On June 21, Varmus responded on the web to the most frequent questions and criticisms by restating some of the fuzzier aspects of the original proposal; the June 21 document is longer than the original proposal. In his meeting with science writers on June 30, Varmus again responded to critJULY19,1999 C&EN
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