Digital Rights Network

Richard Smith ex-editor of the BMJ and famous for quitting his post at Nottingham University after it received funding from the Tobacco industry, recently called for an 'insurrection' among academic authors and editors against closed publishing and a move to an open access model. Smith who was a long-time editor of the BMJ joined the board of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) last year. PLoS is a prominent non-profit organization of scientists and physicians creating dedicated to open-access publishing and making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource. Below you can find excerpts from a letter (full version) he sent out.

Subject: Letter From Richard Smith About PLoS
Date Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 8:06 pm
From: Richard Smith
To: douglas@carnall.demon.co.uk

Dear Friend, I’m sending you this email wearing my hat as a board
member of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and I must confess
right away that it’s a round robin (only without anything about my
holidays or the remarkable achievements of my children). The email is
aimed primarily at those of you who read medical journals and submit
articles to them. If you don’t do either then you could stop reading
now, although you might be pleased to know that I’m still alive and
flourishing. If you want to send me a billet doux (or find out what a
billet doux is) then you could either simply respond to this email and
my friends at PLoS will forward it—or you could email me directly at [..]
I have three simple messages: Firstly, you should read /PLoS Medicine/.
It’s a tremendous journal full of interesting material—particularly
for those who are globally and laterally minded. (I can say this
because I’m nothing to do with the editorial side of the journal,
although I have submitted material—and had some of it rejected.) All
the content is free and can be accessed at
http://medicine.plosjournals.org {http://medicine.plosjournals.org/}
Secondly, you might want to find out more about the Public Library of
Science (PLoS), which is a non-profit organisation of scientists and
physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical
literature a public resource. I believe passionately that all medical
research, most of which is funded with public money, should be
available free to everybody everywhere. The great thing about the
ideas contained in research is that they will lead to new ideas.
Restricting access seems to be almost immoral and is certainly
anti-intellectual. The PloS site is www.plos.org
{http://www.plos.org/} Thirdly, if you are a researcher I would urge
you to submit your work to an open access journal (and why not /PloS
Medicine/?) so that it can be accessed by everybody for free. And
even if you decide to submit to a journal that is not open access
(which is still sadly most journals) why not send a copy at the same
time to Pubmed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
{http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/}), where it can be made available
free to everybody? You could ask the permission of the journal to do
this, but I suggest you simply tell them. I am here encouraging
insurrection, but I think that you will quickly discover that
journals (even the arrogant ones) need authors more than authors need
them. Best wishes Richard Smith