The electronic research archive (ERA)
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Source: http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/eprint
The electronic research archive (ERA) is a new electronic pub-
lishing initiative from The Lancet. For a description of the
aims and intentions of ERA, please read the following Commen-
tary first published in The Lancet of July 3, 1999.
LANCET ELECTRONIC RESEARCH ARCHIVE IN INTERNATIONAL HEALTH AND
EPRINT SERVER
Harold Varmus, director of the US National Institutes of
Health, recently and compellingly set out the potential advan-
tages of electronic publishing in the medical sciences: open
access, rapid and wide dissemination, reduced costs, and flexi-
ble publication formats.(1) Amid the furious debate he has cre-
ated,(2-4) little attention has been paid to the effects of
electronic publishing on research and communication in the de-
veloping world.
This neglected aspect of the electronic-publishing debate di-
vides into two quite separate issues. First, doctors working in
the developing world need affordable access to medical informa-
tion. Some journals, such as the Canadian Medical Association
Journal,(5) already have programmes for sending print journals
free to libraries in resource-poor countries. More initiatives
of this kind are urgently needed.
Second, there is the often forgotten contribution of research-
ers in developing nations to the world's corpus of information
on medical science. Barriers to South-North scientific exchange
are even greater than to its North-South corollary. Some writ-
ers have dubbed research in the South as our "lost science".(6)
The absurd hurdles--for example, those placed by the Institute
for Scientific Information (6)--that journals have to surmount
can discourage development of new and much needed local peri-
odicals. And journals that reject work from developing coun-
tries without sufficient heed to the circumstances in which
that research was conducted can make valuable data from places
such as Africa and southeast Asia all but invisible.
There are signs that these damaging limitations to free and
open communication can be overcome. It is here where electronic
technologies have most to offer. For instance, the notion that
non-peer-reviewed research can be posted on websites, anathema
only a few years ago, has come to be accepted,(7) even by jour-
nals that have advocated and practised some of the strictest
rules against such so-called prior publication.(8) The balance
of power between authors and publishers is also shifting, giv-
ing authors greater rights to communicate their work in ways
that they, not their editors, see fit.(9) The goal for scien-
tists, editors, and publishers is the same as it always was--
namely, to create and maintain communities of scientists and
doctors by providing a forum for exchange of new findings and
ideas. On-line publication meets that challenge by bridging the
present South-North information gap.(10)
For these reasons, The Lancet this week launches an experimen-
tal electronic research archive (ERA) in international health.
This self-archive will be owned by authors and administered by
The Lancet. Access will be unrestricted through the ERA website
(www.thelancet.com/newlancet/eprint). Our objective is to cre-
ate a searchable electronic public library of research in in-
ternational health. We are seeking content that covers all is-
sues relevant to medicine in the developing world. The submis-
sion process is shown in the panel.
A submitted report will first be checked editorially, not only
for its suitability for an archive of international health but
also for whether the report carries such significant public-
health implications that it might cause unnecessary harm if not
fully peer reviewed. Apart from self-archived, unreviewed
eprints (electronic versions of research papers), we will also
consider expanded reprints of papers published elsewhere. The
web offers great advantages over paper for the publishing of
fuller accounts of research methods, more detailed descriptions
of raw data, and wider-ranging discussion. Readers' comments
will be posted alongside the eprints. If the unpublished self-
archived eprint is subsequently published formally elsewhere,
we will link that eprint to the published paper. Electronically
posted expanded reprints of already published papers will have
their original citation clearly identified, with a link to the
original article.
We doubt that we will be able to create an archive in interna-
tional health on our own. Therefore, we are seeking partner-
ships with other organisations to add further content to this
site and to help us find ways to promote collaboration between
scientists in the South and North.
In addition to The Lancet's ERA in international health, this
week we also launch the journal's new eprint server. The aim of
this service is to widen peer review of papers and so
strengthen the quality of the subsequent print version of the
article.
The first report on offer is the QUOROM (Quality of Reporting
of Meta-analyses) statement, a checklist and suggested format
for improving the presentation of systematic reviews. This ini-
tiative follows that of CONSORT,(11) a system that has widely
influenced the reporting of results from randomised trials. One
criticism of the CONSORT group was that there was too little
opportunity for public comment and criticism of its proposals
before print publication. Eprint publication overcomes that ob-
jection. After 4-6 weeks, comments will be collected and used
to invite the authors to revise and improve their paper. The
Lancet welcomes further submission of eprint reports to be con-
sidered for peer review and publication.
These two electronic experiments will thrive only if readers
use them or tell us how they can be improved. Despite a great
deal of talk about self-archiving and eprints in medicine, we
have no idea whether the medical community is ready for them.
Physicists have embraced both initiatives with enthusiasm, but
many doctors have deep and understandable reservations about
their use in the medical sciences.(3) One of our main goals is
to expand access to research from the developing world. We hope
that that aim at least will draw support from investigators and
readers alike to encourage self-archiving.
John McConnell, Richard Horton
The Lancet, London WC1B 3SL, UK
1 Varmus H. E-Biomed: a proposal for electronic publications in
the biomedical sciences.
www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/ebi.htm
2 Editorial. NIH E-biomed proposal: a welcome jolt. Lancet
1999; 353: 1985.
3 Relman AS. The NIH "E-BIOMED" proposal; a potential threat to
the evaluation and orderly dissemination of new clinical stud-
ies. N Engl J Med 1999; 340: 1793-94.
4 Delamothe T, Smith R. Moving beyond journals: the future ar-
rives with a crash. BMJ 1999; 318: 1637-39.
5 Haddad H, Macleod S. Access to medical and health information
in the developing world: an essential tool for change in medi-
cal education. CMAJ 1999; 160: 63-64.
6 Gibbs WW. Lost science in the third world. Sci Am 1995; Au-
gust: 76-83.
7 McConnell J, Horton R. Having electronic preprints is logi-
cal. BMJ 1998; 316: 1907. p>
8 Kassirer JP. Posting presentations at medical meetings on the
Internet. N Engl J Med 1999; 340: 803.
9 Bachrach S, Berry RS, Blume M, et al. Who should own scien-
tific papers? Science 1998; 281: 1459-60.
10 Canhos V, Chan L, Giaquinto F, Kirsop B, O'Donnell A, Ugonna
J. Close the South-North knowledge gap. Nature 1999; 397: 201.
11 Begg C, Cho M, Eastwood S, et al. Improving the quality of
reporting of randomised controlled trials: the CONSORT state-
ment. JAMA 1996; 276: 637-39.
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