E-drug: Lancet electronic research archive (ERA)
[copied from HNPFLASH, a free email-newsletter of the Worldbank.]
V. KNOWLEDGE BUILDER OF THE MONTH - The LANCET
The Lancet has launched an experimental 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, http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/eprint
Their objective is to create a searchable electronic public library
of research in international health. They are seeking content that
covers all issues relevant to medicine in the developing world.
Please support this excellent effort to make knowledge accessible to
all members of the international health community.
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[On the Lancet website,
http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/eprint/index.html
the following summary is offered:
Harold Varmus, director of the US National Institutes of Health,
recently and compellingly set out the potential advantages of
electronic publishing in the medical sciences: open access, rapid and
wide dissemination, reduced costs, and flexible publication formats.1
Amid the furious debate he has created,2-4 little attention has been
paid to the effects of electronic publishing on research and
communication in the developing world.
This neglected aspect of the electronic-publishing debate divides into
two quite separate issues. First, doctors working in the developing
world need affordable access to medical information. 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 researchers 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 writers have dubbed research
in the South as our "lost science".6 The absurd hurdles--for example,
those placed by the Institute for Scientific Information6--that
journals have to surmount can discourage development of new and much
needed local periodicals. And journals that reject work from
developing countries 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 journals 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, giving authors greater rights to
communicate their work in ways that they, not their editors, see fit.9
The goal for scientists, 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 experimental
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 create a
searchable electronic public library of research in international
health. We are seeking content that covers all issues relevant to
medicine in the developing world. The submission 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 international
health on our own. Therefore, we are seeking partnerships 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 initiative
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 objection. 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 considered 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 studies. N Engl J
Med 1999; 340: 1793-94.
4 Delamothe T, Smith R. Moving beyond journals: the future arrives
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 medical education.
CMAJ 1999; 160: 63-64.
6 Gibbs WW. Lost science in the third world. Sci Am 1995; August:
76-83.
7 McConnell J, Horton R. Having electronic preprints is logical. 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 scientific
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 statement.JAMA
1996; 276: 637-39.
WB]
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