Interesting times in medical publishing

Extract

‘Publish and be damned’, the Duke of Wellington's reported retort to attempted blackmail in a kiss-and-tell saga two hundred years ago, has acquired a Don't in front of it in the modern academic world. However, how research should be published has become a controversial topic. In the US the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have decided that any work they support should be made freely available after six months. The subtext is eventual immediate availability, which can already happen if authors publish in some electronic fora. If so, subscription journals could disappear. It is suggested that, instead of the existing system, authors should pay to publish their work, at a generally quoted cost of US$1500 per article. Future NIH grants would include publication costs. Other large grant giving bodies in the UK and elsewhere may follow the NIH example.