Disseminating Science

In 1632, when he was just 26, the great Flemish master Rembrandt was invited to paint a publicly performed dissection by one of Amsterdam’s most illustrious physicians. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp depicts the esteemed doctor facing a bevy of pointy-bearded men, alternately bending over or hanging back from a ghostly cadaver, seemingly lit from within. Indeed, it is frequently depicted as a pivotal piece by art historians. During a recent talk, Harold Varmus, a Nobel prize winner in medicine, flashed Rembrandt’s masterpiece on the screen to illustrate a different point, namely the need to open the world of medical and life science publishing to a larger public.

“Do we want to share knowledge or do we want to cage it up?” asked Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was speaking at a symposium, “Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences,” held on Nov. 9 at HMS.

Coming at the end of a masterful lecture, in which he painted in broad strokes the history of scientific publishing, from Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and the establishment of the first peer-reviewed journal in 1865 to the explosion of high-priced medical journals in the late 20th century and Varmus’s own struggle to create greater access through the establishment of PubMedCentral and the Public Library of Science (PloS) journals, his meaning was clear. But his choice of image belies a more subtle message. It turns out, public dissections like Tulp’s were performed but once a year, typically on freshly killed criminals. And though open to the general public, they were not free. Tulp was most probably lecturing to an audience of wealthy burghers who could afford the price of admission.

Medical knowledge has always come at a cost, it would seem, and efforts to change the system have the weight of history to contend with. One of the goals of the symposium, which was organized by Zeba Wunderlich and Kishore Kuchibhotla, graduate students in the Harvard University Biophysics Program, along with three other students from HMS and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, was to explore the barriers to more open communication. As biophysicists, Wunderlich and Kuchibhotla have a foot in two scientific camps and were struck by their differences. Though physics papers are published in subscription-based journals, they are often shared prior to publication (as preprints) and also afterwards, through self-archiving. This rarely occurs in biology. “We wondered, what is the culture of biology that makes publishing so different from other sciences and also makes it potentially not as helpful as it should be in disseminating research or spurring new research?” said Kuchibhotla.

On the other hand, he and Wunderlich were aware that a small but growing band of biologists is beginning to harness the power of the internet for more democratic ends. PLoS now includes six separate publications and has recently launched PLoS One (www.plosone.org), an interactive site where researchers can comment on each other’s papers. Other interactive web-based journals include Nature Precedings (http://precedings.nature.com), a preprint service for the life and other sciences; the Journal of Visualized Experiments, or JoVE (www.jove.com), which collects and archives videos of experiments; and Science Commons (http://sciencecommons.org), which promotes open access to a broad array of scientific articles and data. Representatives of each were on hand, many of them young, giving the symposium an air of creative tension between an old guard of subscription-based publications and the newer, edgier open-access ventures.

No one expects subscription-based journals to disappear. “I actually think Nature and Cell provide a real value because they have a knowledge base and a group of editors that is very good,” said Kishore. In her talk, Emilie Marcus, editor in chief of Cell, said, “I, as an editor, focus on creating a journal that you, as scientists, will want to read.” Added Varmus: “Nobody can live without Science and Nature. We live for the gossip, the book reviews.”

Rather, the issue was their spiraling number and cost and the general reluctance of their publishers to contribute to public databases such as PubMedCentral, which currently includes fewer than 10 percent of scientific journals. Here some of the strongest frustration was expressed by older symposium participants. “I’m so old I can remember struggling to get to a Xerox machine on the fifth floor of the Countway,” said Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University. Yet many libraries are now unable to keep pace with the explosion of new, often high-priced, life science journals, he said, which means that a paper written by a young scientist may not be available through her or his home institution.

“Everyone who is a scientist knows publication is central to the career of a scientist,” said Varmus. Promotion decisions are often made on the basis of the number of citations a paper has, leading to what Varmus called “impact factor mania” and “Cell–Nature–Science disease.”

“Universities such as this have begun to think very deeply about how to move forward,” said Hyman. About two years ago, he formed a committee, headed by Stuart Shieber, to investigate the problem. “What can we do to maximize Harvard’s goal, which is the widespread communication of scholarly writing in all fields?” asked Shieber, the James O. Welch Jr. and Virginia B. Welch professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. At the committee’s recommendation, Harvard is considering establishing an Office of Scholarly Publications, Hyman said.

According to Shieber, the most effective agent for ensuring open access to scholarly knowledge distribution may be the federal government. In 2006, Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut proposed legislation requiring that findings from federally funded research be made promptly available to taxpayers. The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) is currently awaiting reintroduction in Congress. “That one piece of legislation would do more than anything else to turn the tide toward open access,” said Shieber. The tide may already be turning. Last month, Congress approved a spending bill that includes a measure requiring federally funded research to be made freely accessible within 12 months of publication.

Wunderlich and Kuchibhotla believe that scientists have a role to play. They are working on a short opinion piece that will encourage young researchers like themselves to break the mold. “If you have the opportunity to try something new, you should—don’t be afraid that it’s a risk to go to PloS One or to submit to Nature Precedings. If you don’t take that risk now, there’s no change that’s going to happen,” Kuchibhotla said.

It may take an even younger generation, weaned on MySpace and YouTube, and raised in a culture of sharing, to bring about real change. Said John Wilbanks of Science Commons, “Web 2.0 is not going to take off until a new generation of scientists takes over.”