The webpage entitled: Update on PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada), at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) website, was modified on November 30, 2009. Excerpt:

The first element of the PMC Canada system-the search interface-was launched in October 2009. It allows users to browse, search and download articles.
A manuscript submission system is being developed for PMC Canada.

Also, there’s a section on “PMC Canada: Now Open for Business” by Andrea Szwajcer in the November 2009 issue [5-page PDF] of a newsletter from the St. Boniface Hospital Library (one of the University of Manitoba Libraries). An excerpt (from page 3 of the newsleter):

The digital platform to locate and access publications includes a basic and advanced search function for PMC Canada as well as alphabetical index list to search the PMC Journals by title. The manuscript submission system is not yet available but is promised “later this year”.
This webpage is a little deceiving as you may assume that if you do a search in the search box, you are limited to strictly Canadian publications or have that ability somehow. The reality is a little more disappointing. ….

Comment: Relevant information is available via the webpage for PMC International (PMCI). Excerpts:

To date, NLM has authorized two PMCI centers: UKPMC and PMC Canada.

…..

Like the UKPMC, PMC Canada receives all of its content through the US PubMed Central.

…..

With the introduction of PMC Canada, all current PMC participants have been asked for permission to make their PMC content available to the Canadian site. NLM will not redistribute a journal’s PMC content to PMC Canada without the explicit permission of the publisher. These permissions are included automatically in PMC agreements signed in June 2009 forwards.

So, all articles in PMC Canada that are marked “In PMC Canada” will also be available in US PMC. Those marked “Only in US PMC” aren’t currently available in PMC Canada because the publisher has not yet provided explicit permission for them also to be archived there.

Updates related to OA, sent to Twitter during November 2009:

• Four ideal types of repositories [November 30]: http://bit.ly/6CvyPd http://ssrn.com/abstract=1506905
• RT @mercpol: The academic journal racket … [November 28]: http://tinyurl.com/y8cq97d
• Fwd: Giving Open Access a Bad Name « The Scholarly Kitchen [November 24]: http://ff.im/bTf9l
• Journals are dead (Economic Logic, 21 Nov 2009) [November 23]: http://bit.ly/08rNVTh [Connotea bookmark]
• Fwd: Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact [November 17]: http://ff.im/bA7Xi
• Fwd: ASM – launches new Open Access journal – w/ some aspects of PLoS One and PNAS [November 17]: http://ff.im/byTV8
• Fwd: Nature Communications Q&A [November 16]: http://ff.im/bwNH3
• RT @DRIVERCommunity: Great THES article on open access [November 12]: http://bit.ly/1mDrjr
• RT @Villavelius: Fruit and frugivores [November 11]: http://bit.ly/qmlHf
• Fwd: University Public-Access Mandates Are Good for Science [November 11]: http://ff.im/bfzoy
• Nature endorses efforts to create systems that reach beyond the crudeness of the impact factor [November 8]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/462012a
• OASPA one year on: Core values, best practices and future plans [November 7]: http://ff.im/b7g7g
• RT @rbroekman: “We scientists, are idiots”, nice opinion piece by a researcher about open access [November 7]: http://tinyurl.com/yhok8zs
• Student coalition for open access now represents over 5 million internationally [November 3]: http://ff.im/aBpqt
• Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology makes transition to fully OA journal [November 3]: http://ff.im/aSTC9
• PMC Now Offers a “Sneak Preview” Table of Contents for Embargoed Issues [November 3]: http://bit.ly/32hkz6
• Interview with Peter Suber (10 min video) [November 1]: http://vimeo.com/7375512 [FriendFeed entry]
• What’s the future of OA? [November 1]: http://ff.im/aPua0
• Journal of Participatory Medicine: New open access journal [November 1]: http://www.jopm.org/index.php/jpm/index

Stimulus grant to enhance arXiv e-preprints for scientists by Bill Steele, Chronicle Online, Cornell University, November 17, 2009. Excerpts:

Soon, Cornell’s e-print arXiv of scientific papers will evolve from a simple database to a place where “authors, articles, databases and readers talk to each other” to help users identify a work’s main concepts, see research reports in context and easily find related work.

…..

Other enhancements will provide interoperability with such research sites as PubMedCentral and provisions to allow scientists to contribute in newer, more flexible text formats.

Researchers might be more enthusiastic about participating in open access journals and repositories if they could see that their work was more accessible and usable, [Paul] Ginsparg suggested. “And perhaps the academic community will again play a role at the forefront as the semantic Web 3.0 rolls out,” he said. Academic publishing has lagged behind the commercial Internet in providing interactive enhancements that today’s students take for granted, he explained. “Configuring research communications infrastructure for the next generation of researchers requires getting into the heads of near-term future researchers — undergrads and grad students — coming of age in the Google/Facebook/Twitter era.”

Found via posts in [Digital & Scholarly] and [Open Access News].

Comment: The arXiv repository has been at the forefront of the Green route to OA. The proposed enhancements may once again permit it to play a leadership role. These enhancements are intended to add value of a kind that will enhance the appeal of repositories to a wider range of users.

Green OA mandates implemented by funding agencies and universities can be regarded as “sticks”, designed to push appropriate content into repositories. Enhancements of the kind being proposed for the arXiv can be regarded as “carrots”, designed to pull a variety of users toward repositories. The latter approach has, so far, received less attention from OA advocates than the former.

The very interesting publication Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact Export by Cameron Neylon and Shirley Wu (PLoS Biol 2009(Nov); 7(11): e1000242 [Epub 2009(Nov 17)][PubMed Citation]) is receiving attention on FriendFeed [here] and Topsy [here] and has been bookmarked on Connotea [here].

There’s also a related blog post, A brief analysis of commenting at BMC, PLoS, and BMJ by Shirley Wu on her blog, I was lost but now I live here, November 18, 2009. Excerpt:

One of the many issues Cameron and I touched on was the problem of commenting. Most people probably aren’t aware of the problem; after all, commenting is alive and well on the internet in most places you look! But click over to PLoS or BioMed Central (BMC) and the comment sections are the digital equivalent of rolling tumbleweed.

Comment: A major long-term benefit of OA seems likely to be the development of a much more efficient and equitable system that will make full use of the potential of the Internet to facilitate the quality-filtration of new knowledge. The available set of relevant online resources continues to evolve rapidly.

Life scientists’ information use – one size does not fit all, posted by Sarah Gentleman on Nature Network, November 2, 2009. Excerpt:

Key findings from the report include

• Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources and resources
• The use of social networking tools for scientific research purposes is far more limited than expected
• Data and information sharing activities are mainly driven by needs and benefits perceived as most important by life scientists rather than ‘top-down’ policies and strategies
• There are marked differences in the patterns of information use and exchange between research groups active in different areas of the life sciences, reinforcing the need to avoid standardised policy approaches

See also: Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences, Research Information Network, November 2, 2009. Excerpt:

The report was developed using an innovative approach to capture the day-to-day patterns of information use in seven research teams from a wide range of disciplines, from botany to clinical neuroscience. The study undertaken over 11 months and involving 56 participants found that there is a significant gap between how researchers behave and the policies and strategies of funders and service providers. This suggests that the attempts to implement such strategies have had only a limited impact.

…..

If you’d like to contribute to the discussion, join our forum on Nature Networks and follow our hashtag on Twitter #casestudieslife

Found via: Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences | Research Information Network, posted by Bill Hooker to FriendFeed, November 8, 2009.

Comment: Found from an informal and trusted source of advice (with the help of a social networking tool, FriendFeed ).

Tom Wilson, in a message sent to the BOAI Forum on October 31, 2009, suggested that “… any strategy [for the OA movement] evolved today on the assumption that the future is likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail“. Other excerpts:

No one knows exactly how the ‘open access’ movement will pan out ….. Strong advocacy of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly communication. ….. scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and producing free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist will tell you that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA.

Stevan Harnad, in a response to the same Forum, has reiterated some of his well-known perspectives:

The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed research articles. ….. The way to take matters in their [scholars'] own hands is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles in their university’s OA Repository.

Comment: My own opinion is that both perspectives are tenable. I agree with Stevan Harnad that the most important short-term goal of the OA movement is to “provide Open Access to refereed research articles“. I also agree with Tom Wilson that ”No one knows exactly how the ‘open access’ movement will pan out” over the longer term, and that “the status quo in scholarly communication” seems likely to be unstable.

However, if the “status quo” is identified as a somewhat bewildering variety of options for scholarly communication that are changing quickly as technologies evolve, and are varying from field to field (and even across sub-disciplines in the same field), then this “status quo” may persist for quite a few years, before a smaller number of “best practices” become firmly established.

Updates related to OA, sent to Twitter during October 2009:

RT @pedromts: Should you be tweeting? Cell explains microblogging to scientists [October 29]: http://bit.ly/4ezTS

First phase of PMC Canada has been launched [October 21]: http://bit.ly/4GywWh http://bit.ly/S507j

RT @BoraZ: #PLoS Medicine: Five Years of Access and Activism [October 21]: http://tinyurl.com/yj9kabz

Who Owns Medical News? [October 21]: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Columns/16515

More about compliance with Wellcome Trust’s OA policy [October 15]: (via http://ff.im/9UfBJ)

Fwd: Open Access 101, from SPARC [October 15]: http://vimeo.com/6973160 (via http://ff.im/9Pbpd)

Translational medicine gets a new journal [Author is skeptical. Not OA. Bench to bucks?] [October 10]:  http://bit.ly/2WAnHp

As noted in a previous post (dated June 9, 2009), Robert Kiley of the Wellcome Trust (WT) has reported data indicating that (for Trust-funded research papers published between October of 2007 and August of 2008) potential compliance was about 95%, but actual compliance hovered around 35%.

He recently discussed compliance with the OA policy of the WT in one of the presentations that are available via OASPA 2009 (presentations recorded at the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing, Lund, Sweden, September 14–16, 2009). His presentation is Open Access and the Wellcome Trust (video, 34 min, including a Q & A session).

At about 11.35 min, there’s a slide entitled: Issues – still to be resolved. Four issues are listed: Improving compliance with the OA mandate; Improving methods for researchers to meet author-side payments; Clarifying publishers’ OA policy; and, Working out how to flip the model from “subscriber pays” to “author pays”.

The next slide, at about 11.45 min, shows a plot of compliance (% of papers available in PubMed Central or UKPMC within 6 months of publication) for various dates between November 2006 and January 2009. The plot indicates an upward trend (an increase in compliance) from about 15% compliance on November 2006 to about 36% compliance by January 2009.

The next slide, at about 14.30 min, is entitled: What is being deposited? Data for Wellcome-supported papers in UKPMC are shown, for the period January 2007 to January 2009. During this period, only 16% of 3684 Wellcome papers in UKPMC were author depositions. The remaining 84% were publisher depositions.

The next slide, at about 15.15 min, is entitled: Improving compliance with mandate. Three problems affecting compliance are addressed: Problem in part – authors not self-archiving; …in part, publishers not having workflows to support “author pays” model; ..but, in part, we (funders) have not yet demonstrated the benefits of OA, something we are addressing through UKPMC.

At about 17.00 min, he remarks (not on a slide) that WT hasn’t used the “nuclear option” yet (has not told grantees that WT will stop funding those who don’t comply with the OA mandate).

At about 18.30 min, he begins to address the third problem, that: in part, we (funders) have not yet demonstrated the benefits of OA, something we are addressing through UKPMC. The purpose is to “give something back” to researchers, via new services at UKPMC.

From about 20.25 min to 25.15 min, he addresses the other three issues (other than Improving compliance with the OA mandate) mentioned on an earlier slide: Improving methods for researchers to meet author-side payments; Clarifying publishers’ OA policy; and, Working out how to flip the model from “subscriber pays” to “author pays”.

His final slide, which appears at about 25.15 min, is entitled: Take home messages (one of which is the need to take action on improving compliance). The Q & A session with members of the audience begins at about 26.45 min.

Comment: The OA policy of the Wellcome Trust is of special interest because the WT is involved in a pioneering effort to implement a strong mandate. So far, the WT has avoided use of the “nuclear option” to enforce compliance (the option that grantees who don’t comply lose support from the WT). Instead of focusing attention only on author self-archiving, other ways of improving compliance are also being explored, such as finding ways to enhance publisher depositions (currently, the major source of depositions). As of October 15, 2009, there have been 180 views of the video about Open Access and the Wellcome Trust. Close attention should be paid, by members of those agencies planning to implement strong OA mandates, to relevant information provided by the WT.

Updates related to OA, sent to Twitter during September 2009:

Policy change before peer review: OA needed? [September 29]: http://bit.ly/2PYSyB

RT @oatp: OASPA announces new board [September 22]: http://bit.ly/kedWH

Public health and social justice (and open access as a human rights issue) [September 20]: http://bit.ly/RyrUD

First phase of PMC Canada to be launched during Open Access Week Oct 19-23 [September 17]: http://www.ktecop.ca/archives/447

OA repository launched by ResearchGATE [September 15]: http://tillje.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/1860/

Information-rich and attention-poor – The Globe and Mail [September 13]:  http://is.gd/3eisR http://ff.im/83s2J

What’s next for PLoS Currents? [September 4]: http://bit.ly/cW4ea

A noteworthy situation has been reported in several recent articles. Public health policy (in this case, about flu shots) is being influenced by a research study that is currently undergoing peer review at an unidentified medical journal.This situation provides an attention-grabbing example of the dilemma in research ethics that must be faced about  preliminary research results of great public interest. Should such results be available for public scrutiny as soon as possible? Or, should concerns about impact on public perceptions (or, misperceptions) justify delays while experts in the field evaluate the results?

One solution to this dilemma has been the recent launch of PLoS Currents: Influenza: “PLoS Currents: Influenza aims to enable this exchange [of scientific results and ideas] by providing an open-access online resource for immediate, open communication and discussion of new scientific data, analyses, and ideas in the field of influenza. All content is moderated by an expert group of influenza researchers, but in the interest of timeliness, does not undergo in-depth peer review“.

Comment: My own preference? The tradeoff between possible risks and possible benefits is a challenging one, but I favor the use of PLoS Currents: Influenza as the less paternalistic route. [See Wikipedia entries about paternalism and soft paternalism]. [See also a previous post in this blog about PLoS Currents].

Examples of relevant articles about this situation:

1) MOH cautious on flu shot fears by Helen Branswell in thestar.com, September 23, 2009 [Twitter entry][FriendFeed entry]. Excerpt:

Unpublished Canadian data are raising concerns about whether it’s a good idea to get a seasonal flu shot this season.

2) Like several other provinces, BC, PEI, to delay seasonal flu shots for under 65s by Helen Branswell, Canadian Press, September 28, 2009 [Twitter entry][FriendFeed entry]. Excerpt:

British Columbia and Prince Edward Island have joined a growing list of provinces that have announced they will delay part of their seasonal flu shot programs this year, decisions which are partially fuelled by concerns raised by controversial and unpublished Canadian research.

3) More flu programs suspended by Caroline Alphonso, The Globe and Mail, September 29, 2009. Excerpts:

Lead authors, Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University, have submitted their findings to an unnamed scientific journal and may not comment until it is published.

…..

The findings have yet to be published, but word of it has prompted provinces and territories to revamp their vaccination programs.

4) B.C. announces seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine strategy by Shane Bigham, News1130, September 28, 2009. Excerpt:

The postponement of the seasonal flu shot is also in response to an unpublished Canadian medical study which seems to indicate that people who have received the seasonal flu shot are more likely to catch the H1N1. The findings of that study are still up for peer review and have not been reported in other parts of the world.