Open Letter to Scientific
Publishers
We support the establishment of an online public
library that would provide
the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly
discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible,
fully searchable, interlinked form. Establishment of this public library
would vastly increase the accessibility and utility of the scientific
literature, enhance scientific productivity, and catalyze integration
of the disparate communities of knowledge and ideas in biomedical
sciences.
We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a
legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific
communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record
of scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled
by publishers, but should belong to the public and should be freely
available through an international online public library.
To encourage the publishers of our journals to support this endeavor,
we pledge that, beginning in September 2001, we will publish in, edit
or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and
scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution
rights to any and all original research reports that they have published,
through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within
6 months of their initial publication date.
