The Past, Present and Future of Biomedical Digital Libraries

Questions Please

2008-11-17T13:04:00.001-08:00

Thanks very much for your time and attention. I am happy to answer your questions now or later.

Email: marcus dot banks at library dot ucsf dot edu

Plans for 2009

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I am excited about our impending publication in the eScholarship Repository, because it represents a more durable solution for Biomedical Digital Libraries. For now I am very happy to be the editor.

Here are our plans for 2009:

Recruit new editorial board members.
Actively solicit articles.
See how it goes. The cold truth may be that there is just not enough ongoing demand for a journal like ours. Or there may be great demand, now that we have a stable publisher. Obviously I hope for the latter, but the former would not be a "failure." The articles we've already published have played a positive role in the library and information science space.

Enter the eScholarship Repository

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BUT....

We did receive a few articles in the spring of 2008, including a request to publish the proceedings from an upcoming conference (yet to be held). So this indicated that, although BDL was in a fallow season, there was interest in seeing us continue. For a few months I sought to find another editor, in order to free up my time to write more blog bluster.

In May, I became much more familiar with the California Digital Library's (part of the University of California) eScholarship Repository. Over the summer I began the process of transferring BDL to publication in the eScholarship Repository, because it affords several advantages:

Those pesky publication details are taken care of.
There is an ability to experiment alongside publishing core peer review content (i.e., I may establish a companion blog to stimulate discussion of the articles...a compromise based on reaction to my post about journals becoming blogs).
Prestige of association with University of California.
Absolutely no author fees.

The UC San Francisco Library and Center for Knowledge Management is the sponsor of the blog, and the California Digital Library will be the publisher. As of November 19, 2008 we are in the process of building out the journal site. A demo site is available today, and the completely functioning site will be ready by the end of 2008.

Another Wrinkle: My Belief that Professional Library Journals Should Evolve into Blogs

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On my blog this February I opined that librarian journals should evolve into blogs. In comparison to most researchers, librarians have less stringent tenure considerations and thus more room to experiment. Blogs would circulate ideas more quickly, and foster open discussion among colleagues.

This post attracted a great deal of attention in the "biblioblogosphere" as well as Library Journal. Some people thought I was a visionary, others a crank. Some of the push-back: not all librarians are ready for public peer review; the certification process afforded by traditional journals is still important.

In toto this was an excellent discussion, and to my mind demonstrated how the blogosphere can spark rapid and fruitful discussions. Given my predilection for blogs, as well as the low rate of author interest in the newest incarnation of BDL, I was completely prepared to end the journal after our year of free hosting concluded.

2008: Scholarly Exchange

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Realizing that author fees were the primary barrier to publishing in BDL, we sought to remove them.

Our first solution was to publish with Open Journal Systems, an open access publishing suite developed by the Public Knowledge Project. At the same time we secured a year's free hosting from Scholarly Exchange, and began recruiting articles. There were no author fees.

Whereas BMC offered the valuable services of automatic citation in PubMed and archiving in PubMed Central, these was no longer available. I reasoned that getting new articles online and accessible was the first step toward restoring the health of the journal.

Difficulties quickly surfaced, however:

Very low author uptake, despite the lack of fees (maybe there's a twigging problem, with just not enough articles to go around.)
I significantly underestimated the time involved in the mechanical aspects of running the journal. BMC had fulfilled all of these services for us.

Funding Mechanisms for BioMed Central Articles, aka the "End of Biomedical Digital Libraries with BioMed Central"

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BUT...

In 2003 and 2004, many academic health sciences libraries purchased full memberships in BioMed Central. This enabled researchers at their institutions, including librarians, to publish articles at no charge. Article processing charges for a single article were around $500 at the time BMC began, and now hover around $1,500 per article. UC San Francisco, my employer, paid for a full membership during this time.

Authors at institutions without memberships authors bore the full cost of publication. The membership model was conceived as the open access equivalent of the traditional journal subscription.

Starting in 2005 BMC increased the cost of its memberships. Many libraries responded by reducing their level of membership to "supporting," which offered researchers a discount of 15% off the publication fee. (Famously, Yale dropped support for BMC altogether in August 2007.) This is the level of support that UC San Francisco offers today.

Theoretically researchers with large grants can pay the cost of an open access article from their grant funds. Librarians generally have minimal research support; our core author base was heavily dependent on full memberships in BioMed Central.

Eventually the relationship grew untenable, because it became impossible for most of our authors to publish with us. BDL and BioMed Central formally ended our relationship in September 2007, three years after the first article appeared.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: BioMed Central was sold to Springer in October 2008. The general blogosphere reaction has been that this is evidence that traditional publishers see a bright future for open access as a business proposition. Time will tell. I believe that BMC's experimentation with membership models was part of the process that led to this sale.]

First Phase of Biomedical Digital Libraries: 2004-2007

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For almost three years we published smoothly with BioMed Central.

Quick Facts:

25 articles published between September 2004-April 2oo7. Complete archive available on BioMed Central and in PubMed Central.
Broad themes of articles: Citation tracking and alternatives to impact factor; Productivity enhancement applications or tools; Applications of Geographic Information Systems for developing health sciences library services.
Most cited article in Biomedical Digital Libraries, according to Google Scholar: "The Impact Factor Revisited" (60 citations as of 11-8-08/published in December 2005)
Comparison: JMLA Jan 2006, "How do primary care physicians seek answers to clinical questions? A literature review" (28 citations in GS, the most for that issue of JMLA)

After I became co-editor BDL adopted the practice of completely open peer review, which was a somewhat controversial decision. Over these years I felt that BDL was a valuable member of the health sciences librarian journal community, and we had solid editorial support from BMC.

Open Access Landscape in 2003

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As we established BDL in 2003, there were several interesting developments in the open access landscape.

1. The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing was developed in April and released in June.

2. "Sabo bill," the Public Access to Science Act, was introduced in US House in June. The bill would have excluded "from copyright protection works resulting from scientific research substantially funded by the federal government." This effort failed, but was a precursor of the more moderate NIH Public Access Policy passed in December 2007.

3. The Public Library of Science launched in October.

4. The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in Science and the Humanities released in October.

In this environment BioMed Central operated an active independent journal program, which encouraged development of open access journals on discrete topics (perhaps exacerbating the problem of scholarly journal "twigging.") This opportunity, coupled with the larger ferment of interest in open access publishing, led to the development of BDL.

Origin of Biomedical Digital Libraries

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1. Biomedical Digital Libraries (BDL) began as an independent journal published by BioMed Central (BMC) in 2004. Planning for the journal commenced in May 2003, and the first article appeared in September 2004. The interim period involved establishing an editorial board and ensuring a sufficient level of volunteer interest in maintaining the journal. I began as an Associate Editor in 2003, and became co-editor in 2006. Today I am the editor of BDL.

2. BMC is an open access publisher (which was recently acquired by Springer Science+Business Media.) In 2003-2004 many academic librarians purchased institutional memberships in BMC, which enabled anyone affiliated with an academic institution to publish for free or at a reduced cost. This ensured that our journal would have a core author base.

3. Motivation for stating journal:

Complement-Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA, Open access)
Competition-Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries (Subscription based)
More prompt peer review than JMLA. (JMLA review speed has increased markedly since 2003)
"Walk the walk, not just talk the talk." Librarians heavily promoted open access journals to faculty members, here was a chance to start one from the ground up.