Copyright Controversy in Scientific Publishing

"Information wants to be free" is no longer just the slogan of a few computer hackers. A proposal to make all scientific papers public property has aroused heated debate in the scientific community, including editorials and letters in both Science and Nature.

Scientific data are already shared freely, as they are not protected by copyright, and while the specific form in which scientific papers report their findings is protected, publishers routinely grant permission to quote such papers and to reprint figures and tables. But now a group of scientists have called for the establishment of a Public Library of Science as a centralized repository for all papers, and for a boycott against journals that do not donate their copies to this repository within 6 months of publication. By March 27, 2001, a total of 12,095 scientists had signed an online petition to this effect.

Scientific publishers express concern that this policy will cut revenues to the point where scientific publishing is no longer economically viable. Scientific societies fear the loss of their primary source of revenue. Most publishers believe a public database would become a monopoly, a charge denied by PLS advocates. The funding of the PLS by the United States government is controversial, given the number of foreign scientists who publish in American journals. Some researchers argue that public availability of scientific research does not require a centralized database in an age of search engines and warn of the consequences of transcription errors when papers move from one system to another, especially in medical papers.

A libertarian analysis suggests that the funding of scientific research by tax money helps to shape this debate. Scientists are seldom paid for their writing; instead, wide citation of their papers helps establish reputations on which grant proposals are based. This creates a conflict of interests between authors and publishers. Library subscriptions to journals also compete for governmental funding. It's encouraging, though, to see such comments as "centralization of information is an outmoded concept" (Ira Mellman, Yale University School of Medicine, in a letter to Science published April 6, 2001). Science has always thrived on decentralization and free exchange of information, making it one of the great success stories for libertarian values; anything that undermines these threatens its survival as an institution.