Commentary

Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of commentaries on the future of scientific publishing. For a listing of the other commentaries,
see http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/36/9077.

Will Research Sharing Keep Pace with the Internet?

Richard K. Johnson
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, DC 20036

The ways scientists share and use research
are changing rapidly, fundamentally, and
irreversibly.

The signs are plain to see. E-mail and a
growing range of other network technol-
ogies efficiently and rapidly link research-
ers from around the globe and enhance
informal communication. Most scientific
literature is now created in digital form
and, in nearly every discipline, some
scholarship is digital-only or can be fully
understood only in digital form. Google
has cataloged more than eight billion web
pages and a billion images, and is now un-
dertaking to digitize books on a scale that
previously seemed unthinkable.

These changes signal a new era of dig-
ital scholarship. Many of yesterday’s lim-
itations on research and learning are being
swept away by the Internet. For the first
time in history, we have a practical oppor-
tunity for efficient, unlimited sharing of
information at virtually no cost beyond
that of providing it to the first reader.

Dynamics of change
Many elements comprising the process of
scientific exchange have been quick to re-
spond to the opportunity. For example,
biomedical researchers have used the In-
ternet to rapidly form new or ad hoc com-
munities of scientists in response to health

crises such as severe acute respiratory syn-
drome and avian influenza. Scientists us-
ing the interconnectivity of the Web have
begun to break down information silos,
allowing interdisciplinary perspectives on
complex questions and vexing challenges,
and teams of investigators in far-flung
time zones work together effectively and
easily, quickly sharing information.

However, journals have been compar-
atively slow to embrace the potential of
the ubiquitous network. True, online edi-
tions are now the norm for most journals
and online reference linking has made it
easier to navigate the literature. But fun-
damentally, most online journals are sim-
ply digital editions of their print analogs.
Little changed since they were invented
�300 years ago.

Why haven’t journals evolved more
rapidly? The culture of academe and its
“prestige economy” is one factor imped-
ing change. Academic career advance-
ment depends on publishing in leading,
well established journals, journals that
may have little incentive to alter their
model. Also, economies extrinsic to sci-
ence have grown up around the sale (and
now lease, in the digital context) of jour-
nals. Change has sometimes been held
back by efforts to protect publishing rev-
enues and profits. Related to this is the
desire of many publishers to rigorously
defend “their” intellectual property (the
texts provided to them by scholarly au-
thors, together with editing, formatting,
and other enhancements) in the digital
environment through licensing restric-
tions. New technical protection schemes
for intellectual property could make mat-
ters worse yet for information users.

But scientists and scientific organiza-
tions, including the Society for Neuro-

science (SfN), increasingly are asking
themselves, what could journals become if
freed to do all that they might for the ad-
vancement of science?

The National Science Foundation’s
Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberin-
frastructure looked at the overall scientific
communication process and concluded
that “the traditional linear, batch process-
ing approach to scholarly communication
is changing to a process of continuous re-
finement as scholars write, review, anno-
tate, and revise in near-real time using the
Internet” (National Science Foundation,
2003). This points to the need for a rather
dramatic change by traditional journals if
they to are to keep up.

A team of distinguished scientists in
wide-ranging fields, brought together by
Microsoft Research in 2005 to look ahead
at the transformation of science, envi-
sioned “the rise of new kinds of publica-
tions, not merely with different business
models, but also with different editorial
and technical approaches” serving re-
search needs that will evolve with science
itself. Particularly intriguing is their com-
ment that “these developments will not
only reflect changes in the way research is
done but in some cases may also stimulate
them” (Microsoft Research, 2006). Today
journals are a record of research, but per-
haps in the near future they will be vehi-
cles for real-time, iterative, collaborative
refinement of scientists’ understanding of
research.

As these prognostications suggest, the
scientific paper and its historic container,
the journal, are poised for change. The
possibilities and demands of science to-
gether with new enabling technologies are
just too compelling to resist.

Received July 22, 2006; accepted July 22, 2006.
R.K.J. was the founding Executive Director of SPARC (Scholarly Publish-

ing and Academic Resources Coalition), a position he held from 1998 to
2005. Currently he is a scholarly communications consultant and senior
advisor to SPARC.

Correspondence should be addressed to Richard K. Johnson, Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, 21 Dupont Circle NW, Wash-
ington, DC 20036. E-mail: rick@arl.org.

© 2006 Richard K. Johnson. Licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3130-06.2006
Copyright © 2006 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/06/269349-03$15.00/0

The Journal of Neuroscience, September 13, 2006 • 26(37):9349 –9351 • 9349



Research sharing
The Internet offers the opportunity to
eliminate access barriers that limit use of
scientific findings, to share research freely
among all potential readers. Because sci-
entific discovery is a cumulative process,
with new knowledge building on earlier
findings, it is counterproductive to keep
research locked up like books in a four-
teenth century monastery.

The large audience for freely accessible
scientific knowledge may be surprising to
many, but the hunger for it is apparent
from experience of the National Library of
Medicine (NLM). A few years ago, NLM
transformed its fee-based index and ab-
stracts of biomedical journal articles to
free availability on the Web as PubMed.
Use of the database increased 100-fold
once it became freely available. The po-
tential scope of this usage could never
have been anticipated by looking solely at
use of the controlled-access version.

Who are these new readers? They
surely include scientists around the globe
at institutions that may not be able to af-
ford needed journals. They also may be
researchers in unexpected fields, search
engine users who didn’t realize previously
they could use work in a seemingly unre-
lated field. They may be students, patients
or their families, physicians, community
health workers, or others from the general
public: taxpayers who finance so much
biomedical research.

Much of the thinking about new ways
to share scientific knowledge with these
readers and about new economic models
to sustain the process revolves around two
complementary strategies.

Open-access journals
Open-access journals, whose costs are
typically covered through advertising,
dues, publication fees, sponsorships, in-
kind contributions, or a combination of
these and other sources of support, are
emerging as an alternative to the tradi-
tional subscription model. According to
the Directory of Open Access Journals, there
currently are �2000 open-access journals
in wide-ranging fields. This is a good start,
but so far it represents only about a tenth
of the world’s peer-reviewed journals.

Online open archives
Commonly hosted by universities or gov-
ernment agencies to advance their mis-
sion, online open archives provide free ac-
cess to articles, supporting data, working
papers, preprints, images, and other ma-
terial deposited by members of an institu-
tional or disciplinary community. In bio-

medicine, the National Library of
Medicine’s PubMed Central online ar-
chive is the best known open archive, but
many universities have also established
“institutional repositories” to preserve
work conducted at their institution. Open
archives supplement journal browsing
and readership; they don’t replace it. The
outlook for the future of open archives is
framed in large part by the sometimes-
conflicting terms and obligations of au-
thors’ agreements with their funders and
the journals in which they publish.

A discussion of the merits and tactics
for each of these open-access strategies is
beyond the scope of this commentary, but
suffice it to say that neither spells the end
of science or peer review, as skeptics have
suggested. However, both involve the un-
bundling of the functions journals have
traditionally performed: registration: es-
tablishing the intellectual priority of re-
search; certification: certifying the quality
of the research and the validity of the
claimed finding; awareness: ensuring the
dissemination and accessibility of research,
providing a means by which researchers can
become aware of new research; and archiv-
ing: preserving the intellectual heritage for
future use (Roosendaal and Geurts, 1998).

These functions can now be distrib-
uted via the Internet among various ser-
vice providers, not just a journal. No
longer is it obligatory for the certification
of research quality (e.g., the peer review
process overseen by a particular editorial
board) to be hardwired to its dissemina-
tion; they can be independent. This disag-
gregation opens the door to a more dy-
namic communication environment.

The role of funders
Not surprisingly, many governments and
funding agencies around the world recog-
nize that dissemination of research results
is part of the research process itself, that
the impact of the research they fund will
be magnified by bringing down barriers to
its use.

Increasingly, funders are implement-
ing or exploring policies to facilitate the
sharing of information and realize the
benefits of digital scholarship. The Na-
tional Institutes of Health (NIH) has been
among the highest visibility agencies to
open the door to research sharing with its
Public Access Policy, aimed at securing a
permanent digital archive, enhancing
management of its research portfolio, and
ensuring that findings are available to all
potential users. At this writing, the policy
requests that NIH investigators voluntar-
ily deposit their final peer-reviewed

manuscripts in PubMed Central. (How-
ever, a mandatory deposit policy may be
on the horizon.) The NIH also allows
grant funds to be used to pay journal pub-
lication fees charged by some open-access
journals.

The United States Congress has taken a
growing interest in ensuring access to fed-
erally funded research. Indeed, the NIH
policy was framed in response to Congres-
sional pressure. Now pending in Congress
is the Federal Research Public Access bill
(S. 2695), introduced in May 2006, which
would require that research supported by
major government funding agencies be
freely available online within 6 months of
publication in a journal.

Interest is hardly limited to the United
States. The Wellcome Trust, the United
Kingdom’s largest private biomedical re-
search funder, has played an international
leadership role by requiring its grantees to
submit an electronic copy of the final
manuscripts of their research papers into
PubMed Central. Wellcome also provides
grantholders with additional funding to
cover publication fees charged by some
open access journals. Other UK funders
have followed suit, including the govern-
ment’s Biotechnology and Biological Sci-
ences Research Council (BBSRC) and
Medical Research Council (MRC). They
announced recently that all their funded
researchers will be required to submit a
copy of their final manuscript “at the ear-
liest opportunity,” with the MRC stipulat-
ing that the works be made available “cer-
tainly within 6 months” (Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research Council,
2006; Medical Research Council, 2006).

The Canadian Institutes of Health Re-
search (CIHR) is exploring development
of policies governing access to physical
products of research (e.g., cell lines, DNA
libraries), data typically deposited in pub-
lic databases (genomic data, DNA se-
quences, and protein sequences), and
peer-reviewed published results. Its goal is
to increase access to CIHR-funded re-
searchers’ discoveries and, in so doing,
“stimulate the development of new health
products that will benefit the health of Ca-
nadians as well as the global population”
(Canadian Institutes of Health Research,
2006).

These kinds of policies and actions
may ultimately break the gridlock that is
holding back the evolution of journals.
Funders have a unique perspective on the
outcomes of research that transcends the
narrower interests of other stakeholders.
Their influence can overcome some of the
coordination problems associated with

9350 • J. Neurosci., September 13, 2006 • 26(37):9349 –9351 Johnson • Will Research Sharing Keep Pace with the Internet?



change and the emergence of new norms
for research sharing.

A new era of opportunity
By seamlessly linking data, knowledge,
and users, the emerging research environ-
ment promises to catapult science ahead.
And, given the complex scientific, social,
and economic challenges that face us, the
arrival of these new capacities is coming
none too soon.

To its credit, the Society for Neuro-
science is taking steps to embrace change
rather than guard the status quo that se-
duces so many successful organizations.
The guiding principles of SfN�s “Open
Access Publishing Strategy” (http://www.
sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename � strategic-
plan#6) well capture the spirit with which
all societies should approach the transi-
tion ahead: recognize the value and likeli-
hood of open access publishing and be
ready with an effective strategy when this

happens; maintain the ethos of scientific
publishing (i.e., that it is by and for scien-
tists and that the advancement of science
ranks above all other publishing motives);
maintain peer review as an essential ele-
ment in any open access format (Society
for Neuroscience, 2006).

This kind of constructive approach
will go a long way toward ensuring that
neuroscience and SfN advance and
flourish in a time of great change and
opportunity for science, the era of the
Internet.

References
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research

Council (2006) BBSRC’s position on de-
posit of publications. Retrieved July 11, 2006,
from http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/articles/
28_june_research_access.html

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2006)
CIHR policy in development, access to
products of research. Retrieved July 13,

2006, from http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/
30818.html

Medical Research Council (2006) MRC guid-
ance on open and unrestricted access to pub-
lished research. Retrieved July 11, 2006, from
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/open_access

Microsoft Research (2006) Towards 2020 science,
p 20. Retrieved August 14, 2006, from http://
research.microsoft.com/towards2020science/
downloads/T2020S_ReportA4.pdf

National Science Foundation (2003) Revolu-
tionizing science and engineering through cy-
berinfrastructure: report of the National Sci-
ence Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel
on cyberinfrastructure, p 42. Retrieved Au-
gust 14, 2006, http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/
reports/atkins.pdf

Roosendaal HE, Geurts PA (1998) Forces and
functions in scientific communication: an
analysis of their interplay. CRISP 97. Retrieved
August 14, 2006, http://www.physik.
kuni-oldenburg.de/conferences/crisp97/
roosendaal.pdf

Society for Neuroscience (2006) Strategic
plan. Retrieved July 13, 2006, from
http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename�
strategicplan#6

Johnson • Will Research Sharing Keep Pace with the Internet? J. Neurosci., September 13, 2006 • 26(37):9349 –9351 • 9351