DRM on medical journals is bad medicine

Hi, I am an Interventional Radiologist in private practice. I am frequently frustrated when trying to look up medical information online. With the advent of the internet, one would think that information would be much more readily available. I frequently find that not to be the case. When looking up information during residency, I would do a Medline search in the school’s library and the school’s license would allow access to the journals. Now, out in the real world, I am often thwarted by a journal’s pay wall, whether I arrived via Google or PubMed. I can read the light version in a community magazine, or an article in a non peer reviewed journal; however, the full peer reviewed articles are locked behind a pay wall.

The pay walls even hit the American College of Radiology (ACR) recently when they wanted me to forward a tweet about an article. You guessed it, it was locked behind their pay wall. If I re-tweeted then it would be useless to non members, missing the point of re-tweeting to expand the audience.

I decided to try to make a difference. I contacted a friend, still in academics, and suggested we present a proposal at the up coming meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) meeting to remove the DRM pay wall from the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (JVIR).

SIR has been looking for ways to increase the visibility of itself and Interventional Radiologists, and by removing the pay wall, the availability of the good research in JVIR would increase considerably. Private practice doctors, the media and patients would all have access. The authors would likely see an increase in citations, as the articles would be more available to read. And most importantly patient care would be improved with better access for practicing physicians.

After all, isn’t one of the main reasons for the existence of medical societies to spread knowledge to improve patient care. Now in the digital age, the need to recoup the cost of delivering dead trees covered in ink can be eliminated by online content. This should allow the spread of information and ideas to approach the way Thomas Jefferson described the transfer of knowledge:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his candle at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1813

Currently, Congress has required that all research funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) be freely available one year after it is published, despite some push back. The Obama Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is considering extending this to all federally funded research. So there is a faint glimmer of hope down the road, but isn’t it pathetic (and almost unprofessional) to have to rely on the government make the medical societies do what they were formed to do in the first place.

Right now I am drafting the proposal to present at the SIR meeting. Like all things web, I would interested in any input in the comments you might have. I hope that, if I am successful, this will start a ripple effect across all of medicine eventually freeing all medical journal from DRM.

William “Andy” Jackson, M.D.
@MacRadDoc