Subject: Adhoc: NIH Announced PubMed Central Dr. Harold Varmus announced today that by January 2000, NIH will establish PubMed Central, an electronic repository for research results in the life sciences. This announcement is an outgrowth of the electronic publishing proposal that Dr. Varmus first released in May. Attached for your review is a letter Dr. Varmus has released to scientists about the system. Also attached is a release distributed to reporters and editors along with a set of Q and A's on the project. More information is available on the NIH news page <http://www.nih.gov/news/> and from Dr. Varmus's home page <http://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/varmus.htm>. Tony Mazzaschi AAMC LETTER TO SCIENTISTS Dear Colleague: The proposal we began circulating four months ago for an electronic publishing system in the life sciences generated great interest and intense discussion. After considering all the suggestions we received, we have issued a statement on e-publication announcing that by January 2000, NIH will establish PubMed Central, an electronic repository for research results in the life sciences. We think that this new venture, as it grows and evolves, will ultimately enrich the reading experience, deepen discussion among scientists, and enhance information flow. Providing barrier-free access to this literature will enhance significantly our investment in life science research. Our statement on e-publishing and PubMed Central is attached. Thank you for your comments and interest. I hope you will help support this new effort. Sincerely, Harold Varmus, M.D. Director Attachment For Release: August 30,1999 Contact: Anne Thomas (301) 496-4461 Note to Reporters and Editors In a statement today to editors and publishers of scientific journals and other members of the scientific community, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its plan to establish a repository for electronic distribution of primary research reports in the life sciences. The new NIH-supported site is to be called PubMed Central. It will be integrated with the widely used bibliographic site, PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/), and is intended to be one of several repositories in an international system first proposed by NIH Director Harold Varmus, M.D., in May 1999. According to today's announcement, PubMed Central will begin receiving, storing, and distributing content-- including peer-reviewed articles, preprints, and other screened reports from existing journals, new journals, and reputable scientific organizations-- in January 2000. The mission of the NIH is to conduct and support medical research and to disseminate the results of that research widely to the public and the scientific community. The NIH will make use of electronic-publishing technology to fulfill the dissemination goal by establishing and maintaining PubMed Central, a Web-based repository that will archive, organize, and distribute peer-reviewed reports from journals, as well as reports that have been screened but not formally peer reviewed. Screening and peer review of manuscripts will be the responsibility of scientific publishers, professional societies, and other groups independent of the NIH. As a result of the interest in this proposal and the comments from the scientific community, the scope of the content has been expanded to include the life sciences in general, including plant and agricultural research as well as biology and medicine. "In the four months since we proposed what we then called E-biomed, we have heard from hundreds of people and have had discussions with dozens of interested organizations," said Dr. Varmus. "Whether the views support or oppose the proposal, these comments have included valuable suggestions. Our focus remains as it was: to make important research literature available without barriers on the Internet, and we now have a plan for a system that ultimately will enrich the reading experience, deepen discussions among scientists, and enhance information flow from the world's investment in life sciences research," he said. Q. and A. about PubMed Central August 30, 1999 1.What are the major differences between the original E-biomed proposal and the system described in the current summary? The focus of PubMed Central remains as it was, to make the world's life sciences literature available without barriers on the Internet. The NIH role has changed. NIH's responsibility will be limited to maintaining this repository-facilitating the input of the content from submitters, developing technology for presentation and navigation, developing standards to be used by submitting organizations, coordinating with repository efforts of international partners, and archiving the content for the future. All manuscripts will have been peer reviewed or screened by organizations outside of the NIH. The "coverage" of the PubMed Central will be wider than just biomedical interests and will include the life sciences broadly: biology, medicine, agricultural and plant sciences. We are now using the name PubMed Central as the name of the repository, based on the repository's natural integration with the existing PubMed biomedical literature database. PubMed Central is the NIH part of what we hope will be an international network of similar or "mirror" repositories, creating a system that could called E-bioscience. 2. Will there still be an advisory board? Who will be on that? How will members be selected? We are having discussions with learned societies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia in efforts to convene a meeting of interested parties to appoint advisors and establish international policies. 3. When will the Board be formed? We are currently involved in ongoing discussions with some international groups that want to participate. 4. What will that Board do? Its initial task will be to establish criteria to certify groups that may want to submit material to PubMed Central or related international servers. As an ongoing task, the Board will assist in ensuring that PubMed Central evolves and remains responsive to the needs of researchers, publishers, and the public. 5. What is the cost for the NIH? What does that cover? Where did those funds come from? We estimate that the cost for Fiscal year 2000 will be approximately $2-3 million. (This is for hardware, software, technology upgrades and maintenance, and the Help Desk and support.) This is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of journal publishing. 6. Will this new system save money? The goal of PubMed Central is to maximize our investment in life-science research by making information more available. Even if no money is saved, there will be a huge gain for science and for the public. 7. Who at NIH will be in charge of PubMed Central? The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the National Library of Medicine, will develop and maintain the repository. That is the part of the NLM that designed and maintains the very popular PubMed database. 8. Will changes be made to PubMed itself? Yes. PubMed itself will extend its coverage of the life sciences and continue its linkage to external online journals. 9. Will PubMed Central include research relating to the behavioral and social sciences? Yes, to the extent that they are in the domain of life sciences research, and if those journals are interested in being involved (or if organizations in those disciplines are interested and meet the criteria for participation.) 10. Has NIH dropped the notion of having a non-peer reviewed section? No. We never intended to drop that feature. Papers in this section will be screened for appropriateness (by groups outside of the NIH) but not formally peer-reviewed before they are posted. 11. Why is it important to have that section? There is much information useful to scientists that will probably never be published in peer review journals. An example might be "negative" results from clinical trials. Or experimental techniques of interest to a small segment of scientists. Or large data sets from high-throughput biology experiments-especially new methods before a formal database has been established. We want that information to be available to other scientists. It will inform their work. 12. Can individuals submit papers on their own to your new PubMed Central? Individuals will have to go through a certified independent group, a journal, or a scientific society, even if they submit articles for the section that is screened but not peer reviewed. We will try to direct interested individuals to organizations that are participating in PubMed Central. 13. Which organizations and journals are "on board" with what you are doing and plan to join by submitting material or allowing a linkage to PubMed Central? Association of Academic Health Science Libraries. Frontiers in Bioscience Association of Research Libraries Community of Science Vitek Tracz (Current Science Group) Scott Plantz, MD emedicine, Inc. American Society for Cell Biology and their journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell. 14. How much resistance/cooperation have you gotten from the "big" journals? Do you expect more when people understand how PubMed Central has evolved from the original proposal? As the proposal has evolved and the description has been clarified, we have found that many journals are more receptive to the idea-even if they are not currently planning to participate. 15. Can PubMed Central succeed without the big journals? PubMed Central is not just a repository. It is a process. We will see it develop and change to adapt to new technologies and new situations. Publishers and societies that do not join PubMed Central today will have the opportunity to do so in the future as they see the benefits of this repository 16. Do you intend that scientists from any nation may submit through journals or through scientific societies? Will all papers be in English? Yes. Scientists from any nation may submit. All papers must be in English. 17. From a "readers" point of view, what do you see as the benefits? * Barrier free access to life sciences research. * The ability to search and navigate across the whole archive of both present and past papers because the collection will be in a single community repository. * The ability to set up a personal "search" tool and actually "build your own personal journal". * The ability to view very large data sets previously unavailable because they are too large to be included in a printed journal. * The ability to view video that cannot be displayed in printed journals-for example, some scientific efforts in bioimaging. * The ability to go to the source to verify-or counter-some of the information and misinformation that is posted on the Web. For the first time, the public will have full access to a major corpus of life sciences literature. 18. How much input from other countries have you gotten on your various proposals? Who is "on board" internationally? We have had discussions with EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) and EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory); the proposal has been discussed at the World Health Organization, and researchers from around the world have expressed interest and offered support. We expect that governmental and national organizations in other countries will establish linking, parallel facilities or repositories. We have discussed that with some organizations, and we are continuing these discussions. 17. Has NIH dropped the use of the name "E-bioscience"? No, we haven't dropped that nomenclature. The repository or "server" at the NIH is called PubMed Central. However, we envision that in the future there might be other repositories linked together with the NIH repository-possibly in other countries. Together this system could be called E-bioscience. 18. Do you consider that this new version of the proposal is a capitulation to publishers who were opposed to it? Publishers raised many of the same issues that were raised by scientists, members of the public, and even the press. Many of those who responded during the comment period offered good suggestions for solving the problems that were identified, and we have taken those suggestions. That was the purpose of the comment period, and it worked. 20. What are the benefits to publishers and societies? More people will see their publications-they will get lots of traffic. If their goal is to maximize the use of the scientific information that they publish, this is clearly a benefit. In addition, they will find opportunities for new businesses that build on the PubMed archive. Finally, they will have the opportunity to archive their information without additional cost to them, knowing that their information will be adapted as the technology changes in the years ahead.