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Privatization of a Journal

1997; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 277; Issue: 5324 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.277.5324.297b

1095-9203

Janet M. Boullin,

Ethics in Clinical Research

I would like to expand on Andrew Lawler's article “Privatized cancer journal triggers Senate reaction” (News & Comment, 6 June, p. 1492). The arrangement between the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Oxford University Press (OUP-USA) is a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, a mechanism previously used for the development of various technologies. A major part of the project will be the research and development of a versatile electronic version of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute ( JNCI ) that will be linked to other cancer information resources. In this age, in which the rapid communication of information is critical to scientific advancement, improvements in information dissemination can be as important for the public health as the development of new diagnostics. Thus, the NCI:OUP-USA agreement is analogous: government expertise in producing the journal is being researched and developed by OUP-USA to produce an expanded knowledge base that will be made available to the scientific community and the public at a low cost. Subscription prices for the printed journal remain low—the best value for money by far of any journal in the cancer field—and subscribers can now access an enhanced full-text version on the World Wide Web. In addition, contents and searchable abstracts are available to the public on the journal's home page. Profits, if any, will be shared and reinvested in the dissemination of cancer information. The arrangement provides for a transition during which OUP-USA will assume more of the financial burden and NCI will phase out its staff involvement until the entire burden, both in staff and finances, is borne by OUP-USA. This gradual process was deemed necessary to ensure that the quality of the journal would be preserved. In fact, the cost to taxpayers has already been cut because OUP-USA is paying all production, distribution, and marketing costs. The comments in Lawler's article made by Benjamin Vandergrift, formerly counsel to OUP-USA, do not represent the views of Oxford University Press. # Privatization of a Journal {#article-title-2} In my official capacity as executive editor of the JNCI , I apologize to Andrew Lawler for being unreachable by telephone when he was developing his 6 June article. We are now literally a movable editorial office, going from one temporary location to another while NIH arranges permanent space. I was eager to answer Lawler's questions. Silence from NCI could give weight to the negative takes of Senators John Warner (R–VA) and Wendell Ford (D–KY) on lifting the financial burden of this journal from the shoulders of the American taxpayer. Having missed an “official” opportunity to set the record straight, I do so now in a private capacity, as a concerned citizen. Two years ago, NCI officials planning for the reality of a leaner government recognized that prospects for the JNCI 's future as a federal program were dim. Budget pressures had already begun to undercut the infrastructure that supports its high quality. The same pressures precluded its evolution as a state-of-the-art electronic product. The NCI recognized that the JNCI is an asset to the National Cancer Program and worth saving in the public interest. A search began for a private partner willing and able to take on a journal for its quality and integrity rather than a pleasing bottom line. (As ever, quality costs, and the quality infrastructure of the JNCI are patterned after those of Science , so it has a layer of Ph.D.-level editorial staff that costs a great deal.) After long and careful negotiation, NCI found its match in the nonprofit OUP-USA, the largest university press in this country. NCI and OUP have engaged in a temporary partnership of approximately 5 years that will gradually shift all costs and responsibilities out of the public sector. The OUP has agreed to fund the development of a state-of-the-art dynamic, interactive electronic cancer information product with the JNCI at its center and has assumed all production, distribution, and marketing costs. During the collaboration, the government is providing office space and equipment. NCI and OUP editorial staff are working together on the JNCI to transfer to OUP the procedures, systems, and staff that constitute the quality infrastructure. OUP is bound to maintain this infrastructure for as long as it publishes under the JNCI name, and the NCI director will continue to name the editor-in-chief. Except for those two links, the partnership will end when the transfer and the electronic product are complete, as will all remaining taxpayer support. Contrary to what the unidentified Senate aide quoted by Lawler says, this cooperative endeavor is not a government subsidy, and revenues do in fact flow back to NCI from the money OUP takes in for subscriptions. No one expects that this specialty journal, with the quality requirements of a handful of large general scientific or medical journals, will ever make a profit. OUP and NCI believe that it can be self-supporting, however, and that is the goal. The JNCI will survive if that goal obtains—unless the myths about the iniquity of the privatization succeed. According to one myth repeated in the Science article, the JNCI publishes government information and gives it away to OUP to sell. In fact, this journal, like Science , publishes research results from authors around the world, including a small fraction from federal laboratories. We were a government publication for 57 years because the taxpayers had to pay all editorial office and production costs, not because we are different in nature from other scientific journals. OUP has already assumed more than half those costs and will by the end of the partnership assume them all. The OUP “owns” the JNCI in that authors now assign copyright to OUP instead of the government. This makes the JNCI a private, not a government, publication. As a private publication, the Government Printing Office (GPO) has informed us, the JNCI no longer qualifies for free distribution to libraries in the GPO-run Federal Depository Library Program. We therefore stopped providing 800 copies free to GPO for distribution to libraries. Much to my astonishment, GPO then created the myth that NCI and OUP had cut off free public access to the JNCI . In actuality, however, the public has much greater free access to the JNCI now than it did under GPO. Some 2700 libraries across this country pay to receive the JNCI , and JNCI abstracts are now both free and searchable at the OUP Web site. Of course, these myths serve the interests of GPO. The GPO is the federal government's giant printing monopoly, created in the 19th century to harness the then new printing technology for the efficient use of all branches of government. It has been an agency of Congress, overseen by a House-Senate Joint Committee on Printing, ever since. Because agencies of the Executive branch cannot “lobby” Congress, GPO has been able to shield the committee from real feedback on its performance and to paint its own view of reality for Congress. Senators Ford and Warner may not know that GPO almost killed the JNCI in 1990: GPO's contract printer filed for bankruptcy, and GPO refused to exercise its legal option to let a second contract at NCI's request. Production was at a halt. Because Congress had permitted incursions into the GPO monopoly by that time, an NCI office with printing-contract capability was able to come to the JNCI 's rescue. This group managed to continue our printing without disruption on an emergency basis for six issues, until GPO could resume. Needless to say, we were at the same time planning a permanent escape from GPO, with all deliberate speed. A letter dated 28 May 1997 from NCI Director Richard Klausner to Senator Warner addresses some of the Senator's concerns about the JNCI and the cooperative agreement, and an attachment answers 17 questions asked by the Joint Committee on Printing. These answers contradict many statements and impressions contained in Lawler's article. # Privatization of a Journal {#article-title-3} Lawler's article about the growing flap over the arrangement that gives the JNCI to OUP raises an important question: Should government property created at taxpayer expense become a profit source for a private concern? To this question I would like to add a related concern for those of us who make a living as independent journalists and authors: For the JNCI news reports written by freelance contributors, not staffers, the deal in effect subverts the intent of U.S. copyright law. Under the law, freelancers own the copyright for their works from the time of their creation; ordinarily, they license their works to a publisher and retain the right to profit from further uses of them. Freelancer-written articles published in the JNCI as a government publication went into the public domain—in effect, the people owned the copyright—a situation understood and accepted by freelancers who write for government publications. The copyright for freelancer-written articles published in the JNCI as OUP publications should remain with the writer. OUP, however, has begun to demand that freelancers sign over their copyrights for the sole, perpetual benefit of this privately owned British company. Copyright law in this country derives from Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which authorizes Congress to provide for protection of creative works in order to encourage “authors and inventors.” There is no mention of encouraging publishers. The JNCI 's outside contributors should not have to give up the copyrights granted them by U.S. law simply to accommodate a British publishing company.