Re: The Value of OA

["Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cwbailey@digital-scholarship.com>]

Patients may want direct access to primary literature for a 
variety of reasons, such as gaining an in-depth understanding of 
possible treatments, risks of those treatments, and treatment 
outcomes.

Even patients who have access to high-powered specialists may 
want such access to ensure that they are fully informed and are 
in agreement about treatment options with their physicians. 
Typical office visits are short and many physicians have heavy 
patient loads, requiring rapid turnaround time and limited 
patient interaction.

Medical schools and other specialized health care institutions 
are typically concentrated in urban areas or rural university 
settings, making access to specialists difficult for many 
patients.

Patients may need to rely on physicians who are not specialists, 
and patients' physicians, specialist or not, may have no 
affiliation with an institution that grants them access to 
licensed medical resources or this access may not be completely 
adequate.  Consequently, physicians, who--unlike patients--should 
be able to easily interpret primary literature may not have the 
kind of access to that literature that they need to remain fully 
informed and current, thus ensuring adequate care.

Patients and physicians are taxpayers. Taxes pay for a 
considerable amount of research that results in primary 
literature, both via government grants and, in the case of 
researchers who are at state institutions, via the salaries and 
supporting infrastructure that supports researchers.

If there is no proof that OA helps patients and their physicians, 
there is also no proof that it doesn't; however, patients and 
physicians, like all taxpayers, have footed a very significant 
part of the bill for the medical research literature and they are 
entitled to directly reap benefit from this.

Publishers do not typically pay for journal article content. If 
OA is too burdensome for them, perhaps partial cost recovery for 
research investment costs could be achieved by charging 
publishers set fees for using grant-sponsored article content and 
article content produced by government employees (at all levels). 
A similar strategy could be used by interested private 
foundations. Collected funds could be used to help sponsor future 
research, reducing taxpayers' and foundations' costs.

Best Regards,

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Digital Scholarship
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/