RE: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access

["Sally Morris" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

Apologies for this much delayed response (due to temporary 
unavailability of the BMJ statistics during their website revamp)

Peter Banks (whose sound good sense we all miss sadly) may not 
have interviewed 'homemakers in Houston', but anyone can have a 
look at the usage information on the British Medical Journal's 
website (see 
http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/visitor-statistics/questionnaire). 
Year after year, just 2% of usage has been from patients, and 4% 
from the general public;  this year the figures jumped to 6% and 
5% respectively.  However, this still does not exactly look like 
overwhelming demand to me...

Sally

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel:  +44(0)1903 871286
Fax:  +44(0)8701 202806
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Peter 
Banks
Sent: 30 January 2007 01:55
To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
Subject: Re: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts 
from article
in Nature Magazine

Mr. Banks has not interviewed homemakers in Houston. Instead, I 
spent 20 years in patient education. I've looked at the 
statistics that show 90 million Americans have limited health 
literacy; considered the 40 million Hispanic patients for whom 
English is often a second language; considered the fact that 47 
million Americans have no health insurance and therefore no 
opportunity to discuss health information with a physician. I've 
created low-literacy health publications, Spanish language 
publications.

I have also been a cancer patient and used the Internet. In the 
search for information, NIH's MedLine Plus, the American Cancer's 
Society page, and many other patient-oriented pages were 
extremely useful. PubMed Central was largely useless, since I do 
not happen to be a cultured cell or a rat.

At the same time, we made virtually all the content of the 
journal Diabetes Care freely available (after a 3-month delay). 
I/we did this not because it would help very many patients--from 
usage statistics, it very clearly didn't--but not to inhibit 
those few who might use the information productively.

What we didn't do is to adopt the reprehensible tactic of some OA 
advocates or Sen. Cornyn and suggest that a treatment for breast 
cancer or diabetes was locked behind subscriptions barriers. OA 
may be a good idea on some grounds, but patient education is not 
one of them.

Those who know little about patient education and empowerment 
shouldn't presume to lecture others.

Peter Banks