Open Access and interdisciplinary research

Matthew Cockerill

Managing Director, BioMed Central

10th Berlin Open Access MeetingStellenbosch, South Africa

Thursday 8th November 2012

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5

Open access helps eliminate barriers between disciplines

Under a subscription-based model, institutions and departments often only subscribe to essential journals for the specific field

Under open access, research benefits from cross-fertilization with ideas from other areas

Some examples of cross-fertilization…

1. Malaria

By James Gathany (CDC - PHIL) Public domain,

Fields contributing towards under-standing and elimination of Malaria

• Parasitology• Immunology• Epidemiology• Infectious diseases• Clinical trials• Health services research

Malaria Journal’s influence

More than 400 articles published annually The field is now dominated by open

access journals Malaria Journal Parasites & Vectors PLoS One PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Overall, 35% of malaria-related research in PubMed is now immediate open access

2. Veterinary research

By Sigurdas (Wikimedia commons) CC-BY-SA-3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0,

Veterinary research is badly served by traditional model

Traditional veterinary journals are infrequently read/cited by non-vets

High quality veterinary research has tended to be published in “basic science” journals

Veterinary medicine and human medical research can benefit by sharing findings

Leading veterinary journals have embraced open access

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Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica(Year of transfer: 2006)

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Switched to open access with

BioMed Central

3. Sport science

By Robbie Dale (Flickr: Jess Ennis, Golden Girl) CC-BY-SA-2.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0,

Cross-journal collaboration

4. Biofuels

Biofuels research• Plant

science/genetics/genomics/agronomy (Improving feedstock)

• Microbiology/Biotechnology(Improving processing & fermentation)

• Biochemistry (Re-engineering pathways)• Economics (Land-use change)

5. Flavour research

Research fields relating to Flavour

Chemistry / Biochemistry Neuroscience / Psychology Genetics / Genomics Public Health / Nutrition Obesity Food science Citizen science (chefs and more…)

6. Medical Case Reports

Cases DB

• Thousands of cases from all medical disciplines

• Text-mining enables convenient filtering by diagnosis, treatment, patient age etc

• Includes BioMed Central case reports and OA case reports from other publishers (available under CC license)

Open access and case reports

• Case reports are more useful when aggregated into a coherent database that spans medical disciplines

• Breaks down barriers between medical researchers, specialist clinicians, GPs and patients

7. Genome data

8. Open Data

Data-sharing and data repositories

Have taken off in certain areas Tend to be discipline-specific, e.g.

– Molecular sequence data (protein/dna)– Protein and chemical structures– Spectroscopy data– Biodiversity data– Public/government data

Interoperability is limited

GigaScience

Research involving “big data” Sharing datasets in reusable form

(e.g. the ISA-TAB standard) Using cloud-computing approaches to

allow computational analyses to be easily reproduced and reused

Part of wider ‘open data’ efforts at BioMed Central

Summary

Research rarely falls clearly into discrete disciplinary categories

The pen access model facilitates cross-fertilization between fields

Discipline-specific journals need no longer exist in isolation

Interdisciplinary journals are now viable and successful