Ever since the widespread acknowledgment that publication of research in the biomedical literature was a prerequisite for credibility, authors have been forced to sign over the rights to their manuscript as a requirement of its consideration for publication.

While this may have rankled any number of authors, it was not really an issue until the last decade or so, when the advent of the Internet made alternative routes of scientific exchange not only possible, but also much faster than the traditional media of scientific exchange.

Perhaps the most extreme example of these accelerated communications to date could be found in the latter stages of the human genome project, where discoveries were initially communicated via real-time postings on discussion servers.

So what now? Academic authors are no longer satisfied with a few hundred offprints, they expect to be able to post their new findings on their own Web page. And, while commercial authors or sponsors are still mostly forced to purchase reprints for wider circulation, those with more creative plans for disseminating the results of their research are increasingly finding themselves frustrated by the archaic pricing and distribution models available from traditional publishers.

In December of 1993, the National Writers Union (NWU) filed suit against the New York Times and others, alleging copyright infringement for reuse of articles in online database repositories. The NWU represents the interests of US freelancers, primarily contributing to lay media.

The case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in June of 2001 reached a decision in favor of the NWU.

While clearly reflecting a growing discontent among the broad sphere of authors, the Tassini decision has, in practice had little or no impact on biomedical publishers - other than perhaps to sharpen up their copyright transfer language.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) was officially formed in June 1998 in response to what members saw as the hijacking of the process of scholarly communications by the commercial publishers. They favored what they believed was a more balanced system back when most journals were published by academic presses or the major professional associations. The primary driver of their concerns stems from the ever-mounting price increases for peer-reviewed journals that, when set against the reality of shrinking library budgets, results in an ongoing reduction in library holdings.

One of SPARC's three strategic initiatives is to encourage the establishment of cost-effective alternatives to the expensive, top-tier specialty journals. As confirmation of their success, members point to examples like The Journal of Vegetation Science, which was launched in 1990 and has now out-placed the high-priced alternative Plant Ecology in the Impact Factor rankings for its specialty.

SPARC is becoming increasingly militant. They have posted on their Website a trio of "how to" guides to encourage authors to establish alternative journals.

• Creating Change
• Declaring Independence
• Gaining Independence

While revolt stirs passions, real change unfortunately always requires cold, hard cash. The good news for supporters of SPARC is that money appears to be becoming increasingly available. A recent example of this was the announcement by the Open Society Institute that they will fund a pilot project to support open access to research and scholarly content in any academic discipline.

Then in 1999 PubMed Central (PMC) was launched by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) to function as the NLM's full-text archive of full text, peer-reviewed life science literature.

The original plans for PMC made provision for a form of biomedical preprint server to enable the posting of both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed information. It also required that any participating journal provide all of its peer-reviewed content as a full-text online file immediately upon publication of the parent journal.

The preprint concept seems to have vanished (preprints are frequently seen in other scientific disciplines, such as physics, where authors can post the full text of their submitted articles prior to peer review or publication - they are rare in biomedicine).

In March 2001, PMC even relaxed the requirement to provide complete full text, and will permit the journal exclusivity on their own Website for their embargo period of 6-12 months. In this case a user may search the content, but can only view the full text if they have access to the journal's password-controlled site.

Interestingly some of the loudest voices raised against this initiative were from the academic and society publishers, who have come to rely on the revenue streams from their publications - somewhat in contrast to the aspirations of the SPARC initiative.

This move by NCBI/NLM has been emulated by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) with their E-Biosci initiative. It should be noted, however, that to date neither initiative has attracted anything like a critical mass of content.

The concept has also attracted at least one major for-profit initiative, BioMed Central, which seems to be emulating the SPARC manifesto by providing a framework for authors to establish their own, online-only open access journals. BioMed Central funds its activities by levying a $500 author submission charge.

It should be noted that this type of publishing initiative, especially away from the glare of commercial viability, risks what publishers call "twigging," a situation where increasingly focused subspecialty journals are published that have an increasingly limited potential audience. Perhaps this is less of an issue on the online-only, open access brave new world.

In late 2000, a small but increasingly potent and vocal grass roots movement - the Public Library of Science (PLOS) was formed. Their demands - that all publishers, commercial or otherwise, make the full text of their content available either immediately at the latest within 6 months of original publication in the journal via "an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form."

It is really anyone's guess where this will end. On the one hand, there is no doubt that there is an increasing desire by researchers in biomedicine and other scientific disciplines to make the fruits of their labors freely available to all in a freely-accessible Internet archive that they believe will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.

On the other hand, these same researchers still need the credibility and tenure support that can, at least right now, still primarily be gained from publication in one of the "overpriced," commercially-published journals. If nothing else, publication in these journals comes clearly endorsed with their established reputation for authoritative peer review processes and careful editorial selection.

Some of the largest commercial publishers respond with claims that their online aggregated content initiatives are in concert with those of the "dissenters," but in practice these initiatives are never free.

One of the largest, Science Direct by Elsevier Science, has recently expanded through both cross-searching with PubMed and a pay-per-view access model. While this certainly expands access to content, it still falls far short of the "free after 6 months" requirements of many of the alternatives.

Clearly the debate will continue to rage before a meaningful solution is reached. We will do our best to keep you informed, and to help you understand what it means to your publication endeavors.

In the meantime, the choice of vehicles for publication remains just that - your choice. You can favor PLOS or SPARC, or not, and select your journals accordingly.

Of course in the end someone always has to pay. The reality remains that even if the copyright issues were resolved, the undertaking to create a true open-access Web archive of peer-reviewed biomedical journal articles would require a sophisticated navigation system, and also very significant storage and bandwidth. Who would pay? An international consortium of national libraries might present one possible option.