Marty Frank on the History of E-Biomed

This is an interview with Marty Frank, PhD, FAPS, who served as executive director of the American Physiological Society (APS) from 1985 to 2018. During his tenure, APS saw its membership grow from 6,000 to nearly 11,000 members.

Before APS, Frank worked for seven years as executive secretary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Physiology Study Section. There, in addition to general supervision of the granting process, he initiated workshops and symposia in emerging areas of physiology and served as spokesperson for NIH at universities and national conferences on the subject of peer review of grant applications.

Frank was born in Chicago and completed both his undergraduate and graduate study at the University of Illinois in Urbana. He received his PhD in 1973 for an analysis of calcium storage sites in guinea pig atrium. Frank then spent a year at the Michigan Cancer Foundation in Detroit, where he studied nucleocytoplasmic interactions in amphibian oocytes.

From 1975 until 1978, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. In 1983, he was selected for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Senior Executive Service Development Program, which was designed to prepare “middle managers” for future positions of leadership and major responsibility. As a part of his training, he was assigned to the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (Planning and Evaluation), where he worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Frank has earned numerous awards for his work and leadership. In the scholarly publishing community, he is known as a friendly and knowledgeable colleague with a winning sense of humor, a gracious manner, and a strong backbone. I got to know him during the early days of HighWire Press.

After a recent post comparing Plan S to E-Biomed, a younger professional in the field asked for a history of E-Biomed, a reminder of how time flies, and how history can vanish if not documented. I’m grateful to have this historical perspective from one of the main participants in the E-Biomed days to share. It’s a reminder of how long these initiatives have been kicking around, and how long scholarly publishers have been dealing with such issues. I hope you find it interesting and informative.

Q: Take us back to the mid-1990s and how the Internet was perceived and “felt” to people embracing it. What were the big ideas? How was the scholarly publishing community responding?

Frank: From today’s vantage point of nearly universal Internet access, these constraints seem primitive and almost unimaginable, but in the early 1990s we were only just starting to climb the technological mountain upon which we now stand. By the mid-1990s, the lnternet was becoming increasingly “user friendly” with the advent first of the Gopher and Lynx protocols and later the World Wide Web. As information technology evolved, journal publishers recognized its potential for information dissemination. Both not-for-profit and commercial publishers began looking at the risks and opportunities entailed in moving into the brave new world of electronic publication. In the mid-1990s, personal computers were still relatively uncommon and much less information was available to the public over the Internet. Non-university users who did subscribe to online services such as Compuserve did so using dial-up modems. At a time when the lnternet primarily served up unformatted text, it was a daring move to make the enormous investments in hardware and software to put information online.

There was recognition that print was slow, cumbersome, and expensive, and there was the hope that digital technology would alleviate some of those problems. It would also enable readers to have access to the content more rapidly. In those days, print journals were sent through the mail and on ships to countries around the world, which meant that the content could be months old by the time it reached Australia for example.

One of the first societies to adopt digital technology was the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which began publishing the Journal of Biological Chemistry on CD-ROM using a group called LightBinders. The American Physiological Society (APS) participated in a number of experiments including the Red Sage Project out of the University of California, San Francisco, and an ISI (lnstitute for Scientific Information)-Bell Laboratories effort to bring the scientific literature to the Internet. APS considered CD-ROM but instead sought an online solution. Initially, APS published the abstracts of accepted manuscripts (APStracts) on a Gopher server in 1993. At the same time, APS contracted with OCLC to publish online using their proprietary software (Guidant) which rendered mathematical equations and scientific notation as inline characters. The alternative platform, which was to be used by ASBMB for its journal, was HighWire Press (HWP) out of Stanford University, which rendered mathematical equations and scientific notation as bit-mapped images. As APS prepared to launch its first journal online, OCLC decided to no longer support its proprietary software, forcing APS to withdraw from its agreement with OCLC. APS moved on to HWP to launch our first journal, Journal of Applied Physiology, in 1996. Our original plan was to publish the first journal online for two years to determine its impact on our subscription revenues before putting the next of the APS journal online. APS soon discovered that “if we weren’t online, we didn’t exist,” which caused us to get all of our 14 journals online with HWP by 1998. APS also soon discovered that if the content was not online, students and post-docs were not going to the library stacks to find the article. It was for that reason that APS arranged to scan the entirety of our back content from 1898 to 1996 for posting as the APS Archive in 2000.

Like APS and ASBMB, society and commercial publishers were exploring how best to distribute content using digital technology. Many society publishers decided to work with High Wire Press. However, Elsevier, Wiley, and other commercial publishers were also looking for an online, digital solution for the dissemination of journal content.

Q: When was the first time you heard about open access (OA)? What about when you first heard about E-Biomed? Were there other names it had, or ideas like it?

I cannot remember when I first heard about Open Access (OA); however, it was clear that one of the initiatives being pursued by NIH was to encourage the creation of an OA repository of content. In March 1999, Eliot Marshal reported in Science that then-NIH Director Harold Varmus, along with Patrick Brown of Stanford University and David Lipman of the National Library of Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), had unveiled a proposal for E-Biomed. lt was described as “an ambitious Web-based publishing venture that could radically change the way biology papers are disseminated.” E-Biomed was intended to be a centralized repository where all biomedical journals would deposit their content; however, this visionary plan met with a mixed response.

Q: Can you describe how you got involved in discussions around E-Biomed? What were some of the major events from your perspective?

Frank: Having read the article by Eliot Marshal on my flight to the HWP meeting at Stanford in 1999, I raised my concerns about the plan with John Sack and the other society publishers in attendance. Ellis Rubinstein, Publisher of Science, and I drafted a letter raising concerns about the federal government taking over the publications of the scientific/biomedical literature. Discussions continued at the NAS E-Journal Summit held in the fall of 1999. Harold Varmus was one of the featured speakers at which he explained some of his thinking about the new online publishing environment. At the time, he was complaining about his need to maintain multiple logins and passwords in order to access the literature. In his mind, a common platform like E-Biomed would make access easier and less cumbersome. He also indicated that he wanted the site to provide a feature common to the physics archive, arXiv, which allowed for the posting of preprints. Those of us in the community referred to it as E-Biomed Lite, and we rejected the concept because of concerns about the posting of non-peer reviewed content on a platform with an NIH imprimatur. The issue of E-Biomed became a regular discussion topic at the twice yearly HWP meetings as well as at various publisher meetings. About the same time, Varmus, Brown, and Michael Eisen began a petition drive to encourage investigators to refuse to submit manuscripts and to review for subscription journals. Unfortunately, there were not many options available to investigators at that time. BiomedCentral (BMC) was launched in 2000, but for the most part the petition drive was a hollow gesture.

Around the same time, SPARC, an organization associated with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), began advocating for OA. Their advocacy included lobbying Congress for legislation mandating open access. The Fair Access Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) was one of the first pieces of legislation. It became necessary for commercial and not-for-profit publishers to follow the OA advocates to Capitol Hill to advocate against their proposals.

Q: The HighWire community of publishers at the time was very influential, it seemed. Why was this? What factors contributed to that?

Frank: As noted earlier, the issue of E-Biomed was discussed extensively by the HWP publishers. It was of concern to the group because as not-for-profit publishers, we were perceived as the good guys. We were investing in our journals to make them more accessible to the readership without forcing them to incur astronomical costs. We perceived our subscription prices to be reasonable as opposed to the prices associated with commercial journals. In many way, the OA movement was a movement precipitated by frustrations over the high subscription prices associated with commercial journals and concerns about the “Big Deal” negotiated with libraries at the expense of smaller journals such as those published by non-profit publishers. For many of the HWP publishers, access was being provided to the readership at a reasonable price. In addition, many HWP publishers were already making their content freely available after 6 or 12 months.

In early 2000, the National Library of Medicine launched PubMed Central (PMC), repository of content published in the scientific literature. It was initiated as a result of David Lipman’s participation in discussions about E-Biomed with Harold Varmus. Since very few articles were being deposited in PMC, discussions began about requiring the deposit of research articles funded by NIH into PMC. In September 2004, the NIH proposed that NIH-funded research articles be deposited in PMC and be made publicly available six months after publication. The proposal was a result of the inclusion of a recommendation in the July 2004 Labor and HHS Appropriations Bill requiring NIH to implement a public access policy. The proposal was released for comment by NIH in September 2004 and as a result of comments from the community, NIH issued a Public Access Policy in May 2005 to make peer-reviewed final manuscripts stemming from NIH-funded research freely available to the public via PMC 12 months after publication. The Policy strongly encouraged the deposit of manuscripts either by the author or the publisher but it did not make such deposit mandatory. It was a voluntary policy.

Q: My recollection is that informed by the HighWire publishers group, you spearheaded a response to OA and E-Biomed called “The DC Principles.” Can you take us through how that evolved?

Frank: The Washington DC Principles Coalition for Free Access to Science was launched on March 16, 2004, at a press conference at the National Press Club, Washington, DC. The Coalition was an outgrowth of discussions held during the HWP meetings at a multiple publishers’ meetings. While I may have spearheaded the effort with APS staff, the steering committee contributing to its creation included Michael Clarke (then with AAP), Kathy Case (then with AACR), and Lenny Miller (with the Endocrine Society). In conjunction with the press conference, a press release (http://www.dcprinciples.org/release.htm) was issued noting that “Top Medical And Scientific Societies Commit To Providing Free Access To Medical And Scientific Research.” The message from the press briefing was that supporters of the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science were committed to increasing access to new research findings, while maintaining high standards for responsible scientific publishing.

Q: How did the DC Principles Coalition influence subsequent discussions about OA and society publishers in particular?

Frank: While the DC Principles Coalition was comprised of 48 not-for-profit publishers, it grew to approximately 75 publishers responsible for approximately 800,000 articles. The Coalition members believed in public access as defined by our publishing and business models as opposed to government mandates. As a result of our creation, members of the DC Principles Coalition participated in many Congressional discussions about the impact of government mandated public access on Society and not-for-profit publishers business models. Meetings were also held with the NIH leadership both in the office of the Director (Drs. Varmus and Zerhouni) as well as in the NLM (Dr. David Lipman). I personally found myself spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill joining with other non-profit and commercial publishers advocating against FRPAA and other legislation to mandate public access. As a result of the efforts of the DC Principles Coalition and commercial publishers, the NIH Public Access Plan was initially a voluntary plan encouraging the release of manuscripts in PMC 12 months after journal publication as opposed to the original proposal for release after six months. Unfortunately, the voluntary plan gave way to a mandatory plan with the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 (H.R. 2764) in late 2007. It included a provision requiring the NIH to modify its policies and require inclusion into PubMed Central complete electronic copies of their peer-reviewed research and findings from NIH-funded research within 12 months of publication.

Q: Are there any ways that Plan S seems similar to E-Biomed to you?

Frank: Plan S and E-Biomed are only similar in the sense that the goal of both was to encourage the creation of an open access publishing environment. Neither considered broadly the impact of such an environment on society publishers whose profits, if any, are reinvested in the members of the society through programs, awards, and activities. In addition, neither considered their impact on research community, especially those without resources to pay for the publication of their research in an OA journal. E-Biomed was a concept that morphed into PubMed Central, and it was the policy of the NIH which created the current delayed public access environment for US-funded research. It took into consideration the various publishing models that currently support the dissemination of both NIH and non-NIH funded research. Supporters of Plan S have not taken into consideration its impact on journals that publish content funded by agencies other than those supporting Plan S. It is conceivable that investigators funded by Plan S sponsors will only be able to publish in journals willing to work with the research sponsors. Many publishers expressed concern when the NIH was talking about E-Biomed because of concerns about the funder also being the publisher of the content. Would there be the possibility for independent peer review and assessment? Similarly, concerns were raised when three funders (HHMI, Max Planck, and Wellcome Trust) decided to launch their own Open Access journal, e-Life.

Q: What are some of the key differences to your mind between E-Biomed, and the period of time when it emerged, and Plan S and now?

Frank: As I indicated, both Plan S and E-Biomed were designed to encourage the broad dissemination of the scientific literature without subscription barriers. E-Biomed was only a concept which evolved into PubMed Central and resulted in legislation to require public access to the NIH funded literature within 12 months of publication. The NIH public access initiative led to the passage of legislation mandating similar public access provisions for other Federal agencies. However, in each case, it allowed for delayed public access within 12 months of publication. Plan S requires authors and journals to abide by an immediate public access plan. It could lead to journals that only publish articles from authors funded by a given funding agency. For example, the Journal of Physiology is an international subscription journal produced by the Physiological Society. Currently, articles are published from authors from around the world. However, many are also funded by the Wellcome Trust, a primary funder of UK research. In an OA environment, authors will have to pay a fee for publication, probably a minimum of $1,500 although the Wellcome Trust has not provided a number as of yet. However, the Journal of Physiology is currently supported by subscription fees and authors do not have to pay for publication in the journal. If Plan S is implement in this journal, the only scientists able to publish in the journal may be those receiving funding from the Wellcome Trust.

Q: It seems the Internet changed things for publishers, especially attitudes about their value and legitimacy. Is that a fair statement? Do you see that changing?

Frank: The Internet did change everything, and its creation contributed to Stewart Brands’ statement that “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.” This statement from the mid-1980s, and the creation of the Internet contributed significantly to attitudes about access to the scientific literature. It contributed to the statement that “the taxpayer paid for it, therefore the taxpayer should get it for free.” However, the statement only applied to the funding for the research, it did not consider the costs associated with the publication and the dissemination costs for the content. Contrary to the views of OA advocates, the Internet did help to reduce distribution costs but it did not help to contain the costs associated with the creation of the content (journal article). Personally, I do not see the attitude changing since many believe that if it is on the Internet, it is free whether or not the content is posted by the publisher or an illegal purveyor of content.

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