NEJM hordes taxpayer images…Chi-Ching$, Chi-Ching$
Sometimes the soft firewall I try to keep between this blog and daily life at a top-tier academic medical center library just breaks down.
One of my favorite scientist teachers down the hall turned to me when her favorite librarian wasn’t available. She was preparing a lecture for this fall’s new class of medical students and had found the perfect New England Journal of Medicine article to support her future lecture on genomic medicine, particularly the images. I explained what most librarians have known for about five years: The New England Journal of Medicine created a download service for images restricted to individual subscribers–though readers at institutional subscription sites could still download images for teaching by opening each image separately and saving it. At the time it seemed typical of publishers that want and need to provide extra services and benefits to retain their individual subscriber base…along with a don’t ask, don’t tell back-door way for institutional medical educators to continue to love NEJM images for teaching.
Well, as of a few weeks ago, we new have the NEW NEJM. Medical educators may be stomping on their Red Sox caps all over the world, because even with institutional access, downloading a set of images for an article will cost either $15 or a bit more if you pony up for a personal subscription. Chi-Ching$.
Well, no real surprise, as publishers struggle to find revenue in competition with the growing open access movement and changes in federal law requiring NIH-mandated public access for NIH-sponsored research.
As I sat with my scientist teacher friend to commiserate, we scrolled down to the bottom of the article in question. It was not really original research, but rather an inspiring review article by some of the top scientists and administrators at NIH. To the NEJM’s credit, the article was free and available. But those gorgeous images I can’t show you would cost a medical educator an individual subscription or $15. Not to mention the AP Biology teachers at hundreds of high schools across the globe. The credit for the article read:
Seems like the credit for these images in part or in whole belongs to us tax payers, based on the contributions of the National Human Genome Research Institute. So I encouraged my faculty friend to write to Dr. Feero.
There is still the issue of the NEJM feeding federally sponsored images into their revenue machine…the new NEJM. It’s not the money that is the big issue. It is the teaching of future scientists and physicians. Can’t the NEW NEJM distinguish public images?
