Open Access to Cancer Research in PubMed: June 1, 2006- May 31, 2011

Abstract

Abstract

Objective: This study investigated PubMed (PM), the free database index of references and abstracts on life science and bio-medical topics used to facilitate the lookup of scholarly information, to ascertain how PM's percentage of free online articles, compared to the values given for open access (OA) in previous studies. This study also compared the general OA in PM of journal articles and cancer articles to the OA of specific types of cancer to assess OA availability in areas.

         Keywords: PubMed, cancer, open access

Principal Findings: At 28%, PM's current level of OA in the life sciences lags behind other disciplines, dating back to 2001-2002 when 29% of the articles in political science, 37% in electrical engineering, and 69% in mathematics were open access (Antelman, 2004). Of the research articles on the fourteen types of cancers assessed in this study, five types, including the top three most prevalent cancers: prostate, lung and bronchus, and breast, showed higher percentages of OA in PM research article dealing with those cancers than the general level of OA in PM.

Conclusions/Significance: Though the general OA in PM is higher than the values cited in previous research both for PM and for many other disciplines and databases, there is still a substantial need for increased OA in PM. The lack of OA for the majority of articles in PM is a significant limitation to patients suffering from, and doctors treating, cancer who seek information on PM about the disease to help them make informed decisions about treatment. Finally, at the current annual rate of growth of OA in PM of two percent, it will take between thirty-six and fifty years for OA to allow researchers full access to th previous year's research without a subscription. Furthermore, under the current policy, researchers will never be able to access the research published non-OA from previous years without purchasing subscriptions.