More Use of ‘Cochrane’ Through Canada-Wide Licensing?
February 16th, 2008 Posted by: admin
Peter Suber over at Open Access News has already weighed in on the petition to free up access to the Cochrane Library in Canada (and pointed to relevant links). First, let me say that I am for equity of access to information regardless of one’s ability to pay for that access.
But what I find ironic is how ideological (and sterile) this debate about access is becoming. We have publishers on the one hand fighting tooth and nail to hold researchers to old scholarly communication channels; on the other, many open access (OA) advocates automatically assume everything can/should be openly accessible.
That said, I agree with Ben Toth, Director of Health Perspectives and former Director of the NHS National Knowledge Service. Let’s deal with this issue in a logical fashion, not one resource (and petition) at a time. The question is not whether it would make better sense to have free access to the medical evidence. Of course it would; but my impulse is that as a medical community (and society) we do not want to deal with access issues by negotiating with publishers (however altruistic) one painful resource at a time. Throw open the gates, I say, and let’s pay with our taxes.
Not everyone in our society, however, is altruistic or ready to dismantle the capitalist model inherent in publishing. Big questions, for me, include whether the Canadian petition makes sense from two perspectives. First, what is the evidence we need Canada-wide access to Cochrane? Most academics and clinicians have access to Cochrane already. Is this drastic measure a way to ensure consumers read Cochrane?
Second, what makes the Cochrane Library any more important for Canadian consumers than access to primary research articles, including those at major journals? The last time I looked, Cochrane did not cover a lot of important health problems and did not have the range of coverage that would suit an entire population.
Of course, there are other questions. Yes, access to the best medical evidence in the Cochrane Library can be extremely useful for clinicians; in fact, it is widely used around the world, and access is plentiful in developing countries. But is Canada-wide access really what we need??
Then, there is the question whether Cochrane is widely used by medical professionals to make decisions for patients. How often? What disciplines? Some recent research suggests that Cochrane is not used all that much.
Does the petition hope to address issues like those described in that article? Would open access to the Cochrane Library encourage broader use and implementation at clinical frontlines in Canadian hospitals? Some tough questions for me to ponder, over the weekend. - Dean Giustini, OM blogger
Source: More Use of ‘Cochrane’ Through Canada-Wide Licensing?
