Colleagues,
Wearing my hat as an author, I have just had the interesting experience of, on learning a paper of mine had just been published and e-mailing to request a PDF from the publisher, being told I could not have one. Here is their reply:

"The Journal's policy is that it does not provide PDFs of individual articles to authors. While we understand why authors may request a PDF, there are a number of factors that have influenced this decision.

Access to electronic versions of papers decreases the need to access library copies of the Journal. This influences the libraries' subscription patterns. There are a lot of budget pressures on institutional libraries; periodicals that are not used are more vulnerable to being dropped off renewal lists. This may be particularly obvious where lecturers/tutors provide electronic or paper copies of articles to their students, saving them a trip to the library. There is an opportunity cost in providing a PDF: The author can easily send it on to numerous other computer users and anyone with a copy of the file can easily print out and distribute multiple copies of the article. This decreases the potential for reprint sales. Potential readers of an article who can obtain a copy of the PDF are less likely to order a copy of a specific Journal (or be swayed towards membership or Journal subscription). While PDFs are cheap and easy to produce, the administration and production of the Journal itself is a costly exercise. These costs must be met by the members and Journal subscribers.

The issue is under regular review as technology use and conventions change. In the meantime, we hope you will understand why PDFs are not provided as a standard practice."

I replied, in part, "Let me give you the perspective of how your policy seems from an author's viewpoint. Basically, you are saying to authors (without whom the journal would not exist) "Please write and send us articles that we can profit from in the form of library charges and subscriptions. Once you send it to us, and (hopefully) see it attract a lot of attention, people will buy multiple copies/pdfs, the journal's reputation will be enhanced and it will blossom. But if you want to have a copy, please pay us to get your own work back?" Your policy is like a publisher saying to an author of a book: "Thanks for your book which we hope will make us lots of money. Now if you want a copy, please pay for it." I trust you can see that this is very mean-spirited, amateurish, and most importantly, disrespectful to authors."

Am I missing something here? Do any other journals treat their authors this way?

Simon Chapman
Editor, Tobacco Control (www.tobaccocontrol.com)

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I guess they are just being honest, even if short-sighted.

For one thing, most authors who have been short-changed like that will most likely just go ahead and distribute their proof copies (or the Word documents from which the proofs originated).

And these editors miss the point that the popularity of a single article is not worth nearly as much to them as the reputation and awareness of their journal among the academic and clinical public. Sharing useful articles around widely is the best way of getting that awareness up.

Tony Helman
Editor-in-Chief, Arbor Clinical Nutrition Updates (www.nutritionupdates.org)

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Your "case study" reflects the distant criteria and objective differences between editors and publishers... And I just want to add our experience in Gaceta Sanitaria (in English, Public Health Bulletin, The Scientific Journal of the Spanish Public Health Association, a federation of several public health-related societies: epidemiology, public health, health economy, etc).

When the journal is ready for the Internet, we e-mail the corresponding author the PDF file with a short acknowledgement note for his/her contribution to the journal. The objectives of such action: first, to acknowledge the authors, because without them the journal does not exist, but also because we want to stimulate the use of the paper, and as mentioned, the author effort to spread the word is very important (if this, in turn, contribute to improve the number of citations should be assessed with an adhoc trial...).

Our journal as a hybrid open-access format: the 3 most recent issues (6 months) are available only to society members and subscribers (although some key papers are opened) and full free access applies only to papers published more than 6 months ago. As most authors are society members, they would have access to the PDF, but we believe that this small sign of recognition (providing them with the PDF) will increase their confidence in the journal.

The publisher did not agree with this policy (providing authors with the PDF) but finally agreed-the owner of the journal is the society. They holds the copyright, not the publisher.

Esteve Fernández
Editor-in-Chief, Gaceta Sanitaria (Journal of the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration) (www.doyma.es/gs)

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This is a consequence of signing away the copyright of one's work to get it published. Clearly, the journal has the right to do this if you did sign the transfer of copyright form. So they are taking the stance of maximizing short-term financial gains by selling your work, including to you. (By the way, nothing is preventing you from obtaining a paper copy of your article through interlibrary loan and then scanning it into a PDF file.)

However, they are hurting themselves over the long run because authors who dislike this policy will not submit their work to this journal again. In the end, the profit is in the quality of the work submitted to the journal.

William M. Tierney
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of General Internal Medicine

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