Apologies for this much delayed response (due to temporary
unavailability of the BMJ statistics during their website
revamp)
Peter Banks (whose sound good sense we all miss sadly) may
not
have interviewed 'homemakers in Houston', but anyone can
have a
look at the usage information on the British Medical
Journal's
website (see
http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/vi
sitor-statistics/questionnaire).
Year after year, just 2% of usage has been from patients,
and 4%
from the general public; this year the figures jumped to 6%
and
5% respectively. However, this still does not exactly look
like
overwhelming demand to me...
Sally
Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
Fax: +44(0)8701 202806
Email: sally morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-llists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-llists.yale.edu] On Behalf
Of Peter
Banks
Sent: 30 January 2007 01:55
To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
Subject: Re: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access:
excerpts
from article
in Nature Magazine
Mr. Banks has not interviewed homemakers in Houston.
Instead, I
spent 20 years in patient education. I've looked at the
statistics that show 90 million Americans have limited
health
literacy; considered the 40 million Hispanic patients for
whom
English is often a second language; considered the fact that
47
million Americans have no health insurance and therefore no
opportunity to discuss health information with a physician.
I've
created low-literacy health publications, Spanish language
publications.
I have also been a cancer patient and used the Internet. In
the
search for information, NIH's MedLine Plus, the American
Cancer's
Society page, and many other patient-oriented pages were
extremely useful. PubMed Central was largely useless, since
I do
not happen to be a cultured cell or a rat.
At the same time, we made virtually all the content of the
journal Diabetes Care freely available (after a 3-month
delay).
I/we did this not because it would help very many
patients--from
usage statistics, it very clearly didn't--but not to inhibit
those few who might use the information productively.
What we didn't do is to adopt the reprehensible tactic of
some OA
advocates or Sen. Cornyn and suggest that a treatment for
breast
cancer or diabetes was locked behind subscriptions barriers.
OA
may be a good idea on some grounds, but patient education is
not
one of them.
Those who know little about patient education and
empowerment
shouldn't presume to lecture others.
Peter Banks
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