The session moderator was Michael Kronenfeld, Director of the Learning Resource Center at A.T. Still University, Arizona campus. Kronenfeld did an excellent job of setting the stage for this panel discussion. He also sought out those of us who were clacking away on our keyboards during the session to ask if we were blogging it. Yes, we were!

Up until now, much of our discussion about open access has been about extending access and reinforcing compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. This panel discussion was the beginning of a new conversation: one about what we will do with open access and public access materials, because the ultimate goal of all of this is to improve patient care.

Jennifer McClennan from SPARC presented evidence to show just what a difference a mandate makes. Between 2005 and 2007, when the Public Access Policy was voluntary, only about 5% of NIH-funded research articles made it into PubMed Central. Currently, the compliance rate is around 49%. Is the glass half full, or is it half empty? SPARC is very encouraged by the progress and will continue to advocate for true open access to scholarly communication.

Karen Butter from UCSF shared some interesting findings about faculty attitudes toward open access/public access. In a 2008, 83% of surveyed faculty said they were aware or highly aware of the NIH Public Access Policy. 41% said they were considering journals’ open access policies when deciding where to publish. Faculty cited “easy access to articles” as the #1 reason to support open access, with other popular reasons being expanded access to articles and the recognition of open access as a public good.

Potential harm to society publishers was the #1 reason faculty gave for not supporting open access. PLoS Computational Biology (open access) is actually a society journal. PLoS is close to being able to show that an open access journal can help societies increase membership and generate interest in annual meetings.  [This seems to be working for MLA, too... in a recent survey of JMLA readers, only 5% said free availability of JMLA made them less likely renew their MLA memberships. 26% said they would be more or much more likely to renew, and 59% were neither more nor less likely.]

Catherine Nancarrow from PLoS shared inspiring stories about how open access allows creativity to flourish. For example, check out this semantic enhancement of a PLoS article from PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Unlike traditionally copyrighted journals, PLoS journals can easily incorporate links to related content and multimedia, making that content available immediately. We saw a great example of an interactive protein model incorporated into an article.  Some PLoS articles now come linked to YouTube videos of the researchers explaining their work. The Ten Simple Rules Collection is a great example of what’s possible when readers are encouraged to add value to articles post-publication. This collection has been translated in its entirety to Chinese, and nobody had to ask permission.

Catherine Nancarrow wanted us to spread this word far and wide, so here goes: PLoS waives publication fees for authors who are unable to pay. There is a waiver form to be completed after articles have cleared the peer review process and been accepted for publication.

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Thanks to my fellow bloggers and tweeters (”members of the press corps” as my boss put it) for adding so much value to MLA 2009. Special thanks to Michelle Kraft for organizing us. A hui hou, aloha kakou!

Dr. Shintani has an interesting educational background with degrees in business (undergraduate), law, and public health. In medical school, he became frustrated because he found he was not learning how to cure people, just “how to minimize the damage.” As a result, he went to Boston to study nutrition and ended up establishing the non-profit Hawaii Health Foundation to coordinate his mission “to promote world health.”

According to a JAMA study report he cited, medications (adverse reactions, overdosing, etc.) are the fourth leading cause of death in terms of numbers (106,000) of Americans each year. He commented on the “malignant mindset” we have now that pharmaceuticals make us healthy. He maintained that by definition, we are unhealthy if we need to take pharmaceuticals to manage disease mechanisms.

We’ve all seen the statistics and graphics showing the impact of obesity, so Dr Shintani grabbed the attention of the audience by promising we can eat twice as much food and still lose weight. His answer is described in his books and basically is to eat more fruits and vegetables (75% of diet) and little to no meat or dairy. His Hawaii diet does not count or restrict calories but instead restricts the foods to be eaten. During the question and answer period, he advocated the need for exercise to raise metabolic rates and stress management as well, both topics that could be long presentations in themselves.

This was an interesting presentation, and I am sure more than a few of us will be verifying the references he mentioned as he debunked nutrition myths, checking out Dr. Shintani’s Web site for additional information on the Hawaii diet, and thinking twice before we order our next fast food meal.

Check out #mla09 tweets from this morning - Michelle Kraft and I posted a few.

Dr. Ben Young was a WONDERFUL selection as this year’s Leiter Lecturer. http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2009/events/speakers.html#3 The lecture was captivating from start to finish. “The impact of diseases on Hawai’i’s medical history” began with some entertaining personal stories about Ben Young’s interest in Hawaiian history.

Would you believe this amazing find from a New Orleans shop? Purchased in the 1970s for $125, Young later learned that the certificate awarded by Queen Lili’ukalani (for services rendered to King Kalakaua) was worth more than $1,000 and the (gold) medal about $10,000. He still has both items.

Medal of honor and certificate, found by Ben Young in New Orleans

Ben Young was one of the builders of the famous canoe, the Hokule’a, which was first launched in 1975. He was also the physician for its 1976 voyage from Hawai’i to Polynesia.

In transition to his lecture on the impact of introduced diseases, Young mentioned the roles of ancient Hawaiian physicians (Kahuna), such as obstetrician, herbalist, diagnostician, and psychiatrist. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahuna for more information.)

I’m sure that most of you are aware of the many sad examples of native populations decimated by introduced diseases, and Hawai’i was no exception.

Ben Young: timeline of diseases

Ben Young: 58% decline in Hawaiian population

At the same time, there was a huge increase in the immigrant populations of Chinese and Japanese plantation workers in the mid-to late 1800s. The major influxes  correlate with major disease outbreaks.

More to come in post #2.

NLM is receiving about $82 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As of 1 May 2009 clinicaltrials.gov included 72,012 entries: 11,481 observational and 60,333 interventional. Of 13,097 visitors, most were patients and physicians. Dr. Lindberg reminded us that it was really the scandals associated with Paxil and Vioxx that got the registry off the ground… So now we have a repository for reporting/monitoring participant flow, baseline measures, outcome measures. NLM is still working on how to report serious adverse events. Lindberg also discussed some of the QA challenges, and reminded us to look for the NCT number on studies - it’s required for all U.S. trials.

It’s the 20th anniversary of NCBI - it began with only 12 people, and has 500+ employees today. Another upcoming anniversary: 2011 will mark 175 years for the National Library of Medicine!

More to come…

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Mahalo

His focus was the history of disease..   Because this island was isolated for 1,000 years, they had not been exposed to any of our western diseases.  The arrival of the Western Europeans brought TB and venereal disease and then later influenza, small pox, leprosy and then the plague..   Because of this, within 30 years there was a 58% decline in population of the Hawaiian islands.  This speaker gave a detailed history of the establishment of the hospitals established to take care of those who had become ill and also the physicians of note who were involved in their treatment.   There  were some beautiful slides of the island of Molokai, which is the island designated for the victims of leprosy.   The speaker has even written a song about the lepers of Molokai that was played for us.

On Saturday, the section program planners (or their substitutes) discussed the theme (for 2010, it is “Reflect and Connect”).  There will be limited space in DC (2010 conference location) for posters, so we were encouraged to think creatively about what this may mean as far as programming (possibly incorporating posters with presentations, having a “lightning round” poster session where poster grouped thematically have their presenters talk for a few minutes in quick succession, then have time for people to come and ask them questions).  We then shared possible ideas we’re heard from our sections and SIGs, but since all the section and SIG meeting were still to be held, this was mostly just to help get the thinking juices going.

Over the next few days of the conference, we (section/SIG planners) talked with our respective groups to garner ideas for section planning.  The section/SIG planners then met together as a group, wrote up our top three (or four) ideas on large pieces of paper posted on the walls around the room, and looked to see which other groups has similar interests and would be good partners for programming.

At this point, many program ideas have been thrown out, had partners found, and discussion and negotiation has occurred.  We now wait to see how things get compiled and will be sharing information via GoogleDocs to solidify the programs.

Stacy Arenson shared about the new Disaster Information project from NLM.  She explained how the military (Naval Medical Center Hospital), federal (NIH’s Clinical Center), and civilian (Suburban Hospital) hospitals are coordinating efforts in case of disaster.  Steps taken include: digital pens w/special paper to capture information electronically, protocols for tranferring patients to a non-trauma hospitals (NIH’s Clinical Center) to make room for trauma patients, and lasers on top of hospitals to communicate with each other in case other communications go down.

Sheldon Kotzin talked about NLM/s newish online journal donation program for libraries to check about donating journals they are getting rid of to NLM.  He also highlighted the online Images from the History of Medicine Collection; the images are also listed in LocatorPlus.

Of significant personal interest are online seminars from NCBI–hopefully as a replacement for the excellent NCBI classes that have previously been conducted, and were cut last year due to lack of funding.  I eagerly await the development of these seminars and commend NLM for finding another venue for training on this important resource.