The Cochrane Collaboration is an international nonprofit organization which compiles the results of medical research and publishes summaries of the collected findings. Cochrane is widely trusted because they are able to take a long-term view to their reporting, which leads to their publications being conservative, broad, and acknowledging of all major perspectives. Additionally they do an excellent job of continually updating their reports and noting how new reports differ from previous ones.
I started examining Cochrane findings in spring 2012 when I started working at Consumer Reports. This was through the Choosing Wisely campaign, which backs more of its health recommendations to publications in the Cochrane Library than to any other single publishing imprint. In spring 2013 Jake Orlowitz (user:Ocaasi on Wikipedia) assisted Cochrane in providing Wikipedia contributors with no cost access to Cochrane journals. This program resulted in many Wikipedians becoming more aware of Cochrane and more broadly, the idea of systematic reviews in academic literature. Understanding what a review is also suggests what primary research is, and although following the granting of no cost access the number of citations to Cochrane in Wikipedia has risen, it is my opinion that the greater impact to this point has been increased discussion in many Wikipedia communities about the differences between higher and lower quality sources of information. Wikipedia community guidelines suggest that review articles are superior to primary research, and that there are considerations which one can make to further judge quality of publications. The actual number of Wikipedians who have accepted Cochrane access is probably less than 200, and the number among those who have used the access once is probably not more than half that, and the number who have used their Cochrane access a lot must not be more than 20-30. Considering the impact and volunteer time investment in this I think the investment by Cochrane in this can only be called successful and worthwhile.
In December 2013 Cochrane called for applications to hire a Wikipedian-in-residence. In May 2014 they hired Sydney Poore (user:FloNight) for this position. She has had a few roles, including explaining Wikipedia to Cochrane, explaining Cochrane to the Wikipedia community, assisting with the Cochrane Library subscriptions, executing plans to increase the use of Cochrane information in developing Wikipedia. Sydney has always been so kind to me. I met her first in person on my first day in New York City, which was also the day that I first met Richard (user:Pharos).
At Wikimania 2015 in Mexico I had a chat with Sydney and Nancy Owens from Cochrane. Nancy is an executive at Cochrane and has been there since about 2000. She is a champion of Cochrane’s Collaboration with Wikipedia, and we three all exchanged ideas. I told them that at Consumer Reports I am doing outreach to medical schools, and if Cochrane had any contacts at any medical school local to me then I had time to assist students and instructors in participating in the Wikipedia Education Program. It would make me happy to partner with anyone near to me who was interested in Cochrane and interested in students contributing more to Wikimedia projects.
We lightly discussed a controversy which is close to me – open access of Cochrane journals. I only said that I did not want to talk about this issue, and they told me that they both are encouraging other people to discuss the issue. I am not sure what parts of the controversy are published, but I think in social circles which care it is no secret that there is tension in the Cochrane community about open access. The situation is that Cochrane is unusual among academic publishers for the size and devotion of its community of contributors, and their strong feeling for universal multilingual access to the health information which Cochrane provides. In 2003 Cochrane partnered with Wiley for publishing. Wiley is an American published based in New Jersey. It has revenue of USD 2 billion a year and is for profit. The tension is that among open access advocates, Wiley commits the same acts of wickedness as other paywall-using publishers, including capturing the results of taxpayer funded research, denying access to information which all humans have a right to access, protecting an outdated exploitative business model to sustain profits at the expense of the vulnerable, and in general seeking out the most evil thing to do whenever faced with a set of options. Because of Cochrane’s devoted community and a general sense that Cochrane’s model is a pinnacle of scientific culture, a model for fair collaboration, and a benefit to every sector of society internationally, there is more conflict among its community because of the open access movement with the affiliation with Wiley. Cochrane began affiliating with Wiley to secure funding, and some question whether the cost is worthwhile considering the drawbacks. Some would want Cochrane to be published on an open access model. If this happened, Wiley would lose a significant revenue stream and be under increased pressure to give up even more of their profitable journals. There is further tension that some at Cochrane are influenced by anti-open-access lobbyists paid by Wiley and like publishers, who counter the poorly funded open access activist community with well-funded anti-propaganda. Some of that propaganda includes teaching new definitions of open access which were never part of the open access movement. The open access movement was defined by the three Bs – the Budapest Initiative, the Bethesda Statement, and the Berlin Declaration. All of these agree that for a work to be open access then anyone must be able to “copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship”. The propaganda funded by big publishers including Wiley seeks to change the definition of open access to mean “available to read in limited circumstances without paying a fee”. I am willing to make all kinds of compromises to work with Cochrane but ultimately – the clock is ticking for them and someday there will be no path forward for their publications except true open access. It is not my concern when that day will be, and for my own part, I feel that increasing distribution of Cochrane’s content and the increased success of the organization only hastens everyone’s realization that the information they publish must be available in an open access model.