Contributions to Science by Institut d'Estudis Catalans

VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 | JUNE 2014

Volume 10 | Issue 1 | June 2014

OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL

www.cat-science.cat http://revistes.iec.cat/contributions/

FRONT COVER

BACK COVER

Saló de Cent (Main Hall) of the Ajuntament de Barce lona. The Consell de Cent was established in the 13th century and lasted until the 18th century. Its name derives from the number of its members: one hundred. In 1249, Jaume I (1208–1276) created the fundamental structure of the municipal government of Barcelona: a board of advice of four membres, helped by eight counselors and an assembly of probi homines (honest men, leaders), all them membres of the mà major (Catalan for senior hand, or the upper class formed by wealthy merchants). After several modifications, by 1265, the municipal organization gained its more permanent structure: the municipal authority rested on three counselors elected by a Council of one hundred individuals. In 1335, Pere III the Ceremonious permitted the Consell de Cent to use the royal insignia of the four (red) bars. The present gothic hall was begun in 1369 and the first session was held there on August 17, 1373. The importance of the Consell de Cent is supported by many examples along history. For instance, in 1450 the University of Barcelona was created by king Alfons V the Magnanimous (1396–1458). The Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea celebrated its inaugural event in the Saló de Cent on November 28, 2013, in commemoration of the 750th anniversary of the Disputatio of Barcelona of 1263, by organising its own, modern day Disputatio, now devoted to discuss current problems in the society, with the participation of a woman and a man.

Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972) was born in November 25, 1892 in Alaior, Minorca. She was “the most important Spanish female scientist of the first third of the twentieth century, and one of the most important educators of the first half of the twentieth century”. Throughout her life, Comas never distinguished science pedagogy from scientific knowledge. To her, the ideal of scientific training consisted in “placing students in the same position as the researcher, not because they need to discover for themselves what has required centuries to discover...”. In 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed, Comas was appointed Director of the School for Teachers of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia. But in July 1936, the military uprising in Spain was a fatal blow to the nascent scientific community in Spain. Committed to republicanism, in 1937, Comas went to England carrying four thousand Basque children, to preserve them from the war. In April 1939 the Civil War ended, and Comas, as hundreds of thousand other democratic Spaniards, remained in exile until the end of their lives. Since 1942 until her retirement (in 1959) she taught in the innovative Dartington Hall School, in Totnes (Devon County). She died in Exmouth, England, in August 28, 1972. Her many years of work as a teacher also reflected the difficulty for women at that time to take up careers in scientific research. (In the back cover the larva and adult of Chironomus, a mosquito to which she devoted most of her research, are shown.)

Volume 10 | Issue 1 | June 2014

Editorial Board

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ricard Guerrero

Biological Sciences Section, IEC

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Salvador Alegret

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Ramon Gomis

Science and Technology Section, IEC

Biological Sciences Section, IEC

EDITORIAL BOARD The Science and Technology and Biological Sciences Sections:

Joaquim Agulló, Technical University of Catalonia • Josep Amat, Technical University of Catalonia • Francesc Asensi, University of Valencia • Damià Barceló, Spanish National Research Council (Barcelona) • Carles Bas, Institute of Marine Sciences-CSIC (Barcelona) • Pilar Bayer, University of Barcelona • Xavier Bellés, Spanish National Research Council (Barcelona) • Jaume Bertranpetit, Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) • Eduard Bonet, ESADE (Barcelona) • Joaquim Casal, Technical University of Catalonia • Alícia Casals, Technical University of Catalonia • Josep Castells, University of Barcelona • Jacint Corbella, University of Barcelona • Jordi Corominas, Technical University of Catalonia • Michel Delseny, University of Perpinyà • Josep M. Domènech, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Mercè Durfort, University of Barcelona • Marta Estrada, Institute of Marine Sciences-CSIC (Barcelona) • Gabriel Ferraté, Technical University of Catalonia • Ramon Folch, Institute for Catalan Studies • Màrius Foz, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Jesús A. Garcia-Sevilla, University of the Balearic Islands • Lluís Garcia-Sevilla, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Joan Genescà, National Autonomous University of Mexico • Evarist Giné, University of Connecticut (USA) • Joan Girbau, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Pilar González-Duarte, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Francesc González-Sastre, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Joaquim Gosálbez, University of Barcelona • Albert Gras, University of Alacant • Gonzalo Halffter, National Polytechnic Institute (Mexico) • Lluís Jofre, Technical University of Catalonia • Joan Jofre, University of Barcelona • David Jou, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Ramon Lapiedra, University of Valencia • Àngel Llàcer, Hospital Clinic of Valencia • Josep Enric Llebot, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Jordi Lleonart, Spanish National Research Council (Barcelona) • Xavier Llimona, University of Barcelona • Antoni Lloret, Institute for Catalan Studies • Abel Mariné, University of Barcelona • Joan Massagué, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York (USA) • Federico Mayor-Zaragoza, Foundation for a Culture of Peace (Madrid) • Adélio Machado, University of Porto (Portugal) • Gabriel Navarro, University of Valencia • Jaume Pagès, Technical University of Catalonia • Ramon Parés, University of Barcelona • Àngel Pellicer, New York University (USA) • Juli Peretó, University of Valencia • F.Xavier PiSunyer, Harvard University (USA) • Norberto Piccinini, Politecnico di Torino (Italy) • Jaume Porta, University of Lleida • Pere Puigdomènech, Spanish National Research Council (Barcelona) • Jorge-Óscar Rabassa, National University of La Plata (Argentina) • Pere Roca, University of Barcelona • Joan Rodés, University of Barcelona • Joandomènec Ros, University of Barcelona • Xavier Roselló, Technical University of Catalonia • Claude Roux, University of Aix-Marseille III (France) • Pere Santanach, University of Barcelona • Francesc Serra, Autonomous University of Barcelona • David Serrat, University of Barcelona • Boris P. Sobolev, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia • Carles Solà, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Joan Antoni Solans, Technical University of Catalonia • Rolf Tarrach, University of Luxembourg • Jaume Terradas, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Antoni Torre, Obra Cultural de l’Alguer • Josep Vaquer, University of Barcelona • Josep Vigo, University of Barcelona • Miquel Vilardell, Autonomous University of Barcelona • Jordi Vives, Hospital Clinic of Barcelona

Volume 10 | Issue 1 | June 2014

Contents

FOREWORD Escalas Llimona R

Intuition, inspiration and prana

FEATURE ARTICLE Castellà A

Becoming a Blue Country

DISTINGUISHED LECTURES Chisholm SW

Margalef’s mandala, Prochlorococcus, and geoengineering

Martí G

The Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea

Pogge T

The Health Impact Fund: A new paradigm in pharmaceutical innovation

Dierssen M

Producing progress? Issues to consider

RESEARCH REVIEWS Begueria A, Larrea C, Muñoz A, Zafra E, Mascaró-Pons J, Porta M

Social discourse concerning pollution and contamination in Spain: Analysis of online comments by digital press readers

D’Ambrosio U

Theoretical reflections on ethnobiology in the third millennium

Batlle JA, López R

Revisiting the border between Newtonian mechanics and General Relativity: The periastron advance

Skinner N, Sapiña L, Gil M

On Open Access, Impact Factors and boycotting the top science journals: An interview with Randy Schekman

Finch J, et al.

Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: How to expand access to research publications. Executive summary

Abadal E

Gold or Green: The debate on Open Access policies

Barquinero J

Next generation scholarly communication: A researcher’s perspective

ALLEA (All European Academies)

101

ALLEA Statement on Enhancement of Open Access to Scientific Publications in Europe

Radó-Trilla N

107

Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972), a woman for all seasons

111

ANNUAL INDEXES, Volumes 7, 8 9 (years 2011, 2012, 2013)

FORUM AND FOCUS

HISTORICAL CORNER

Foreword / Pròleg Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIB SCI 10:1-2 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.181 PRÒLEG

FOREWORD

Romà Escalas Llimona

Secretari General de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans, i President d’Instru menta,* Barcelona, Catalunya

Secretary General of the Institute for Catalan Studies, and President of Instrumenta,* Barcelona, Catalonia

Intuïció, inspiració i prana

Intuition, inspiration and prana

Intuïció i inspiració són dos elements essencials per tal d’iniciar i impulsar qualsevol procés personal creatiu, tant científic, com artístic. Són principis imprescindibles per a l’orientació dels nostres objectius, l’elecció dels nostres models de vida, per a l’expressió personal a través de l’art o la ciència, per a la creativitat i per a la comunicació. A causa de la subtil diferència en els seus significats, intuïció i inspiració es confonen sovint i s’impedeix la seva apreciació individual. Segons el Diccionari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans (DIEC), la intuïció és: «el coneixement directe i immediat, sensible o intel·ligible, d’una realitat o d’una veritat, sense necessitat de recórrer a un raonament previ, com la intuïció genial que caracteritza els artistes». Així doncs, la intuïció és la percepció d’una idea, com també l’habilitat per entendre o conèixer una realitat o una veritat. Alguns diccionaris defineixen intuïció com a una facultat, una capacitat o habilitat per actuar o fer. De totes maneres, si la intuïció fos una habilitat, podria adquirir-se i exercitar-se, ignorant així la seva espontaneïtat i immediatesa, desconnectada del raonament. Per tant, una definició més adequada seria la que relaciona la intuïció amb la capacitat de percepció i comprensió immediata d’una realitat present o futura. Pel que fa a la inspiració, trobem diferents accepcions al diccionari. En un sentit metafísic, el dIEC defineix inspiració com «la influència sobrenatural o divina capaç d’infondre en l’ànim idees, sentiments, resolucions, etc.» i «la influència capaç d’il·luminar l’enteniment, influir en la voluntat d’una persona o exercir un estímul sobre el seu intel·lecte». La inspiració, aliena a nosaltres mateixos, és captada i conduïda mitjançant misteriosos canals de comunicació. Per tant, es redueix a una «influència» externa que estimula la nostra percepció, intel·ligència i creativitat. Però no podem oblidar que l’accepció més primària i corporal és la que la considera un mer acte de respiració: «el moviment o acte d’inspirar l’aire pels pulmons». De fet, tots dos conceptes, intuïció i inspiració, inclouen la idea de moviment, ja sigui de l’aire o d’una substància, una influència transmissora d’energia. En el cas de la intuïció, el procés és absolutament estàtic mentre que en la inspiració té una relació dinàmica amb el temps. Des d’aquesta perspectiva, és més fàcil entendre la principal diferència entre els dos processos: Mozart no va tenir un «moment d’inspiració» durant el qual va concebre la Dies Irae del seu Rèquiem. Mozart va tenir una idea intuïtiva del que seria la seva Dies Irae, i durant la seva composició va estar constantment inspirat, ja que, en cas contrari, probablement no hauria passat del primer acord. Podem trobar altres exemples aplicables a la descoberta i la pràctica científica. La intuïció procedeix d’algun lloc més profund, de l’experiència i la ment subconscient, en canvi, la inspiració és un fenomen que prové de l’exterior, d’alguna entitat o ésser superior, i afecta directament les zones més elevades i refinades del pensament i de la nostra activitat espiritual.

Intuition and inspiration are two essential elements to start and promote any creative personal process, either scientific or artistic. They are crucial for orienting our objectives, for choosing our models of life, for expressing ourselves through art and science, and for creativity and communication. Due to the subtle difference in their meanings, intuition and inspiration are often confused, which in turn prevents their individual appreciation. According to the dictionary of the Institute for Catalan Studies (DIEC), intuition is: “the direct and immediate knowledge, sensitive or intelligible, of a fact or a truth, without the need of prior reasoning, such as the brilliant intuition that characterize artists.” Thus, intuition is the perception of an idea, as well as the ability to understand or to know a reality or a truth. Some dictionaries define intuition as a faculty, an ability or skill to act or do. However, if intuition were a skill, it could be acquired and exercised, which ignores its spontaneity and immediacy, disconnected from reasoning. Therefore, a more suitable definition is one that relates intuition to the capacity of perception and immediate comprehension of a present or future reality. When it comes to inspiration, there are several meanings. In a metaphysical sense, the DIEC defines inspiration as “the supernatural or divine influence capable of instilling the mind with thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc.”; also “the influence which is able to illuminate the understanding, to influence the person’s will or to stimulate its intellect” and “the movement or act of inspiring the air by the lungs.” Other definitions relate inspiration to a divine influence or action on a person that instills his or her mind with thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc. Inspiration that comes from outside ourselves is captured and driven through mysterious communication channels. Thus, it comes down to an external “influence” that stimulates our perception, intelligence and creativity. But we must not forget that the most primary definition of inspiration is the one related to the mere act of breathing: “the drawing of air into the lungs.” In fact, both intuition and inspiration include the idea of movement, either of air or of a substance, an influence that transmits energy. In the case of intuition, the process is absolutely static whereas inspiration has a dynamic relationship with time. From this perspective, it is easier to understand the main difference between the two processes: Mozart did not have a “moment of inspiration” during which he conceived the Dies Irae of his Requiem. He had an intuitive idea of what his Dies Irae would be, and during its composition he must have been constantly inspired—otherwise, he probably would not have written more than the first chord. We can find other examples related to scientific practice and discoveries. Intuition comes from a deeper place, from experience and the subconscious mind, whereas inspiration comes from the outside, from some higher being or entity, and

ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:1-2 (2014)

Foreword

Subjecta a una durada temporal, la inspiració caldrà mantenir-la en actiu durant el màxim de temps possible, objectiu que s’assoleix mitjançant l’entrenament i la concentració. Considerem per un moment la definició d’inspiració que ens remet al moviment o acte d’inspirar l’aire pels pulmons i així, respirar. En les tradicions hinduistes, l’alè s’anomena prana i es descriu en els Upanixads —textos indis vèdics escrits entre els s.VII i V aC— com a una entitat suprema. El prana és sovint elogiat com l’essència que sustenta la vida, com l’ésser mateix. No és només l’aire que respirem, sinó que és l’energia vital que circula a través d’un ésser viu des del primer moment de la seva concepció fins a la seva mort. A través del poder del prana, «l’alè de la vida», es poden realitzar els desitjos de la ment. Diversos escriptors occidentals han buscat una explicació a aquest paral·lelisme entre la inspiració i el prana. L’escriptora ucraïnesa Helena Blavatsky (nascuda Helena von Hahn i coneguda també com a Madame Blavatsky, 1831–1891) creia que la interrelació entre l’aire inspirat i els canals energètics era la base que orientava el prana. En el mateix sentit, Charles W. Leadbeater (1854–1934) descrivia el prana com una forma d’energia continguda en l’aire inspirat. Quan l’aire circula per determinats canals, anomenats nadís en sànscrit, aquest és guiat pels sistemes cardiovascular i nerviós. Tant la idea del prana com la de la inspiració coincideixen en un procés respiratori i unes fonts d’energia. Pel que fa a la inspiració, ho trobem implícit a la seva definició com una influència externa que estimula la nostra comprensió, intel·ligència i creativitat. Una energia vital, ja sigui transportada per l’aire o per altres mitjans més subtils, és coherent amb la idea oriental de prana, l’energia vital Suprema. Així doncs, el prana explicaria, a través de l’experiència personal i física, com rebem estímuls i energies capaços d’iniciar i impulsar els nostres processos creatius. Traduir aquesta idea al llenguatge actual depèn del llenguatge cultural de cada lloc i moment. En la nostra cultura occidental, la inspiració va tenir un origen diví fins que no es va separar el poder secular del religiós. És important reconèixer la manera com experimentem la inspiració en la vida quotidiana, per exemple, el científic en la recerca o l’artista en la seva producció creativa. La permanència i la durada de la inspiració necessària per assolir els nostres objectius dependrà de com l’apliquem i l’orientem. Si entenem la inspiració com un procés que pot ser millorat i mantingut en el temps, haurem de crear eines d’aprenentatge que ens permetin avançar en aquesta direcció. A banda de la inspiració, la intuïció també procedeix, almenys parcialment, de l’energia del prana. Encara que flueix per canals diferents, es revela inesperadament. La intuïció ens orienta, proporcionant-nos un far que il·lumina el nostre camí a seguir. Malgrat tot, cal certa formació o un estat superior de consciència per poder desencadenar la seva aparició. «La inspiració existeix, però t’ha de trobar treballant», va dir Pablo Picasso. Podríem ampliar la seva reflexió amb la idea de «amb sort, la intuïció apareixerà durant el procés d’inspiració». L’aparició de la inspiració en absència d’una intuïció prèvia implica que correm el risc de destinar una gran quantitat d’energia a un propòsit —vital, artístic o científic— indefinit o mal orientat.

it directly affects the highest and most refined areas of thought and thus our spiritual activity. Transient in nature and therefore also duration, inspiration must be maintained in an active state for as long as possible, which is achieved through training and concentration. Let us consider the definition of inspiration related to the phy siological act of drawing air into the lungs and thus to breathing. In Hindu traditions, breath is called prana and it is described in the Upanishads—Vedic Indian texts written during the 7th and 5th centuries BC—as a Supreme entity. Prana is often praised as the essence that sustains life, as the being itself. It is not just the air we breathe, it is the vital energy that circulates through a living being from the very moment of its conception until its death. Through the power of prana, “the breath of life,” the desires of the mind are made real. Several Western writers have sought an explanation to the parallelism between inspiration and prana. The Ukrainian writer Helena Blavatsky (née Helena von Hahn, also known as Madame Blavatsky, 1831–1891) believed that the interrelationship between inspired air and energetic channels was the basis for guiding prana. Along the same lines, Charles W. Leadbeater (1854–1934) described prana as a form of energy contained in inspired air. When air circulates through specific channels, known in Sanskrit as nadís, it is guided by the cardiovascular and nervous systems. The idea of prana and that of inspiration coincide in a respiratory process and as sources of energy. For inspiration this is implied in its definition as an external influence that stimulates our understanding, intelligence and creativity. A vital energy, whether transported through air or through some other, more subtle means, is consistent with the oriental idea of prana, the Supreme vital energy. Thus, prana would explain, through the personal and physical experience, how we receive stimuli and energies capable of initiating and promoting our creative processes. Translating such an idea into modern-day languages depends on the cultural language of the time and place. In our Western culture, inspiration was considered to have a divine origin, a notion that held until the split of secular from religious power. It is important to recognize the way in which we experience inspiration in everyday life, e.g., the scientist in his or her research or the artist by virtue of his or her creative production. The permanence and duration of inspiration needed to achieve our goals will depend on how we apply and guide it. If we understand inspiration as a process that can be improved and maintained over time, we will need to create learning tools that allow us to move forward in this direction. Not only inspiration but also, at least partly, intuition comes from the energy of prana. Although it flows through different channels, it can show up unexpectedly. Intuition guides us, providing us with a beacon that suddenly illuminates our way forward. However, some amount of training or a higher state of awareness is needed to trigger its appearance. “Inspiration exists, but it must find you working,” said Pablo Picasso. We can expand Picasso’s reflection with the thought “Hopefully, intuition will appear during the process of inspiration.” The appearance of inspiration in the absence of prior intuition implies that we run the risk of allocating a large amount of energy to an undefined or poorly oriented purpose—either vital, scientific, or artistic.

*Asociación Española para el Estudio de los Instrumentos Musicales y sus Colecciones.

*Spanish Association for the Study of Musical Instruments and Their Collections. E-mail: rescalas@iec.cat

www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:1-2 (2014)

FEATURE ARTICLE Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:3-6 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.182

www.cat-science.cat

Becoming a Blue Country Antoni Castellà Secretary for Universities and Research, Department of Economics and Knowledge, Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Antoni Castellà Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca Via Laietana, 2 08003 Barcelona E-mail: secretaria.sur@gencat.cat

Summary. Catalonia has a research system with brilliant results whose applications strongly contribute to the Catalan economy. While Catalonia represents 0.1% of the world’s population, it is responsible for 1% of the world’s scientific output. Confronted with the knowledge revolution, the challenge that must be met by the country is to complete the massive transfer of this knowledge in the next ten years. Catalonia should become a Blue Country; that is, one with a profoundly democratic and cultured society with a high level of trust between its citizens, civil society and institutions. It should have powerful higher education and research systems that can provide Catalonia an economy with high added value. Scientists, by advancing knowledge and transforming it into value, will be the heroes of our time. They are the members of society who can lead us in becoming a Blue Country. [Contrib Sci 10:3-7 (2014)]

Catalonia has been able to consolidate a research system that, despite suffering an unprecedented financial crisis, year after year achieves very relevant levels of scientific production. The last three years have been complicated by problems that only recently have finally been overcome, thanks to the efforts of the entire system. The important work carried out in universities, hospitals and research centers has yielded results with at least three consequences: first, the Catalan scientific system has been consolidated and strengthened; second, brilliant results have been obtained in many different scientific areas, and, finally, they have contributed high added value to the Catalan economy. But what should be expected in the future? Although we hope to achieve budgetary stability, the economic prosperity experienced before the crisis has yet to be restored. The Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya) must grapple with a situation in which further budget adjustments are not possible and that presumes only limited economic recovery closely linked to the income tax.

Among Catalan scientific institutions, those included in the CERCA (Research Centers of Catalonia) Institute deserve special mention (Fig. 1). The Government has tried to protect CERCA from the vulnerabilities of the public sector. From the ancillary budget law of 2011 to later minor regulations, a legal perimeter has been built that gradually allows preservation of CERCA’s autonomy, necessary to maintain the good results of its member research centers. The aim of this Government is to ensure the protection of these centers. Thus, we are preparing a law of science for Catalonia. This will be a very necessary law, beyond its content. The law will be an extremely important event because it will confer stability to research, now and in the near future: having a law of science approved by a broad parliamentary consensus will provide many guarantees, regardless of who rules the Generalitat. Furthermore, some progress has been made in increasing the critical mass of CERCA centers, through the SUMA Program, which is aimed at obtaining integrated structures of higher critical mass and scientific and economic competitive-

Keywords: science policy · knowledge revolution · Catalan science ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:3-6 (2014)

Contrib Sci

Research in Catalonia

Fig. 1. With 22.8 grants per million inhabitant, Catalonia ranks 4th within the European Research Area, and second within the European Union.

ness. Despite its initial risks, the program has produced positive results. Increasing the critical mass is particularly necessary in the context of Horizon 2020, the eight phases of the European Framework Programs for Research and Technological Development. Competitive European funding programs are among the indicators that assign a high ranking to the Catalan research system. Catalonia is the second EU country (just behind the Netherlands), based on per million inhabitants, in obtaining grants from the European Research Council, one of the most competitive programs. Considering the population of Catalonia, scientists working in the Catalan system obtain more grants than those in Germany and the UK. Catalonia, which has 0.1% of the world’s population, is responsible for 1% of the world’s scientific output. Specifically, Catalonia produces 32 publications per million inhabitants: just one publication less than Israel, but 10 more than Germany and 14 more than France. Thus, we can state that Catalonia has a good level of science that directly impacts the country’s economic model, its economic growth and, therefore, its social progress towards a welfare society. However, while Catalan citizens are www.cat-science.cat

aware of the country’s excellence in tourism, gastronomy and sports, there is no general recognition of the country’s excellence in science. This means that, in addition to moving forward in obtaining results, it is important to make Catalonians aware that the country has a very good reputation in the sciences. Catalonia will only remain competitive by innovation: either doing what no one else does or doing it better or being the first to do it. The current challenge is to complete the massive transfer of the country’s knowledge over the next ten years; by producing an impact on Catalan industry and by being able to create science-based companies and transform the country’s own industries. The Catalan Government relies on different tools to promote such changes, from Industrial Doctorates to the joint financing of proofs of concept. Indeed, several conditions essential to making the sought after technological leap, such as tax incentives regarding publicprivate venture capital funds, do not depend on the Catalan Government. However, the challenge is not a new one: it is exactly what Catalonia faced during the 19th century, when it participated in the Industrial Revolution despite being a 4

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:3-6 (2014)

Contrib Sci

Castellà

Fig. 2. Catalan RDI system. Huge growth in fund attraction (M€): from FP3 to FP7 Catalonia has multiplied the fund attraction by 28.

country without natural resources. We are now facing the knowledge revolution (Fig. 2). The goal is for Catalonia to become a Blue Country. What does that mean? In the classification that divides the countries of the world into three colors, red countries are those of Southern Europe, i.e., countries whose economies highly depend on domestic demand and are based on low value-added sectors. Yellow countries are emerging ones; despite their strong growth, the basis of their economies are the same as those of red ones: cheap labor and a strong dependence on the construction industry and low valueadded sectors. Blue countries tend to have relatively small populations—usually no more than 10 million inhabitants— and they are profoundly democratic and cultured societies with a high level of trust between citizens, civil society and institutions. They also have strong higher education programs and research systems, which provide them with high added-value economies. Let us dream. Catalonia has seven million people; it has

one of the oldest parliaments in Europe and, therefore, a deep democratic tradition. It also has a civil society rooted in the territory and with an important historical ability to build the country. In Catalonia, around 25% of the GDP comes from industry such that the country has one of the most powerful systems of knowledge in Southern Europe. Therefore, it has the potential to become one of the blue countries of the world and must take advantage of this great opportunity. When Catalonia joined the Industrial Revolution, its heroes were members of an entrepreneurial class and an enlightened Catalan bourgeoisie. These individuals were able to make the technological leap towards the cultural and political Catalan Renaissance. Now the world is facing a knowledge revolution, and the heroes of our country are scientists, that is, individuals able to make advances in knowledge and then transform them into value. With the support of the whole country, scientists can lead a second Catalan Renaissance in which our country becomes part of the Concert of Nations.

***

www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:3-6 (2014)

Research in Catalonia

Resum. Catalunya disposa d’un sistema de recerca amb resultats brillants que contribueix fortament a l’economia catalana. Tot i que representa el 0,1% de la població mundial, Catalunya és responsable de l’1% de la producció científica mundial. Davant la revolució del coneixement que estem vivint, el repte actual és culminar, en els propers deu anys, la transferència massiva d’aquest coneixement científic. Catalunya hauria d’esdevenir un País Blau: un país amb una societat profundament democràtica i culta, amb un alt nivell de confiança entre la ciutadania, la societat civil i les institucions. Hauria de tenir potents sistemes d’educació superior i de recerca que puguin proporcionar una economia amb un alt valor afegit per al país. Els científics, sent capaços d’avançar en el coneixement i transformar-lo en valor per a la societat, han de ser els herois del nostre temps. Ells són els que poden portar, definitivament, a esdevenir un País Blau. Paraules clau: política científica · revolució del coneixement · ciència catalana

www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:3-6 (2014)

DISTINGUISHED LECTURES Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

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CONTRIB SCI 10:7-15 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.183 MARGALEF PRIZE LECTURE OF 2013

Margalef’s mandala, Prochlorococcus, and geoengineering* Sallie W. Chisholm

Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Correspondence: Sallie W. Chisholm Dept. of Civil and Environ. Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139, USA E-mail: chisholm@mit.edu

Summary. Ocean phytoplankton played a central role in oxygenating our planet’s atmosphere billions of years ago. Hence these early “geoengineers” were crucial for the evolution of life on Earth. Their modern-day ancestor, the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, is the most abundant photosynthetic cell on the planet. Its discovery 30 years ago served as a reminder of how little we understand about the complexities of marine food webs. Yet proposals to fertilize the oceans, either to mitigate climate or enhance fisheries, continue to gain momentum both within the scientific community and in the commercial sector. If implemented, the unintended consequences of these and other geoengineering proposals are likely to be enormous, and impossible to anticipate. [Contrib Sci 10:7-15 (2014)]

The most ubiquitous, important, and profound dimension of life on Earth is the process of photosynthesis. Had some ancient marine microorganism not acquired a key mutation some 3.5 billion years ago, allowing it to split water instead of hydrogen sulfide, the evolution of life on Earth would have taken an entirely different trajectory. Photosynthesis was the ultimate “disruptive technology” of its day—converting carbon dioxide gas into organic carbon molecules using solar energy and splitting water—releasing oxygen gas. Over billions of years oxygen transformed the very nature of our planet, making it possible for more complex forms of life to evolve and spread across the Earth. As that oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere, organic carbon was buried and

compressed—becoming fossil fuel and accumulating over billions of years. This is the “buried sunlight” humans began to exploit a few hundred years ago, changing profoundly our civilization and its relationship to the natural world. Picocyanobacteria—micron-sized unicells that thrive through out the oceans—are the modern-day descendants of the ancient metabolic engineers that oxidized our planet. The sister clades Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus co-exist over vast regions of the tropical and subtropical oligotrophic oceans. Their global populations are roughly 1027 cells [41] and in some places they account for over 50% of the total photosynthetic biomass [16]. Since the oceans contribute just less than half of the global photosynthesis (35–50 Gtones of carbon per year, Gt C y–1) these

*Based on the lecture given by the author at the Palau de la Generalitat of Catalonia, Barcelona, on 21 October 2013, on the occasion of receiving the Ramon Margalef Prize of 2013.

Keywords: Prochlorococcus · geoengineering · climate change · iron fertilization ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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ic compounds. After its discovery we wondered how something so simple could be so ubiquitous, as general ecological theory would suggest such a system to be very unstable. The answer is, of course, that Prochlorococcus is not a single entity. It consists of unknown numbers of ecotypes, each with slightly different fitnesses along environmental gradients—in a sense creating a mandala of their own within the “void” space in Margalef’s mandala. The relative abundance of these ecotypes shifts slightly as ocean conditions shift, insuring the stability of “the collective”—or “Prochlorococcus federation” as we sometimes call it (Fig. 2). The diversity within the collective is astounding. Each cell has about 1200 core genes that it has in common with all 1027 Prochlorococcus in the oceans [24]. The remaining 800 or so genes making up the complete genome are only shared with some other cells and to varying degrees. So although each cell has roughly 2000 genes, the “collective genome” or “distributed genome” of the 1027 members of the global Prochlorococcus federation is estimated to be 83,000 genes [2]. It is this collective gene pool that enables it to consistently occupy such a broad range of oceanic conditions. What are the functions of the genes that give Prochloro coccus its collective diversity? This puzzle continues to unra vel, but to date there are a number of niche axes upon which selection has operated to drive Prochlorococcus differentiation. These include adaptations to different light intensities, temperature sources and concentrations of essential nutrients such as phosphorus, nitrogen and iron, and defense mech anisms for different types of viruses (phage) that infect them [12]. More recently we have learned that some ‘ecotypes’ of Prochlorococcus can utilize organic carbon compounds includ ing glucose [17] and amino acids [57], introducing further complexity and drawing attention to mixotrophy as an important dimension of the existence of some Prochlorococcus lineages. What has also come to light as we begin to appreciate the diversity within Prochlorococcus is the degree to which the phages that infect them play a role in generating this diversity. Phages acquire genes from host cells during infection and use them to guide host metabolism [25,47]. These genes are subjected to different selective pressures while in the phage and thus evolve in ways that would not happen in the host cell. As such, phages are diversity generators for key genes involved in the cellular machinery of the host, providing great grist for the natural selection mill. These evolving genes can, in principle, reintegrate into the host’s chromosome at any time, introducing variety for selection to operate upon. We find that many of the “niche-defining” genes in a particular

Fig. 1. Margalef’s marine mandala showing the relationship between nutrient availability, turbulence, size and the niche space of characteristic genera. The diagonal line is the main sequence of succession and the arrow marks the progression from R-selected to K-selected groups as well as general size progression. Margalef predicted that there would be some group of phytoplankton yet-to-be discovered that would fill the void in the SE quadrant. Picocyanobacteria fill that void. Adapted from [30].

tiny cells single-handedly play a central role in global metabolism. Given their global significance, it is somewhat astonishing (and humbling) that Synechococcus was not discovered until 1979 [20,54] and Prochlorococcus in 1988 [9]. We can derive some comfort, however, from the fact that Ramon Margalef imagined the existence of these types of cells as he developed his theory of phytoplankton succession. He represented the phase space occupied by different eukaryotic phytoplankton groups as bounded by gradients of nutrients and turbulence, and identified a “void” in the southeast quadrant of his now-famous Mandala (Fig. 1). I am told that he predicted that there had to be some group of small phytoplankton that would fill this “void” in the diagram (Celia Marassé, pers. comm.), and indeed that is precisely where picocyanobacteria would fit.

Prochlorococcus, mandalas within mandalas As the smallest of the picocyanobacteria, Prochlorococcus embodies the minimal amount of information—2000 genes—that can generate life from solar energy and inorganwww.cat-science.cat

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Fig. 2. Prochlorococcus, the collective, consists of high- and low-light adapted ecotypes with sub-clades within each group (represented here in a ‘cartoon tree’) (A). The ocean habitat has strong vertical gradients of light, temperature, and nutrients (C), and the ecotypes distribute themselves along these gradients in ways that are consistent with their growth optima as a function of light intensity (B). Strains from the two clades within the HL adapted group (green and yellow) have different temperature tolerance ranges (D), and the relative abundances of cells belonging to these clades along longitudinal temperature gradients are consistent with these physiological optima (E). Strong seasonal forcing drives seasonal succession in ecotype abundances that are repeated with great regularity from year to year (F). The “eNATL” ecotype in particular is able to withstand the fluctuating light due to deep winter mixing much better than the other low-light adapted strains [1,21,28,36,55,56].

Prochlorococcus lineage are located in hyper-variable island regions of the genome, and these regions have signs that phage are involved in shuttling their genes around [13].

prevents phytoplankton from assimilating available nitrogen and phosphorus. And it is these Prochlorococcus that ultimately drew me into a debate about ocean stewardship and geoengineering (Fig. 3). In the early 1980s one of the questions troubling oceanographers was: “Why aren’t equatorial Pacific waters greener?” There are abundant N and P supplies in these regions as a result of equatorial upwelling, but phytoplankton are not able to assimilate them and grow to densities one would expect [8]. John Martin had already shown that if you put equatorial Pacific water in bottles and add iron—in effect pushing the system into the northeast quadrant of Margalef’s mandala—phytoplankton did indeed bloom [33]. Even with this evidence, some oceanographers were slow to accept the “iron hypothesis” so Martin designed the definitive experiment—one that would circumvent all criticism about the potential “bottle effects” in his experiments. He designed, and his team implemented, the first unenclosed open-ocean fertilization experiment, IRONEX-I, in which iron was added to a 100-km2 patch of

The iron hypothesis Prochlorococcus thrives in the most nutrient impoverished regions of the oceans. Their chemical composition is finely tuned to the austerity of the oligotrophic ocean habitat, and has features that reflect this. Their lipids, for example, consist primarily of sulfo- rather than phospho-lipids, reflecting the extremely low concentrations of phosphorus in their habitat [50], and over 90% of the phosphorus in a Prochlorococcus cell is in its nucleotides [53]. There is also evidence of N-sparing in the amino acids that it uses in its proteins [18]. But Prochlorococcus also thrives in equatorial pacific waters which are among the so called “high nutrient-low chlorophyll” (HNLC) regions of the oceans where iron limitation www.cat-science.cat

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that iron-stimulated blooms of plankton in the southern ocean played a role in the drawdown of atmospheric CO2. The inference was that this played a role in cooling the Earth on geological time scales [31]. This idea spread like wildfire in the popular press as people began to postulate that perhaps one could reduce the growing fossil fuel-derived CO2 load to the atmosphere by fertilizing the oceans with iron. Indeed, John Martin planted the seed for this idea when he made the now famous remark “Give me a half-tanker of iron and I will give you an ice age” while giving a lecture on his theory about the climate connection [8]. Over the years since Martin made that statement, the iron fertilization approach to mitigate climate change has received attention in many circles. Although never explicitly stated, this application was a subtext for the numerous ocean iron fertilization experiments designed to explore various dimensions of “the iron hypothesis” [4]. While none of those experiments were studying iron fertilization as a “geoengin eering tool”, the focus of the experiments coalesced on studying how much carbon could be captured in an iron-enriched bloom, and what fraction of this might be exported to deeper waters where it would be isolated from the atmosphere. Much less attention was given to studying the food web and down stream biogeochemical consequences of iron enrichment or the potential unintended consequences of scaled-up versions of these experiments. This single minded focus—CO2 drawdown and carbon export below the surface mixed layer—and the language used in research papers, for example “… iron triggered a massive phytoplankton bloom which consumed large quantities of carbon dioxide…” [11] fueled coverage of the experiments in the popular press from the perspective of geoengineering potential. Entrepreneurs were in turn drawn by the allure of being able to control an ecosystem with such a small quantity of a relatively cheap and “natural” substance. One can understand the appeal. Because phytoplankton requires very little iron relative to nitrogen and phosphorus to fix carbon and grow, if the latter is available in excess, a tiny amount of iron can make them available to the phytoplankton by freeing the iron bottleneck. Sunlight is free, acreage (the ocean commons beyond the 200 mile limit) is free, and so is the nitrogen and phosphorus “fertilizer” in ocean waters. Iron is relatively cheap, and now it has been demonstrated over and over that if you add iron to certain regions of the oceans they turn green with phytoplankton relatively quickly. But despite the allure, there are many good arguments, based on what we already know about how ocean ecosystems function, that iron fertilization is not a viable op-

Fig. 3. Geoengineering comes of age. The number of citations of papers on geoengineering has increased dramatically in the past decade (Source: ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science).

ocean, and the response of the phytoplankton community was followed for several weeks. The results were unambig uous [32]. Iron addition created a large phytoplankton bloom, dominated by diatoms, and the drawdown of excess nitrogen. IRONEX-I was followed by IRONEX-II, and my laboratory was fortunate enough to participate in those historic experiments to study how Prochlorococcus—not known to be a bloom former—responded to release from iron limitation. True to form, their population sizes held steady throughout the iron-induced diatom bloom, but their cell division rates doubled, proving that even the smallest cells in the community were severely iron limited [29]. Population sizes held constant because the microzooplankton that eats Prochlorococcus responded to the increased supply of cells and kept their numbers in check. What is unclear from these experiments, and all that followed [4], is how these communities would respond to sustained iron enrichment.

The expanded iron hypothesis John Martin not only hypothesized that iron limits HNLC areas of the contemporary ocean but he also suggested that variations in the availability of iron to the oceans could have played a role in regulating Earth’s past glacial/interglacial cycles. He saw evidence of coupling between iron dust flux to the oceans and atmospheric CO2 concentrations suggesting www.cat-science.cat

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tion for mitigating climate change [7,45,46]. First, ocean fertilization causes a shift in the phytoplankton community thus changing the structure of the entire food web that depends on it. This is not an unintended consequence but rather it is the intended consequence of the perturbation. Without this shift there would be no bloom because only certain species capable of rapid growth dominate an iron-induced bloom. Second, when phytoplankton bloom and synthesize massive amounts of organic carbon, bacteria consume the carbon, and in doing so they consume oxygen, changing the redox state of ocean ecosystems. Many of the bacteria that thrive in low oxygen regions of the oceans generate nitrous oxide and methane, both very powerful greenhouse gases. And finally, models suggest that at the unrealizable limit—if one fertilized all of the HNLC regions of the oceans for 100 years—at most 1 Gt C y–1 would be sequestered in the ocean. This — even if achievable, which it is not— would not change the trajectory of global warming significantly. The cost would be a massive restructuring of ocean biogeochemistry, the longterm consequences of which on the global biosphere are completely unknown. Despite these limitations and concerns, calls for more research on ocean fertilization as a geoengineering option persist within the oceanographic community [5,61]. I suspect that implicit in these calls is the understanding that these experiments, regardless of purpose, are powerful tools for learning how ocean ecosystems function and hence of value in their own right. But one chooses to measure different things in mission-oriented research compared to basic research. If the talent and ingenuity among our scientific ranks is focused on seeing how much carbon one can generate and export to the deep ocean through fertilization, it will not be focused on understanding ocean ecosystems in all their complexity. This understanding is essential for the effective management of ocean resources and modeling the trajectory of ocean processes in the face of climate change.

were sufficient to account for a bloom [38]. In 2010, two years after the eruption and phytoplankton bloom, the returns of sockeye salmon to the Frasier River were the largest on record—34 million fish. Some attributed this bumper crop of salmon to increased survival of juveniles caught in the phytoplankton bloom [40], but the causal link between the bloom and the salmon has been questioned [34] and continues to be debated [39]. While it is impossible for the nonexpert to judge which side of the debate is more compelling, attributing cause and effect to events so far separated in time, occurring in a complex fluid environment, and involving complex food webs, takes an enormous leap of faith. Despite limited—and contested—evidence linking iron dust supply and increased salmon returns, it was inevitable that someone would suggest that intentional iron fertilization might be a way to enhance fisheries. Claims that global stocks of phytoplankton may be decreasing [3] had already triggered arguments that the oceans are in need of “nourishment” [63]. The stage was set for the inhabitants of Old Massett Village, in British Columbia, whose livelihood has been greatly compromised by the decrease in salmon stocks in recent years, to take great interest in the iron-salmon connection. Their Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) [59] hired a California businessman, Russ George, to fertilize a 10,000 sq mile patch of ocean with 120 tons of iron sulfate/ iron oxide in the summer of 2012 [48]. The area fertilized was orders of magnitude larger than any of the scientific ocean fertilization experiments conducted to date. The experiment, described as an “ocean restoration project” by its leader [27], was conducted 200 miles west of the coast of British Columbia where phytoplankton blooms are already a persistent feature in satellite images of ocean color. For their 2.5 million dollar investment in the project, the HSRC was allegedly promised not only return of the salmon runs by George, but also the sale of carbon credits for the atmospheric CO2 that would purportedly be sequestered as a result of the fertilization. At present there is no market for the latter and no established mechanism for verifying the amount of carbon sequestered as a result of ocean fertilization. The Haida Gwaii Fertilization project constitutes the first “rogue” geoengineering experiment in history and the largest iron fertilization experiment to date. It is considered “rogue” because these types of experiments are not allowed in international waters under the 2008 statutes of the UN London Convention, except for “legitimate scientific purposes”. If not legitimate, they are considered disposal at sea which is prohibited under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Astonishingly, the Haida Gwaii experiment did not receive

It’s not just about climate In August 2008, the Kasatochi volcano in the Alaskan central Aleutian Islands erupted, delivering iron-rich volcanic ash to the ocean waters downwind. Satellite images of surface ocean waters in the Gulf of Alaska revealed phytoplankton blooms downwind of the iron dust plume. The spatial and temporal relationship between the dust plumes and ocean blooms looked compelling [19], and the quantities of iron that could be delivered to the oceans via the dust www.cat-science.cat

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public attention until a year after it had been completed. The story was uncovered by the Canadian environmental wathdog group Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) and released in a series of articles by the Vancouver Sun [35]. A “legitimate scientific experiment” of this scale would not have gone undisclosed for this length of time. There is nothing published in the scientific literature about the HSRC experiment and data have not been made public. But oceanographers familiar with the region say that it would be very difficult to differentiate between a natural bloom of phytoplankton and one resulting from the addition of iron [58]. At the moment the entire experiment is under investigation by Environment Canada. Meanwhile, the London Convention of the International Maritime Organization [62] was recently amended to tighten the restrictions surrounding ocean fertilization. A permit is now required for “any activity undertaken by humans with the principal intention of stimulating primary productivity in the oceans” and will be granted only for “legitimate scientific research taking into account any specific placement assessment framework.” While this new, stricter regulation will serve to discourage unauthorized ocean fertilization experiments, it also makes more difficult the small-scale experiments that are effective tools for oceanographers trying to understand the function of ocean ecosystems [6]. This is unfortunate as it is only by perturbing a complex dynamic system that one can get a glimpse of the connections that regulate and stabilize it. As John Martin argued, ‘bottle experiments’—a standard oceanographic experimental tool—exclude higher trophic levels and eliminate physics, giving us a distorted picture of the full consequences of any experimental perturbation. There is no substitute for unenclosed nutrient enrichments on a relatively small scale, but large enough to preserve physics and be able to measure some food web consequences. A particularly promising technology for these types of experiments is simple pumping systems to move nutrient-rich deep water to the surface, simulating ocean upwelling. These would allow us to study, experimentally, the response of the microbial community to this natural, episodic, ocean process. Unfortunately, the technology is already on the radar screen for several geoengineering applications [26], and several patents have already been filed on “artificial ocean upwelling”. Were this technology to be used for basic research purposes, one can be certain that the experiment would be interpreted as a test of geoengineering potential, and the results would be co-opted and interpreted selectively by those with a profit motive. We can only hope that the specter of “rogue” experiments, commercial interests, and geoengiwww.cat-science.cat

neering applications does not discourage legitimate smallscale ecosystem experiments in the future. They could play a unique role in helping us to understand the biogeochemistry of the oceans and we are in desperate need of advancing this understanding at this point in Earth’s history.

Geoengineering goes mainstream Ocean fertilization is but one of many proposed geoengineer ing approaches for mitigating the effects of human activities on the Earth System [51]. Most of the approaches fit under two broad categories. They are either designed to sequester atmospheric CO2 or to manage the amounts of solar radiation reaching the Earth. The latter is an attempt to treat directly the symptoms of greenhouse gas emissions—i.e., warming Earth—whereas the former is directed at redistributing the global carbon inventory so less CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. While neither approach gets at the root cause of global warming, it strikes me that CO2 removal is much closer to the cause than is solar radiation management and should be considered remediation—i.e., “removal of a contaminant”—rather than geoengineering. Lumping both of these approaches under the rubric of geoengineering is not logical. Regardless of what is included under the definition of geoengineering, the concept is no longer a “fringe idea”. It made the transition to “legitimate inquiry” with the publication of two influential papers in 2006 calling for research on it [10,14]. And extensive report on the topic by the UK Royal Society followed [44], which concluded that “geoengineering is likely to be technically feasible, and could substantially reduce the costs and risks of climate change.” This firmly established it as something to be considered seriously by the scientific and engineering communities, and interest in the topic soared (Fig. 3). Just recently, the mention of geoengineering in the 2013 report of the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [60] gave a significant boost to its global visibility. In their summary to policy makers they wrote: “Methods that aim to deliberately alter the climate system to counter climate change, termed geoengineering, have been proposed. Limited evidence precludes a comprehensive quantitative assessment of both Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and their impact on the climate system.” The report does not shy away from highlighting the risks and enormous uncertainties inherent in geoengineering but the mere mention of it by this influential international body boosted its legitimacy enormously. 12

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While there seems to be more focus on the policy, ethical, and governance dimensions of geoengineering than there is on the science itself (see Climatic Change Vol. 121, 2013), solar radiation management via sulfur aerosols seems to be gaining momentum as the most ‘feasible’ technology for cooling the Earth. This is in part because research on it has a very strong and vocal advocate in David Keith [23], and in part because this technology has a natural analog in the cool ing effect of volcanic eruptions [15] which renders it slightly less ‘alien’ than many other approaches. At the same time, it is also one for which the specter of “rogue” applications looms large. This concern has even lead to game theory analyses of the global politics of solar radiation management, which concludes that the technology should theoretically lead to small but powerful coalitions of nations who would ultimately “set the global thermostat” [42]. While it is important that these types of scenarios are getting scholarly attention, they should not draw our attention away from facing the ecological uncertainties inherent in any type of large-scale manipulation of the climate system. Biospheric feedbacks are represented in the most rudimentary of fashions in models of geoengineering approaches—precisely because of their inherent complexity. There is one point upon which all models agree however: Once you start, you cannot stop. Termination of solar radiation management after several decades would result in a rapid increase in global mean temperature, precipitation, and sea-ice melting [22].

decline was due to the bacteria in the organic-matter-rich soil whose respiration far surpassed the photosynthesis of the plants in the enclosure. What was puzzling, however, was that the CO2 in the enclosure’s “atmosphere” did not increase stoicheometrically with the decreased oxygen, as one would expect if the latter were due to respiration. Where was the missing CO2? Ultimately it was shown that it had reacted with the cement structures in the enclosure [43]—a cause-and-effect chain that could only be established in hindsight. Yes, we do learn from our mistakes, and now that we understand this dimension of designing artificial biospheres we might get it right the next time. But it is one thing to make a mistake with a 3-acre experiment that people can walk away from when things do not go as planned. It is yet another to forge ahead in relative ignorance, hoping for the best, while geoengineering the Earth. As Margalef suggested: “if God has put us on this Earth, we have the right to make use of it, but we might as well do so with a modicum of intelligence” [52]. Acknowledgements. The Prochlorococcus story outlined here has unfolded in large part through the talent and hard work of generations of students and post-docs in my laboratory. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with them and I share the honor of the Margalef Prize with all of them. There are many others who have made significant contributions to our understanding of Prochlorococcus as well. Their significant work has been slighted here because this paper is drawn from lectures about my work. I would also like to thank John Cullen for partnering with me on the issue of ocean fertilization over the years, and to the US National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, the Seaver Foundation, and most recently the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their support. Finally, I must acknowledge the significant role Ramon Margalef’s books and papers played in my choice to pursue phytoplankton ecology as a career.

Hindsight and humility As we contemplate geoengineering we might draw some humility from our limited predictive capabilities, and the degree to which hindsight has played a role in our understanding the complexities of the Earth system. We have been surprised, for example, to see that the global temperature anomaly has shown very little warming in the last decade even though greenhouse gases are increasing steadily. Do we understand why? We have some good hypotheses [49] but the precise fate of the “missing heat” is still not entirely understood. Only in hindsight have potential causes emerged. The Biosphere 2 experiment in the 1990s [37] is a more “down-to-Earth” example of our limited predictive capabilities when it comes to complex living systems. Eight people were enclosed in a sealed 3-acre structure designed to have all the ecosystem components to sustain them for 2 years. The experiment ended prematurely because oxygen concentrations decreased to levels unsafe for the inhabitants. It was later learned that the www.cat-science.cat

Competing interest. None declared.

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29. Mann EL, Chisholm SW (2002) Iron limits the cell division rate of Prochlo rococcus in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Limnol Oceanogr 45:1067-1076 30. Margalef R (1997) Our biosphere. Ecology Institute, Oldendorf/Luhe, Germany 31. Martin JH (1990) Glacial-interglacial CO2 Change: The Iron Hypothesis. Paleooceanography 5:1-13 32. Martin JH, Coale KH, Johnson KS, et al. (1994) Testing the iron hypothesis in ecosystems of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Nature 371:123-129 33. Martin JH, Gordon RM, Fitzwater SE (1991) The case for iron. Limnol Oceanogr 36:1793-1802 34. McKinnell S (2013) Challenges for the Kasatoshi volcano hypothesis as the cause of a large return of sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchusnerka) to the Fraser River in 2010. Fish Oceanogr 22:337-344 35. McKnight Z (2013) B.C. company at centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions. Vancouver Sun, 4 September 2013 36. Moore LR, Chisholm SW (1999) Photophysiology of the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus: Ecotypic differences among cultured isolates. Limnol Oceanogr 44:628-638 37. Nelson M, Burgess TL, Ailing A, Alvarez-Romo N, Demster WF, Walford RL, Allen JP (1993) Using a closed ecological system to study Earth’s biosphere: Initial results from Biosphere 2. BioScience 43:225-236 38. Olgun N, Duggen S, Langmann B, Hort M, Waythomas CF, Hoffmann L, Croot P (2013) Geochemical evidence of oceanic iron fertilization by the Kasatochi volcanic eruption in 2008 and the potential impacts on Pacific sockeye salmon. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 488:81-88 39. Parsons T, Whitney F (2014) On the effect of the Kasatoshi volcano on the large return of sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchusnerka) to the Fraser River in 2010. Fish Oceanogr 23:101-102 40. Parsons TR, Whitney FA (2012) Did volcanic ash from Mt. Kasatoshi in 2008 contribute to a phenomenal increase in Fraser River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchusnerka) in 2010? Fish Oceanogr 21:374-377 41. Partensky F, Garczarek L (2010) Prochlorococcus: Advantages and limits of minimalism. Annu Rev Marine Sci 2:305-331 42. Ricke KL, Moreno-Cruz JB, Caldeira K (2013) Strategic incentives for climate geoengineering coalitions to exclude broad participation. Environ Res Lett 8:014021 43. Severinghaus JP, Broecker WS, Dempster WF, MacCallum T, Wahlen M (1994) Oxygen loss in Biosphere 2. Eos, Trans Amer Geophys Union 75:33-37 44. Royal Society of London (2009) Geoengineering the climate: Science governance and uncertainty. RS Policy document 10/09. RS1636. ISBN: 978-0-85403-773-5 45. Strong A, Chisholm S, Miller C, Cullen J (2009) Ocean fertilization: time to move on. Nature 461:347-348 46. Strong AL, Cullen JJ, Chisholm SW (2009) Ocean fertilization science, policy, and commerce. Oceanography 22:236-261 47. Thompson LR, Zeng Q, Kelly L, Huang KH, Singer AU, Stubbe J, Chisholm SW (2011) Phage auxiliary metabolic genes and the redirection of cyanobacterial host carbon metabolism. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:E757-E764 48. Tollefson J (2012) Ocean-fertilization project off Canada sparks furore. Nature 490:458-459 49. Trenberth KE, Fasullo JT (2010) Tracking Earth’s energy. Science 328:316-317 50. Van Mooy BAS, Fredricks HF, Pedler BE, et al. (2009) Phytoplankton in the ocean use non-phosphorus lipids in response to phosphorus scarcity. Nature 457:69-72 51. Vaughan NE, Lenton TM (2011) A review of climate geoengineering proposals. Climatic Change 109:745-790 52. Vilalta JM (2004) Biography of Ramon Margalef. Generalitat de Catalunya [Online] Available at: http://www.gencat.cat/premiramonmargalef/cat/ biografia.htm

7. Chisholm SW, Falkowski PG, Cullen JJ (2001) Oceans. Dis-crediting ocean fertilization. Science 294:309-310 8. Chisholm SW, Morel FMM (eds) (1991) What controls phytoplankton production in nutrient-rich areas of the open sea? Limnol Oceanogr 36 9. Chisholm SW, Olson RJ, Zettler ER, Goericke R, Waterbury JB, Welschmeyer NA (1988) A novel free-living prochlorophyte abundant in the oceanic euphotic zone. Nature 334:340-343 10. Cicerone RJ (2006) Geoengineering: Encouraging research and overseeing implementation. Climatic Change 77:221-226 11. Coale KHK, Johnson KSK, Fitzwater SES, et al. (1996) A massive phytoplankton bloom induced by an ecosystem-scale iron fertilization experiment in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Nature 383:495-501 12. Coleman ML, Chisholm SW (2007) Code and context: Prochlorococcus as a model for cross-scale biology. Trends Microbiol 15:398-407 13. Coleman ML, Sullivan MB, Martiny AC, Steglich C, Barry K, DeLong EF, Chisholm SW (2006) Genomic islands and the ecology and evolution of Prochlorococcus. Science 311:1768-1770 14. Crutzen PJ (2006) Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injections: a contribution to resolve a policy dilemma? Climatic Change 77:211-220 15. Dutton EG, Christy JR (1992) Solar radiative forcing at selected locations and evidence for global lower tropospheric cooling following the eruptions of El-Chichon and Pinatubo. Geophys Res Lett 19:2313-2316 16. Flombaum P, Gallegos JL, Gordillo RA, et al. (2013) Present and future global distributions of the marine Cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110:9824-9829 17. Gómez-Baena G, López-Lozano A, Gil-Martínez J, Lucena JM, Diez J, Candau P, García-Fernández JM (2008) Glucose uptake and its effect on gene expression in Prochlorococcus. PLoS ONE 3:e3416 18. Grzymski JJ, Dussaq AM (2011) The significance of nitrogen cost minimization in proteomes of marine microorganisms. ISME J 6:71-80 19. Hamme RC, Webley PW, Crawford WR, et al (2010) Volcanic ash fuels anomalous plankton bloom in subarctic northeast Pacific. Geophys Res Lett 37:n/a-n/a 20. Johnson PW, JM S (1979) Chroococcoid cyanobacteria in the sea: A ubiquitous and diverse phototrophic biomass. Limnol Oceanogr 24:928935 21. Johnson ZI, Zinser ER, Coe A, McNulty NP, Woodward EMS, Chisholm SW (2006) Niche partitioning among Prochlorococcus ecotypes along ocean-scale environmental gradients. Science 311:1737-1740 22. Jones A, Haywood JM, Alterskjaer K, et al (2013) The impact of abrupt suspension of solar radiation management (termination effect) in experiment G2 of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). J Geophys Res Atmos 118:9743-9752 23. Keith D (2013) The case for climate engineering. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 24. Kettler GC, Martiny AC, Huang K, et al. (2007) Patterns and implications of gene gain and loss in the evolution of Prochlorococcus. PLoS Genet 3:e231 25. Lindell D, Jaffe JD, Coleman ML, et al. (2007) Genome-wide expression dynamics of a marine virus and host reveal features of co-evolution. Nature 449:83-86 26. Lovelock JE, Rapley CG (2007) Ocean pipes could help the Earth to cure itself. Nature 449:403 27. Lukacs M (2012) World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules. The Guardian. 18 January 2014 [Online] Available at: http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-ironfertilisation-geoengineering 28. Malmstrom RR, Coe A, Kettler GC, Martiny AC, Frias-Lopez J, Zinser ER, Chisholm SW (2010) Temporal dynamics of Prochlorococcus ecotypes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. ISME J 4:1252-1264

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Chisholm

53. Waldbauer J (2010) Molecular biogeochemistry of modern and ancient marine microbes. PhD Thesis, MIT and WHOI, pp 1-344 54. Waterbury JB, Watson SW, Guillard R, Brand LE (1979) Widespread occurrence of a unicellular, marine, planktonic, cyanobacterium. Nature 277:293-294 55. Zinser ER, Coe A, Johnson ZI, Martiny AC, Fuller NJ, Scanlan DJ, Chisholm SW (2006) Prochlorococcus ecotype abundances in the North Atlantic ocean as revealed by an improved quantitative PCR method. Appl Environ Microbiol 72:723-732 56. Zinser ER, Johnson ZI, Coe A, Karaca E, Veneziano D, Chisholm SW (2007) Influence of light and temperature on Prochlorococcus ecotype distributions in the Atlantic Ocean. Limnol Oceanogr 52:2205-2220 57. Zubkov MV, Tarran GA, Fuchs BM Depth related amino acid uptake by Prochlorococcus cyanobacteria in the Southern Atlantic tropical gyre. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 50:153-161 58. McKnight Z (2012) Iron-fertilizing experiment took place in worst possible spot: scientists. Vancouver Sun. 24 October 2012 [Online]

59. 60.

61. 62.

63.

Available at: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/n+fertilizing+e xperiment+took+place+worst+possible+spot+scientists/7436066/story. html Haida Salmon Restoration Corp (2014) [Online] Available at: http:// haidasalmonrestoration.com IPCC Summary for Policy Makers (2013) 24 December 2013 [Online] Available at: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/ WGI_AR5_SPM_brochure.pdf ISIS Consortium (2014) To promote in-situ iron studies of the ocean [Online] Available at: http://isis-consortium.org International Maritime Organization (2014) New regulations for ocean fertilization [Online] Available at: http://www.imo.org/OurWork/ Environment/LCLP/Pages/default.aspx Ocean Nourishment Corporation (2014) [Online] Available at: http:// www.oceannourishment.com

*** Resum. El fitoplàncton marí té un paper central en la oxigenació de l’atmosfera del nostre planeta fa milers de milions d’anys. Per tant, aquests primers “geoenginyers” van ser crucials per a l'evolució de la vida a la Terra. Els seus descendents actuals, el cianobacteri marí Prochlorococcus és la cèl·lula fotosintètica més abundant del planeta. El seu descobriment, fa 30 anys, va servir com a recordatori del poc que coneixem sobre la complexitat de les xarxes tròfiques marines. La proposta de fertilització dels oceans, ja sigui per mitigar el clima o per millorar la pesca, continua guanyant adeptes dins la comunitat científica i el sector comercial. Si s’arribés a implementar, les conseqüències no desitjades d’aquesta i altres propostes de geoenginyeria poden ser enormes i impossibles de preveure. Paraules clau: Prochlorococcus · geoenginyeria · canvi climàtic · fertilització amb ferro

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CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10: 7-15 (2014)

DISTINGUISHED LECTURES Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

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CONTRIB SCI 10:17-22 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.184

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DISPUTATIO OF BARCELONA 2013

The Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea Genoveva Martí Research Professor of ICREA, Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence:

Genoveva Martí Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science Faculty of Humanities University of Barcelona c/ Montalegre, 6-8 08001 Barcelona, Catalonia E-mail: gmarti45@uwo.ca

Summary. The Barcelona Knowledge Hub, a hub of the Academia Europaea, was set up in Barcelona in 2012 as the office for the Southern European region and the Mediterranean. The Academia Europaea is a pan-European, nongovernmental, not-for-profit association of over 3000 individual scientists and scholars who are�� recognised�� as experts and leaders in their own fields. It is committed to identifying topics of trans-European importance to science and scholarship, and provides, where appropriate, its expertise and its independent and impartial advice to European institutions, governments and international agencies concerning matters affecting science, scholarship and academic life in Europe. The Barcelona Knowledge Hub �� organises�� multidisciplinary activities that consider the perspective of the social sciences and the humanities, with scholarly aims as well as the goal of promoting the dissemination of science. [Contrib Sci 10:17-22 (2014)]

The Academia Europaea, promoting lear ning, education and research The Academia Europaea (AE) [http://www.ae-info.org/], founded in 1988, is a pan-European, nongovernmental, notfor-profit association of individual scientists and scholars who are elected by nomination and recognised by their peers as experts and leaders in their fields. The AE is independent of national governments and government-controlled sources of finance. Its main object is to support the culture of European research through dialogue and collaboration. The AE has over 3000 elected members from 37 European countries, including a substantial number of recipients of pres-

tigious awards, medals and prizes. Fifty-four members are Nobel Prize winners and 13 are Fields Medal recipients. The AE publishes European Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal covering contemporary issues in Europe, including those of economics, history, social science and other general sciences. In its mission statement, the AE is committed to identifying topics of trans-European importance to science and scholarship, and to proposing appropriate action to ensure that these topics are adequately addressed. It promotes a wider appreciation of the value of European scholarship and of research and encourages interdisciplinary and international scholarship in all areas of learning of relevance to Europe. In addition, where appropriate to its expertise, it provides independent

Keywords: Barcelona Knowledge Hub · Academia Europaea · European higher learning, teaching and research · Disputatio of Barcelona 1263-2013 · 26th Annual Conference of the Academia Europaea ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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The Barcelona Knowledge Hub

and impartial advice to European institutions, governments and international agencies concerning matters affecting science, scholarship and academic life in Europe.

The organisation of the Academia Europaea

Contrib Sci

The AE is run by a Board of Trustees, which acts as the executive management board. Currently, the President of the AE is Sierd Cloetingh (Professor of Tectonics, Vrije University, Amsterdam), Anne Buttimer (Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College Dublin) is Vice-President, and Roger Elliot (Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford) is the Honorary Treasurer. The Secretary to the Board is Dr. David Coates. The remainder of the Board is composed of members of the AE elected by the AE Council, which comprises members of the Board of Trustees, the chairs of Academic Sections (Statutory Council members) and a number of independent members (up to five) elected individually at the Annual General Meeting. The scholarly interests of the AE are managed through a section structure. On election, all members are assigned to a section. Currently, there are twenty academic sections: History and Archaeology; Classics & Oriental Studies; Linguistic Studies; Literary & Theatrical Studies; Musicology & History of Art and Architecture; Philosophy, Theology & Religious Studies; Behavioural Sciences; Social Sciences; Law; Economics, Business and Management Sciences; Mathematics; Informatics; Physics and Engineering Sciences; Chemical Sciences; Earth and Cosmic Sciences; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Cell Biology; Physiology and Medicine; Organismal and Evolutionary Biology and Applied and Translational Biology. The AE has its headquarters in London but it also has three regional hubs: the hub for central and Eastern Europe, located in Wroclaw; the hub for the northern European region, located in Bergen and the hub for southern Europe and the Mediterranean, located in Barcelona.

Fig. 1. Logo of the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea.

Barcelona perfectly suits the foundational mission of the AE. It has a strong academic and scientific environment, with important centres for biomedicine and photonics. In addition, the city is one of the main Euro-Mediterranean centres and the capital of the Union for the Mediterranean. Thus, the BKH contributes towards the consolidation of the city’s international position. This explains the decision by the Catalan Government (Ministry of Economy and Knowledge), the Barcelona City Council and the “la Caixa” Foundation to join efforts to launch an AE hub in Barcelona. The BKH is housed on the premises of the Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC). The BKH has been operational since January 2013. Its foundational agreements were signed by the AE and the three partners in December 2012. One of its main objectives is to organise multidisciplinary activities that include the perspective of the social sciences and the humanities in the Southern European region, with scholarly aims and for the dissemination of science.

Barcelona Knowledge Hub: the South ern European and Mediterranean Office

Disputatio of Barcelona 1263-2013. The BKH’s inaugural event was celebrated in November28, 2013, as a commemoration of the 750th anniversary of the famous Disputatio of Barcelona of 1263, by holding its own, present-day Disputatio (Fig. 2). The first Disputatio of Barcelona was held in 1263 before King James I of Aragon; it was one of the interfaith debates that took place between Christian and Jewish theologians. On that occasion, the debaters were Pau Cristià, a convert from Judaism and a Dominican friar, and Rabbi

In 2012, a hub of the AE was established in Barcelona, as the office for the southern European region and the Mediterranean. Known as the Barcelona Knowledge Hub (BKH) (Fig. 1) [http://barcelona.acadeuro.org/], it focuses on the promotion of activities that are of interest to members of the Academia and endorses its mission. www.cat-science.cat

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Martí

Fig. 2. Panoramic view of the Disputatio of Barcelona 2013, held in the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Hall. (See also the illustration of the cover of this issue of the journal.)

the Disputatio of 1263. In the latter, following the debate of the two wise men of opposite religious convictions, one of them was declared the winner. In the modern Disputatio, the debaters were a wise woman and a wise man who, instead of engaging in an intellectual confrontation, tried to illuminate different aspects of an important issue—given that the pursuit of truth, tolerance, and collaboration are often more conducive to progress. The success of the event inspired the advisory board of the BKH to continue holding Disputationes as the main annual event of the BKH. The 2014 Disputatio will be organised in conjunction with the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility . It will be held in November 2014, on the premises of the Hospital de Sant Pau of Barcelona, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.

Moses ben Nahman (also known as Nahmanides; his Catalan name was Bonastruc ça Porta), a Catalan Sephardic rabbi, physician, philosopher, kabbalist and biblical commentator. In the scholastic system of education of the Middle Ages, the Disputationes offered a formalised method of debate designed to uncover and establish truths in theology and the sciences. Fixed rules governed the process: they demanded dependence on traditional written authorities and a thorough understanding of the argument made by each side. The Barcelona Knowledge Hub Disputatio of Barcelona 2013, with the title “Social and State-of-the-Art Medicine,” took place on November 28th in the historical Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Hall, in the presence of two hundred members of the local scientific, intellectual community. The event was hosted by Xavier Trias, Barcelona’s Mayor, who was joined at the presidential table by Lars Walloe and Anne Buttimer, President and Vice-President of the AE, respectively, Andreu Mas-Colell (Minister of Economy and Knowledge of the Catalan Government) and the academic director of the BKH, Genoveva Martí. Two speakers with expertise in different areas were invited to share their views on the access to medical resources and their distribution (Fig. 3). In keeping with the BKH’s intent to approach issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, the invited disputantes were Mara Dierssen, a neuroscientist, group leader of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology of the Systems Biology Programme at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, and president of the Spanish Society for Neuroscience, and Thomas Pogge, a philosopher, current president of the Health Impact Fund, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, director of the Global Justice Program and Board Member of Academics Stand Against Poverty. The 2013 Barcelona Disputatio was very different from www.cat-science.cat

The 26th Annual Conference of the Academia Europaea. With the motto “Young Europe: realities, dilemmas and opportunities for the new generation,” the purpose of the conference was to identify the social, medical and environmental challenges that will become prominent in the forthcoming decades and that must be tackled by the next generation. These challenges do not belong to a single, well circumscribed discipline: medical issues have human, social and technological aspects; matters of sustainability have medical and social impacts and social questions are inextricably connected to health and environmental concerns. Because these problems are multi-faceted, their solutions accordingly require cross-cutting thinking and interdisciplinary expertise. The conference, held between July 16 and July 18, 2014, had three main blocks, each revolving around medical, social and environmental issues. The keynote speakers were Nubia Muñoz (Medical), Saskia Sassen (Social), and Gordon McBean (Environment), and they were joined by seventeen other 19

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10: 17-22 (2014)

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The Barcelona Knowledge Hub

Fig. 3. Genoveva Martí (Academic Director of the Barecelona Knoledge Hub), Lars Walløe (President of the Academia Europaea), Xavier Trias (Mayor of Barcelona), Mara Dierssen and Thomas Pogge (disputantes), Anne Buttimer (Vice-President of the Academia Europaea) and Andreu Mas-Colell (Minister of Economy and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia), at the Disputatio of Barcelona 2013.

speakers of international stature, members and non-members of the AE. Kurt Mehlhorn, who was awarded the Erasmus Medal during the conference, delivered an address to the Academia General Assembly entitled Algorithms and Programs. Also, five parallel scientific workshops were organised by several of the Academia Sections. The one on Crystallography was attended by Dan Shechtman, 2011 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. Furthermore, at every annual conference, up to ten outstanding young scientists and scholars from the host country are recognised as Burgen Scholars, an award named after the Academia’s founding president.

younger perspective in several talks by YAE members. The scientific sessions consisted of stimulating discussion surrounding eight short presentations linking the three YAE domains of physics and engineering, the life sciences and the social sciences and the humanities. Researchers exchanged views and presented their recent work. They addressed various societal challenges in the areas of health, responses to the economic crisis and arising climate-change parameters. Thus, YAE members presented novel insights into light-activated hearing devices, the formation of citizens’ collectives and the accumulation of methane in lakes. Simone Turchetti (University of Manchester) delivered a lecture entitled “Deeply concerned with the environment? Revisiting the history of environmental science and politics” and Nataša Pržulj (Imperial College London) talked about the hidden language of complex networks. A plenary debate was also held, in which scientists from many European countries evaluated the role of young academies in Europe. The audience agreed with the concerns of the young scientists, that it remains a challenge to shape a coherent science policy for Europe, to secure the sustainable support needed to achieve a scientific impact and to formulate a perspective for the next generation of scientific leaders.

Young Academy of Europe Annual Meeting. Another mission of the BKH is to provide support to the activities of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE), affiliated with the AE. The YAE is a pan-European and independent initiative of top young scientists and scholars that reflects their interest in creating a platform for networking, scientific exchange and science policy. On 15 July 2014, the BKH coordinated the third Annual Meeting of the YAE, organised in conjunction with the AE’s Annual Conference. During the meeting, views on the current realities and opportunities for scientists in Europe were discussed from a www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:17-22 (2014)

Martí

International Women’s Day. In March 2014, the BKH and the IEC celebrated International Women’s Day [1] with a lecture entitled “Arab Spring or Long Desolate Arab Winter?”, by Nadia El-Awady, Egyptian physician and science journalist, and followed by a colloquium. Nadia El-Awady is a freelance journalist and novice adventurer currently dividing her time between Egypt and the UK. The major part of her career has focused on science journalism. She has a B.Sc. in medicine from Cairo University and an MA in journalism and mass communication from the American University in Cairo. When on December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi , a Tunisian street vendor, publicly set himself on fire in protest against the municipality’s confiscation of his vendor’s cart, from which he sold fruits and vegetables, a series of events were initiated that within a short time led to revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya and the ouster of their long-standing rulers. El-Awady, former president of the World Federation of Science Journalists, stood on the frontlines of the Egyptian Revolution from January 25 to February 11, 2011. Three years later, during International Women’s Day at the IEC, she reflected on the situation in Egypt and its effect on her, her family and those around her.

About the author Genoveva Martí graduated from the University of Barcelona and obtained her PhD from Stanford University. She is Research Professor of ICREA (Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies) at the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Barcelona, and has been Reader at the London School of Economics. She has taught also at the University of Washington, Seattle and the University of California, Riverside. Since 2009 she is a member of the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Section of the AE. She is a member of the LOGOS research group. Her research interests include the theory of reference, the semantics of singular and general terms, and the role of experimental data in semantics. She was awarded the Narcís Monturiol Medal by the Government of Catalonia in 2012.

“Neuroscience and...”. The BKH together with the IEC, the Centre for Genomic Regulation and the Institute of Culture of Barcelona sponsored a cycle of four lectures with the title “Neuroscience and...” The cycle was held in the IEC, from March to July, 2014. In the first debate, “Neuroscience and Economics”, which took place on March 13, participants discussed how the brain works when we evaluate decisions, when we categorise risks and rewards and when we interact with other economic agents. An understanding of these aspects provides insight into an understanding of economics on a global scale, given that the financial-decision making process of humans is based not on logic but instead is strongly influenced by emotions and intuition. The economists Antonio Cabrales (University College London) and Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA-UPF) and the biologist Arcadi Navarro (ICREA-UPF) opened the session with a short presentation, followed by an exchange with the audience. “Neuroscience and Education” was the title of the second lecture, held on May 15. The speakers were Ismael Palacín, director of the Jaume Bofill Foundation; David Bueno, of the Department of Genetics at the University of Barcelona; and Ignacio Morgado, of the Institute of Neurosciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. On June 26, the talk was dedicated to “Neuroscience and Politics”. On 3 July, the cycle was closed with the final lecture, “Neuroscience and the Law”. www.cat-science.cat

Workshop on “Funding Policies and Research Values: Strategies & Needs; Risks & Prospects”, in Trieste. In collaboration with the University of Trieste and with the support of the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences), the BKH was the co-organiser, on May 12, 2014, of a one-day workshop entitled “Funding Policies and Research Values: Strategies & Needs; Risks & Prospects.” Part of the “Cultures in dialogue” project of the AE, the workshop aimed to determine which strategies should be adopted to secure the future of the Humanities. Naomi Segal 21

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The Barcelona Knowledge Hub

(Birbeck University of London) focussed on strategies for supporting literary studies within the framework of European research policy, proposing to redefine them in terms of cultural literacy. The risks and prospects of Humanities research were also addressed. Carolyn Gianturco (University of Pisa) examined the risks of linear financial cuts in state research funding for the sector of musical studies. Maurizio Brunori (University of Rome) explored the prospects for success of humanistic studies that can be gained by partnerships and the “network” academic model, centred on the Mediterranean region, in which dialogue among different cultural heritages is fostered. Finally, the workshop highlighted the need for new life for research in the Humanities, through a funding policy that recognises the differences between this field and the empirical and exact sciences.

Since 2012, the BKH has been building bridges to connect both Mediterranean shores, with the aim of contributing to the creation of a Mediterranean space of scientific collaboration. The creation of the BKH is the starting point to encourage achievement of the highest possible standards in scholarship, research and education and to promote a better public understanding of the benefits of knowledge and learning, and of scientific and scholarly issues that affect society, its quality of life and its standards of living. Competing interests. None declared.

Reference 1. Puche C (2013) The Institute for Catalan Studies and the International Women’s Day, 2006–2013. Contrib Sci 9:107-108

***

Resum. La Barcelona Knowledge Hub, subseu de l’Academia Europaea, es va inaugurar a Barcelona el 2012 com a oficina per a la regió del sud d’Europa i la Mediterrània. L’Academia Europaea és una associació no governamental, paneuropea i sense ànim de lucre de més de 3000 científics i estudiosos reconeguts com a experts en el seu camp. Els objectius de l’Academia Europaea són identificar temes científics d’importància transeuropea i oferir, si escau, assessorament independent i imparcial a les institucions europees, governs i organismes internacionals en relació amb els assumptes que afecten la ciència i la vida acadèmica a Europa. Al sud d’Europa, la Barcelona Knowledge Hub organitza activitats multidisciplinàries des de la perspectiva de les ciències socials i les humanitats amb l’objectiu de promoure la difusió de la ciència i l’acadèmia. Paraules clau: Barcelona Knowledge Hub · Academia Europaea · Ensenyament superior i recerca a Europa · Disputatio de Barcelona 1263-2013 · 26è Congrés Anual de l'Academia Europaea

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CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:17-22 (2014)

DISTINGUISHED LECTURES Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

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CONTRIB SCI 10:23-28 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.185

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DISPUTATIO OF BARCELONA 2013

The Health Impact Fund: A new paradigm in pharmaceutical innovation* Thomas Pogge Department of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Correspondence: Thomas Pogge Department of Philosophy Yale University P.O. Box 20830 New Haven, CT 06520-8306, USA Tel. +1-2034322272 E-mail: thomas.pogge@yale.edu

Summary. We have learned that the speed and quality of innovation can be substantially raised by granting innovators temporary monopolies, such as patents or copyrights, which enable them to profit by charging high mark-ups. But such temporary monopolies promote innovation at the expense of diffusion. In other words, the better we innovate, or incentivize innovation, the more we pay a price in terms of the diffusion of those same innovations. Rewarding innovation in the wrong way in the areas of pharmaceuticals, food production, and environmental innovation has especially serious effects on the poor. The current system does poorly with regard to access targeting and cost-effectiveness. The Health Impact Fund proposes a new way of paying for pharmaceutical innovation by incentivizing the development and delivery of new drugs through pay-for-performance mechanisms. Furthermore, the same idea could be applied to agricultural and environmental innovation. [Contrib Sci 10:23-28 (2014)]

Rules governing the development and distribution of new medicines Human progress has two interlinked components. One is innovation—the creation, invention and discovery of new knowledge—and the other is diffusion—the dissemination or uptake of knowledge. Insofar as either of these two components is stifled, humanity’s progress is impeded.

We have learned that the speed and quality of innovation can be substantially raised by granting innovators temporary monopolies, such as patents or copyrights, which enable them to profit by charging high mark-ups. But such temporary monopolies facilitate innovation at the expense of diffusion. In other words, the better we innovate, or promote innovation, the more we pay a price in terms of the diffusion of those same innovations.

*Based on the lecture given by the author at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council, on 28 November 2013, for the Disputatio of Barcelona 2013, on “Social and State-of-the-Art Medicine”, and the inauguration of the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea.

Keywords: Health Impact Fund · healthcare · pharmaceutical industry · innovation · patents · agriculture · environment · population growth ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:23-28 (2014)

Health Impact Fund

Nowhere is this situation more serious than in the area of medicines or pharmaceuticals. At present, pharmaceutical innovation is rewarded through product patents (vs. process) of minimally 20-year duration. The World Trade Organization (WTO), since its founding in the mid-1990s—and under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement—has required all of the WTO member states to introduce these 20-years patent. Just to give an idea of what a difference the institutionalization of these patents makes, before TRIPS came into effect, India, for example, had 7-year process patents. This allowed pharmaceutical innovators to protect a particular process of producing a drug but they could not protect the molecule as such. And so generic companies were able to invent around the patent, and make inexpensive copies of these patented drugs for the benefit of patients in India and across the world.

blished, because additional units are inexpensive. However, they are sold at very high prices because innovators want to take full advantage of their temporary monopoly. And once the patent period has expired, there are inadequate incentives for the competent provision of generics to patients who are poor or hard-to-reach. Given the high inequalities in income around the world, the profit maximizing price for pharmaceutical innovators will be high. For them, it makes more sense to sell at prices so that only the top 15 % of the human population can buy the product. It is not worth lowering the price down to the level where more people can buy it, because innovators lose more money on the smaller mark-up than they gain by selling more product to those willing and able to buy at lower prices. It does poorly in regard to targeting. Focused innovation is distorted by huge economic inequalities, which steer innovators away from diseases predominantly affecting the poor and also excessively reward the development of new “me-too” and maintenance drugs (me-too drugs are drugs with a structure very similar to already known drugs, but with minor differences). Pharmaceutical innovators can make the most money by producing drugs against diseases that affect the rich, affluent or well-insured people; they cannot make

Disadvantages of the current system: It does poorly in regard to access. Universal access is seriously undermined, even in affluent countries, during the time the product is under patent by large mark-ups. The profit maximizing monopoly price tends to be 50 times or even 100 times higher than the cost of production. The cost of producing pharmaceuticals is low once their production has been estaTable 1. Advisory Board of the Health Impact Fund Kenneth J. Arrow

Nobel Prize in Economics; Professor Emeritus, Stanford University

Noam Chomsky

Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT

John J. DeGioia

President, Georgetown University

Ruth Faden

Director, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University

Paul Farmer

Harvard Medical School; co-founder, Partners in Health

Robert Gallo

Institute of Human Virology

David Haslam

Chair, UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence

Paul Martin

Former Prime Minister of Canada

Christopher Murray

Director, University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Baroness Onora O’Neill

House of Lords; former British Academy President & Newnham College Principal

Sir Gustav Nossal

Former Director, Hall Institute of Medical Research, University of Melbourne

James Orbinski

Former International President, Médecins Sans Frontières

Sir Michael Rawlins

Former Chair, UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence

Karin Roth

Member of the German Parliament

Amartya Sen

Nobel Prize in Economics; Professor, Harvard University

Peter Singer

Professor, Princeton University

Judith Whitworth

Chair, WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul

Former German Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development

Richard Wilder

Associate General Counsel, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

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CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10: 23-28 (2014)

Pogge

much money from diseases that are concentrated among the world’s poorest populations. And for that reason, research and development of new medicines focuses away from large and important diseases that affect the poor, such as malaria, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and leishmaniasis.

property rights, but would be required to sell the new medicine at the lowest feasible average cost of manufacture and distribution and to grant cost-free licenses after the reward period. This price ceiling would generally be determined by a tender, where alternative manufacturers could offer to produce the drug and the lowest costly manufacturer would be chosen to deliver the drug to the innovator and the innovator would then sell it to wholesalers and retailers. A distinguished advisory board of Nobel Prize winners and politicians (Table 1) has helped the HIF gain political traction of the idea and also to develop its details further.

It does poorly in regard to cost-effectiveness. The current system is very wasteful—a majority of the money that the world spends on pharmaceuticals, about one trillion USD every year, does not go back into the manufacture or the research and development of new drugs. Most of the money actually goes to lobbying and gaming, patenting and litigating, wasteful marketing and counterfeiting, as well as to huge deadweight losses, all of which greatly diminishing overall efficiency.

Advantages of the HIF The HIF can solve the three big problems of the status quo. First, it prevents high prices. All HIF-registered drugs are available at their real cost or even below cost from day one. Poor people can gain access to important new medicines either through their own funds or through governments, NGOs, or international agencies. In some cases, innovators would have incentives to sell the product even below cost. For example when, by serving additional patients, the health gains for which they would be rewarded would be larger than the expenses of selling below cost. The HIF also ends the neglect of the diseases of poverty. The HIF adds powerful targeting incentives to develop new drugs with the greatest health impact—regardless of the socioeconomic composition of patient population. In regard to the diseases of the poor, research companies in the developing world would not be at a disadvantage as they are with regard to diseases like cancer and diabetes. In fact, they would be at peak competitiveness: there is no head-start by “Big Pharma”, there is an availability of patients to run clinical trials, as well as a highly committed work force, and a supportive political and social environment. In addition, the HIF boosts cost-effectiveness. It would reduce costs and losses due to patenting because innovators would not need to patent their drugs in many jurisdictions because nobody would dare to compete with them if they offered their products at very low prices. There would be much less litigation and much less need for competitive marketing. In addition, there would be no incentives for counterfeiting because the real drugs would be available at very low prices. Gaming and lobbying would also be much reduced as would be the enormous deadweight losses that are now costing an additional 220 billion USD per year in lost sales that would be profitable to the innovator.

The Health Impact Fund (HIF) The solution on which we work involves the creation of the Health Impact Fund (HIF) [www.healthimpactfund.org]. The HIF is a complement to the existing TRIPS which would offer to innovators the opportunity to voluntarily register any new medicine for participation in the ‘health impact awards.’ These awards would be paid annually out of fixed reward pools that the HIF would establish, in the order of 6 billion USD per year. These annual pools would be divided up among the registered products in proportion to the health impact—in quality-adjusted life-years, which is a measure of disease burden—that each of them have. In other words, for all of these registered drugs, the HIF would measure the health gains that they produce in the world, and would then divide the reward pool accordingly. The idea is to establish a second track on which innovators can be rewarded. Pharmaceutical innovators will be able to choose which market to enter: they will be free to stay in the existing system and get rewarded through the high markups they can charge, protected by a patent; or they can give up that reward opportunity, agree to sell their product at cost and then be rewarded on the basis of the health gains. Obviously, different products will choose different tracks. A product that is mainly directed at rich people, such as a hair-loss product with little health gain, would stay on the patenttrack, whereas a product that addresses a need of poor people, such as a malaria drug, would surely choose the HIFtrack, be rewarded according to health impact and sold everywhere at a low price determined by cost. Savings from lower drug prices would help governments fund the HIF at initially 6 USD billion annually (0.01% of GDP of the world). Registrants would be free to keep intellectual www.cat-science.cat

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Health Impact Fund

As a bonus, also for rich populations, the HIF would focus the attention of innovators on the health of patients, because only if you actually promote the health of patients, do you make money. Under the present system, innovators have every incentive to sell medicines at very high prices regardless of whether those medicines promote people’s health or not. By combining substantial rewards with low product prices, the HIF encourages efforts toward: (a) efficacy, making sure that the medicine is in good condition with regard to freshness, transportation, and storage; b) targeting of patients who can benefit the most; (c) affordability, price below the ceiling to boost reach; (d) careful prescription with proper instructions; and (e) promotion of high compliance and adherence, for optimal effect. All these incentives are welcome to patients regardless of economic position.

health gains and of the preservation of the drug’s efficacy. The drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2012, and by the Drugs Controller General of India in January 2015, and the pilot in Mumbai is under way. The HIF would benefit all parties and stakeholders. Innovators would reap moral and reputational gains, large new markets, and new R&D opportunities. Patients would achieve a broader arsenal of medical interventions, available at more affordable prices, and with a strong focus promoting healthcare, rather than merely selling to patients. It would also benefit governments and tax payers by directly improving the efficiency of healthcare and reducing the human and economic burdens of disease. By relying more on pharmaceuticals we then need to rely less on hospitals or on intensive care units, and we would have less disease in the population. That would mean less economic costs involved with disease. Finally, it would also strengthen North-South partnerships for an important global public good.

Financing the HIF The HIF would be funded through governments that are willing to participate in the scheme. Each of them would contribute a sum around 0.03 % of their gross national income (GNI). The investment could be done through long-maturity or perpetual bonds with interest pegged to inflation or GNI per capita. Alternatively, the HIF could be funded through a dedicated international tax, for instance a tax on financial transactions or a tax on pollution, whose future revenue stream could be securitized. Such taxes would also moderate speculative excesses in financial markets or slow climate change. Ultimately, the idea is to create a diversified endowment, managed to generate a stable income stream that would cover a substantial and growing portion of the annual reward pools. The endowment could accept contributions also from international and non-governmental organizations, foundations, corporations, individuals and states—following the example of private universities. And would thereby give us an opportunity personally to contribute to the long-term improvement of human health. During 2013, the team developing the HIF proposal received €2 million from the European Union, which will help establish the baseline against which health gains will be mea sured. The HIF team also received substantial support from Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Pharmaceutical Research and Development, involving their new drug against multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis—and the first anti-tuberculosis drug developed in over forty years— Sirturo® (Bedaquiline). Because J&J will contribute the drug at zero cost, this pilot will only refine the measurement of www.cat-science.cat

Agricultural innovation The same idea that can potentially work really well in pharmaceuticals could be applied in other fields, such as food production, which faces the same dilemma between innovation and access. Over human history, we have learned that stimulating innovation in food production has allowed, with given inputs, to produce ever-better nutrition, ever more efficiency at greater nutrient-yield per acre, less use of pesticides and fertilizers, etc. To keep hunger at bay, such a progress must continue. But progress in food production has been incentivized in the wrong way. In agriculture, too, we encourage the innovation we need through patents, temporary monopolies that allow innovators to charge licensing fees or sell products at very high prices. And again, this of course hampers the diffusion of higher-yielding crops among the poor, aggravating the ravishes of malnutrition. It also prevents the diffusion of innovations that would reduce the use of pesticides, fertilizers, methane and antibiotics.

An analogous solution The solution for food production is analogous to the solution in the case of pharmaceuticals. Agricultural innovators should have at least the option to agree to the cost-free use of their 26

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Pogge

Table 2. Comparison of total fertility rates in countries that have eradicated poverty (a) and those who have not (b) Botswanaa

Colombiaa

Singaporea

Nigerb

Equatorial Guineab

1950–1955

6.50

6.76

6.40

6.86

5.50

1955–1960

6.58

6.76

5.99

7.05

5.50

1960–1965

6.65

6.76

4.93

7.29

5.53

1965–1970

6.70

6.18

3.46

7.53

5.66

1970–1975

6.55

5.00

2.62

7.74

5.68

1975–1980

6.37

4.34

1.87

8.00

5.68

1980–1985

5.97

3.68

1.69

8.05

5.79

1985–1990

5.11

3.24

1.71

7.94

5.89

1990–1995

4.32

3.00

1.76

7.79

5.89

1995–2000

3.70

2.75

1.57

7.61

5.87

2000–2005

3.18

2.55

1.36

7.38

5.64

2005–2010

2.90

2.45

1.27

7.15

5.36

Year

large and shared by all. We all have to breathe the foul air and we all have to contend with polluted water and a degrading natural environment, including affluent populations and their progeny. Again, green innovators should be given at least the option to agree to the cost-free use of their innovations, in exchange for payments from public funds based on the measured total environmental impact of their innovations, assessed according to a pre-announced metric.

innovation in exchange for payments from public funds that would be based on the measured total impact of their innovation in terms of nutrients produced with given inputs, on methane emissions averted, and on reduction in the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics. So, as a society, we should define a way of measuring the social value of innovations and should then reward each innovation according to the social value it produces, which is proportional to the number of users and to the benefit to the average user. In other words, we would turn these incentives on their head. Rather than give innovators an incentive to charge high prices, they would be given an incentive to make sure that their innovation was very widely used, even by poor populations.

A final thought Rewarding innovation in the wrong way in the areas of pharmaceuticals, food production, and environmental innovation has especially serious effects on the poor. Poor fall ill more often and more severely, they die earlier, they suffer hunger and malnutrition, and they also suffer more from the effects of climate change, as could be seen in the Philippines with Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. And so, incentivizing innovation in these social areas in the wrong way perpetuates poverty. Poverty, in turn is a key driver of human population growth. Currently the total fertility rate (TFR)—the average number of children per women—is 4.53 for the 50 least developed countries versus 1.66 for the more developed regions, and 2.41 for the remaining middle-income countries. Already, 95 of the richer countries around the world have reached TFRs below 2.00, and thus will stop growing (except through immigration). So, despite the vastly higher mortality, poor countries have a rapid population growth, while the better-off have little or none. In countries that have eradica-

Environmental innovation The same could work in terms of environmental innovation. Here too, innovation is of great importance to protect the environment because it allows the production of electricity and other goods at much lower cost to the environment. However, many green technologies—such as efficient solar panels or hybrid cars—are patented, and because of high licensing fees, they do not diffuse among poorer populations. Once again, we are wrongly rewarding innovation in a social issue by giving innovators the right to charge high prices, by granting them a temporary monopoly. This is senseless, because the income from non-diffusion green technologies is small, and the harm from the diffusion of preventable excess pollution created by the use of old, obsolete technologies is www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:23-28 (2014)

Health Impact Fund

ted poverty, such as Botswana, Colombia, or Singapore, population growth has decreased continuously since the 1950s, but it remains high in countries such as Equatorial Guinea and Niger where poverty continues (Table 2). Also, when we look at the ranking for countries by TFR, we see that most top countries with high TFR are in Africa, the top ten being Niger, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Zambia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Angola. Approximately 100 countries have TFRs below 2. The crucial variable for the ecological sustainability of our planet is the number of human beings who will share its limited resources over the coming millennium. Fertility is the main variable determining what the human population will be like in 2100. Depending on what policies our generation will initiate, the United Nations estimates that there will be

between 6 billion and 16 billion people by the end of the century (there are 7.2 billion today). Of course, for ecological reasons, it would be much better if, in 2100, the world’s population was closer to 6 billion than to 16 billion. The best way of achieving that is by overcoming poverty, and one way to do that is by changing the way in which we reward medical, agricultural and environmental innovation. Competing interests. None declared.

For further information Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2012) World Population Prospects [http://esa.un.org/wpp/]

About the author Thomas Pogge. PhD Harvard University. President of the Health Impact Fund team, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and Director of the Global Justice Program at Yale. Broadly devoted to moral and political philosophy, and Immanuel Kant, his work has increasingly focused on real-world issues related to justice, poverty and health. Pogge’s recent publications include Politics as Usual (Polity 2010), World Poverty and Human Rights (Polity 2008), John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (Oxford 2007), and Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right (Oxford & UNESCO 2007). Pogge holds secondary appointments at King’s College London and at the Universities of Oslo, Sydney and Central Lancashire. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oslo and Princeton Universities as well as at the Princeton Center for Advanced Studies, All Souls College Oxford and the National Institutes of Health. In 2013 he

won the American Philosophical Association Gregory Kavka Prize in political philosophy. He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Helsinki, Bucharest and Connecticut and is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science.

*** Resum. Hem après que la velocitat i la qualitat de la innovació es poden augmentar molt mitjançant la concessió als innovadors de monopolis temporals, com ara patents o drets d’autor, que els permeten obtenir guanys mitjançant el cobrament de marges elevats. Però aquest tipus de monopolis temporals promouen la innovació a costa de la difusió. En altres paraules, com més innovem o incentivem la innovació, més paguem en termes de la difusió d’aquestes mateixes innovacions. Premiar la innovació de manera equivocada en les àrees de la producció de medicaments, de la producció d’aliments i en la innovació ambiental té efectes especialment greus per als pobres. El sistema actual no és eficient en termes d’accés, selecció d’objectius i rendibilitat. El Fons per a l’Impacte sobre la Salut (Health Impact Fund) proposa una nova manera de pagar la innovació farmacèutica, incentivant el desenvolupament i subministrament de nous medicaments a través de mecanismes de pagament per resultats. A més, la mateixa idea es podria aplicar a la innovació agrícola i ambiental. Paraules clau: Health Impact Fund · sanitat, indústria farmacèutica · innovació · patents · agricultura · ambient · creixement demogràfic

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DISTINGUISHED LECTURES Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:29-34 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.186

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DISPUTATIO OF BARCELONA 2013

Producing progress? Issues to consider* Mara Dierssen Systems Biology Program, Centre for Genomic Regulation, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Mara Dierssen Centre de Regulació Genòmica Dr. Aiguader, 88 08003 Barcelona, Catalonia Tel. +34-933160100 Fax +34-933160099 E-mail: mara.dierssen@crg.es

Summary. There is a growing gap in productivity in the biopharmaceutical industry. The money spent on developing new drugs has increased substantially, but the hopedfor dramatic increase in new therapies based on recent revolutions in molecular biology and genetics has yet to materialize. Long approval times, high-failures rates, and highcompetition account in part for this situation. Some argue that entrepreneurs are not promoting fundamental, new discoveries and instead are simply profiting from the knowledge generated by academia. In fact, publicly funded research is driving progress in a completely new field and the development of a completely new landscape of medicine. The knowledge thereby acquired has dramatically changed the approach to targeting disease. In response, a new model is needed, one that addresses how investment in innovation is driven, but also how innovation is done. [Contrib Sci 10:29-34 (2014)]

Pharmaceutical innovation Human progress has two interlinked components: innovation, i.e., creation, invention, and discovery, and diffusion, i.e., the dissemination and uptake of knowledge. In the realm of human healthcare and drug discovery, innovative products can be defined as those that cure or prevent a disease or condition, decrease mortality or morbidity, decrease the cost of care, improve the quality of life, are safer or easier to use, or improve patient compliance and persistence. In recent years, there has been a decrease in the number of molecular entities or biological license applications that have

been approved. In the USA, 2012 was a surprisingly “productive” year compared to the past two decades, with 33 new molecular entities (NMEs) and 6 biologic license applications (BLAs) approved by the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). The annual average is 30 FDA approvals, but there are years with as few as 18 [8]. Nonetheless, during those same years investment in the search of new drugs increased. Nowadays, the cost of developing new drugs has risen to the point that Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, described it as a horrendous failure: “One point your numbers tell you is how horrendous the failure rate is and how that causes the cost of success

*Based on the lecture given by the author at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council, on November 28, 2013, for the Disputatio of Barcelona 2013, on “Social and State-of-the-Art Medicine”, and the inauguration of the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea.

Keywords: innovation · pharmaceutical industry · genomic medicine · epigenetics · healthcare system ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Producing progress?

The new science of personalized medicine and the genomic era

to be so much higher” [5]. In fact, if we compare the number of new drugs approved per dollar spent, the decrease in the former is indeed alarming. There is a growing gap in productivity in the biopharmaceutical industry: money spent on developing new drugs has increased substantially, but the hoped-for rapid proliferation of new therapies based on recent revolutions in molecular biology and genetics has yet to materialize. Why is this? In the USA, one important reason is that the FDA’s approval process, driven by extreme caution, is extremely long. The amount of time from the ‘eureka’ moment of discovering a drug candidate to its final approval by the FDA can take 10 to 15 years, with an average cost of US$ 1.32 billion per drug [9]. Assuming that a new effective drug could save approximately 10,000 lives, a 10-year wait for its approval means that 100,000 people will die in the meantime. Huge investments without success also point to another problem. In addition to high failure rates, the failures normally come at the very end of the process: 40 % in phase III of clinical trials, with two-thirds of the failures due to lack of efficacy [15]. For some drugs, for example those targeting components of the central nervous system, this is extremely important because failures at the late phase of a clinical trial greatly increase the cost of an ultimately successful drug. In addition, once this drug is approved, the market abounds with companies competing to sell it, analogous to “too many cooks spoiling the broth.” This results in a very high expenditures on promotion and related activities. In the USA—the only country for which data on expenditures on all major marketing and sales activities are available—total real spending on pharmaceutical promotions rose from US$ 11.4 billion in 1996 to US$ 29.9 billion in 2005 [11]. Another study suggests that the true figure (including meetings and e-promotions) is closer to US$ 57.5 billion [12]. Also in the USA, the number of sales representatives is three times the number of clinicians. This means that physicians receive three to four visits per week. The January 2013 issue of The Economist contained an article with the title ‘Has the ideas machine broke down?’ The argument was that entrepreneurs are not leading new, fundamental discoveries but are simply profiting from knowledge coming from academia, from publicly funded research: “Almost no entrepreneurs discover things fundamentally new, at least while working on their own nickel. Rather, in the words of Isaac Newton, they stood on the shoulders of giants. In this case, the giants were those scientists and engineers funded by society, through tax payer largess, that created the building blocks that led to many of the technological breakthroughs we have today.” www.cat-science.cat

Publicly funded research has powered a completely new field of medicine, with a completely new landscape. This knowledge has radically changed the strategies for targeting diseases. Some examples of this new landscape are genomic medicine, the ENCODE project, synthetic biology, and robotics. Genomic medicine. Genomic medicine has provided an abundance of information about the genetic basis of disease, thus providing insight into the physiopathology of disease and identifying new therapeutic targets. This knowledge is driving a major change in how medicine is perceived; a revolution is underway, based on personalized genomics and direct-to-consumer genomic services. Services such as 23andMe, a private DNA testing company, will analyze your saliva sample and, a few hours later, will send your genotype to your mobile phone, where you can share it with your friends on Facebook, perhaps garnering a “like.” Although, following ethical concerns, 23andMe no longer offers health-related services, initially it provided information on the risk of developing certain diseases. Additionally, you can buy access to your ancestry to find out whether you are more similar to your mother or your father, and where your ancestors came from. Genomic medicine is driving a new approach to therapy, based on a new medical model, personalized medicine. This model proposes customizing healthcare via decisions and practices tailored to the individual patient, by exploiting genetic and other relevant information. Consider that, for a single patient group with the same diagnosis and treated with the same medication, there will be responders, non-responders, and those who exhibit signs of increased drug toxicity. Personalized medicine, by tailoring medications based on genetic information, will greatly contribute to optimizing treatment. The ENCODE project. The Encyclopedia of DNA elements (ENCODE) project is a public research consortium that was launched in September 2003 by the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to identify all functional elements in the human genome [3]. An achievement of ENCODE has been the recognition that most of the non-coding DNA is involved in the regulation of the expressions of coding DNA, with important effects on health. Synthetic biology. Another major discovery that is driving and will drive a change in productivity is the capability of 30

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Dierssen

creating new life from inert chemicals. In 2010, Craig Venter and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute reported the creation of a bacterial chromosome which they used to successfully replace the DNA of a bacterium [4]. Similar new entities will probably be capable of replicating and of evolving into new forms. Craig Venter said: “This is an important step both scientifically and philosophically.” We must think about the potential uses of future new living organisms. They could be used, for example, for producing new drugs.

The problem, however, is that this basic research is lost in translation when it comes to converting findings into real therapeutic advances. The substantial increase in investment in pharmaceutical research has yielded only slight progress, since the new compounds are only marginally better, but much more expensive, than existing ones. Moreover, it has increased the gap between treatment available to the rich vs. the poor. In a survey of physicians, from 2000 to 2010, out of approximately 1000 new drugs, only 2 % earned one of their top two ratings, corresponding to a real therapeutic advance [7]. This is because most of the new drugs are simply the result of drug repositioning—the application of known drugs and compounds to new indications. Drug repositioning has grown in importance over the past few years because it is less expensive, and the risk versus reward trade-off of the available strategies is much better. But it also means that innovation does not reach the market. But, what are scientists truly worrying about? The pharmaceutical industry cannot be the ultimate answer. In fact, the effects of the environment must be taken into account. The environment is a strong determinant of how we develop and function. Genetic susceptibility factors are responsive to environmental ones. Genetically-susceptible individuals, when subjected to an adverse environment, are much more vulnerable and will go on to exhibit, in the case of childhood abuse, for example, antisocial behavior [1]. This finding has political implications. We are aware that we need to improve education, ensure a healthy environment, and change our way of interacting with this environment, but such steps must be initiated by policy-makers. To quote Leonard Schlain, “[T]here is no gene-controlled inheritable trait that cannot be altered by the environment […] Humans enter the world as a work-in-progress […] Nature/nurture is not an either/or duality but, rather, represents a both/and type of complementarity.” [4] Gene-environment interactions make people different, and the consequences of these interactions are in many cases decisive. Given the complexity of how phenotype is determined, how powerful or useful will the delineation of an individual’s genome be in predicting disease and in choosing therapy? Our understanding is far from complete; we need more basic science research, and we need more knowledge. Investment in science at the moment is below what it should be, and we must work to improve this situation. We are fortunate to live in a region of the world where science is important. But regarding research in medicine, there are other problems. Consider the aims of EU Horizon 2020—the eighth phase of the Framework Programs of Research and Technological Deve-

Robotics. Brain-computer and body-computer interfaces that help people with disabilities to be more independent are already available. Computer science has contributed to improving not only the health, but also the social inclusion of the disabled, decreasing the cost of dependency.

Genetics, the environment, and medicine One of the most important discoveries of recent years is that we can shape ourselves, both our brains and our bodies, and that these changes can be passed on to the next generation. This discovery is based on the recognition that there are changes in gene activity and expression that are not dependent on gene sequence; moreover, they are heritable—but not necessarily. The study of those changes in single genes or sets of genes is called epigenetics, and the global analysis of epigenetic changes across the entire genome, epigenomics. Epigenomics is one of the fastest emerging scientific fields, promising a huge growth potential by revolutionizing the therapeutics and diagnostics industries in healthcare. The US NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Mapping Consortium was launched as a public resource of human epigenetic data to facilitate disease-oriented research [http://www.roadmapepigenomics.org/]. Experiments have shown that a puppy that is raised by an anxious, low-nurturing mother becomes an anxious adult, whereas a puppy that is raised by a relaxed, highnurturing mother becomes a relaxed adult. The genome of this puppy actually changes, and this change will be transmitted to its progeny. More importantly, we can also change the impact of the environment pharmacologically. The study of heritable changes in genome function and gene expression has opened a new gateway in biology, allowing us to understand the basis of diseases, and presents incredible opportunities for disease diagnosis and drug discovery. The epigenomic therapeutic market is expected to explode in the coming years. www.cat-science.cat

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Contrib Sci

Producing progress?

Fig. 1. (A) Estimate of world poverty (2013). CIA Poverty Stats. Source: Wikimedia Commons. (B) World map index of the perception of corruption (2012). The Corruption Perception Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be, using a scale of 0–100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as being highly corrupt and 100 that it is perceived as being very clean. Source: Transparency International.

cannot be taken for granted that they will reach the people who need them (Fig. 1). In the words of Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International, a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption, “we must ensure that there are consequences to corruption. ‘No to impunity’ cannot just be a slogan—it must be carried out with all our combined strength and inspire citizens to speak up and no longer tolerate corruption.” [14]. In Spain, there is also a “map of shame.” Government policies of austerity, together with punitive changes to the benefit system, as well as media and ministerial attacks on the claimants, to name just a few [2], are placing an increasing number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion. While this affects the entire population, the consequences are particularly dire for the young population, the future of

lopment, the main targets of which are aging and obesity. In other words, funding from public agencies is mostly devoted to the diseases of developed countries.

Innovation-distorting economical inequalities Focused innovation is distorted by huge economic inequalities, which steer innovators away from seeking treatment of those diseases predominantly affecting the poor. The problem is that the map of some disorders, such as malaria, coincides with the map of poverty, but is in direct opposition with the map of drug and pharmaceutical investment. Moreover, if we compare these maps against the map of corruption, we see that even if the drugs reach these countries, it

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Dierssen

the country. We could appeal to ethical values, to morality. But from neuroscience we know that power (of any kind) equals reduced morality. There are studies showing that higher levels of power, or wealthier economies, drive more unethical attitudes and behaviors [10]. Policy proposals with ethical implications or that aim to achieve the egalitarian distribution of benefits and costs may fail. You could argue that we live in a democracy, but from neuroscience we also know that there are no rational voters. The political brain is an emotional brain and people are driven by emotions. Politicians use marketing techniques aimed at holding their traditional voters as well as widening their appeal. But in designing their campaigns they should take into account voters’ attitudes, by studying how voters’ electoral memory, sense of responsibility, and emotional state are associated with their votes. What do citizens think about when they stand in the polling booths? What is the impact of electoral arrangements on voting and voters’ perceptions of elections? How do voters evaluate government performance? Answers to these questions would help to generate more coherent systems.

Competing interests. None declared.

References 1. Caspi A, McClay J, Moffitt TE, Mill J, Martin J, Craig IW, Taylor A, Poulton R (2002) Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children. Science 297:851-854 2. Clarke J, Newman J (2012) The alchemy of austerity. Crit Soc Policy 32:299-319 3. ENCODE Project Consortium (2007) Identification and analysis of functional elements in 1% of the human genome by the ENCODE pilot project. Nature 447:799-816 doi:10.1038/nature05874 4. Gibson DG, Glass JI, Lartigue C, Noskov VN (2010) Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome. Science 329:52-56 doi:10.1126/science.1190719 5. Herper M (2012) The cost of creating a new drug now $5 billion, pushing big pharma to change. Forbes Pharma & Healthcare Blog [Online] Available at: http://tinyurl.com/lasbmtf 6. Kane G (2011) Why doesn’t energy efficiency happen? Terrainfirma Blog [Online] Available at: http://www.terrainfirma.co.uk/blog/2011/01 7. Kesselheim AS, Avorn J (2013) The most transformative drugs of the past 25 years: a survey of physicians. Nat Rev Drug Discov 12:425-431 8. Mullard A (2013) 2012 FDA Drug Approvals. Nat Rev Drug Discov 12:8790. doi:10.1038/nrd3946 9. Pharma Israel. The concept of intellectual property [Online] Available at: http://www.pharma-israel.org.il/property-view/post1/ 10. Piff PK, Stancato DM, Côté S, Mendoza-Denton R, Keltner D (2012) Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. doi:10.1073/pnas.1118373109 11. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2012) Pharma 2020: Marketing the future— which path will yout take? [Online] Available at: http://www.pwc.com/ gx/en/pharma-life-sciences/pharma-2020/pharma-2020-vision-path. jhtml 12. Mintzes B (2013) Promotion of Medicines and Patient Health [Online] Available at: http://www.politicsofmedicines.org/articles/promotionof-medicines-and-patient-health 13. Schlain L (2003) Sex, time and power. Penguin Books, NY, USA 14. Transparency International (2012) Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 [Online] Available at: http://issuu.com/transparencyinternational/docs/ cpi_2012_report/3?e=0 15. Wagner JA (2008) Back to the Future: Driving Innovation in Drug Development. Clin Pharmacol Ther 83:199-202

Concluding remarks The health systems of most countries perform very poorly in terms of cost-effectiveness, which reduces their societal value. Overall efficiency is greatly diminished by lobbying and deal-making, the patent application process, litigation, wasteful marketing, counterfeiting, and deadweight losses. Adverse disturbances of drug development by the scientific or regulatory environment have detrimental effects on social value. Disruptions in the flow of funding from sales to R&D lead to lower social returns. We need to address not only the drivers of investment in innovation, but also how innovation is done. I would like to see more research of these issues and a change in the regulatory environment aimed at raising the social value of innovation. We need to change the model. The outcome of treatment should be included in an assessment of its value. In other words, payment for pharmaceuticals should be based on performance. We should also improve science funding. And finally, academic knowledge, both theoretical and methodological, should be applied to policymaking. In the words of sustainability expert Gareth Kane, “[t]he true barrier to sustainability is about six inches wide—the space between our ears. Most of the problems and the solutions can be found there” [6]. www.cat-science.cat

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Producing progress?

About the author Mara Dierssen received her degree in medicine (1985) from the University of Cantabria and her PhD (1989) from that university Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. She did her postdoctoral work at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (1990–1993). She was assistant professor at the University of Cantabria (1993–1997), professor of psychophysiology and neurosciences at Ramon Llull University (1997–2006), and senior researcher at the Medical and Molecular Genetics Centre of the Cancer Research Institute (IRO) in Barcelona (1997–2001). Since 2005, she has been the director of the Associated Unit for Behavioral Research (National Biotechnology Centre-CSIC) and, since 2007, investigator of the Centre for Biomedical Research on Rare Diseases (CIBERER). She belongs to several academic societies and is a member of the executive committee of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). Dierssen has received numerous awards, including the National Culture

Award for Science (2008), the Sisley Lejeune Award (2010), and the Alicia Koplowitz Award (2011). She has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Currently, she is group leader of the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology of the Systems Biology Program at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (2007–) and president of the Spanish Society for Neuroscience (2013–2015).

*** Resum. Existeix una creixent llacuna en la productivitat de la indústria biofarmacèutica: els diners gastats en el desenvolupament de nous fàrmacs ha augmentat molt, però el gran augment esperat de noves teràpies basades en les revolucions recents de la biologia molecular i la genètica encara no s’han materialitzat. El llarg temps d’aprovació de nous fàrmacs, l'alt índex de fracassos, i l’alt nivell de competència són algunes de les raons d’aquesta situació. Hi ha qui sosté que els empresaris no estan promovent nous descobriments fonamentals i senzillament es beneficien del coneixement que es genera al món acadèmic. De fet, la investigació finançada amb fons públics està liderant un camp completament nou i el desenvolupament d’un nou escenari per a la medicina. El coneixement adquirit ha canviat enormement la nostra manera d’encarar les malalties. Com a resposta a aquest canvi, cal un nou model que tingui en compte com s’inverteix en innovació, i també com es fa la innovació. Paraules clau: innovació · indústria farmacèutica · medicina genòmica · epigenètica ·

sistema sanitari

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RESEARCH REVIEWS Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:35-47 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.187

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Social discourse concerning pollution and contamination in Spain: Analysis of online comments by digital press readers Arantza Begueria,1 Cristina Larrea,1* Araceli Muñoz,1 Eva Zafra,2 Jaume Mascaró-Pons,3 Miquel Porta4,5,6 Department of Cultural Anthropology and the History of America and Africa, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia. 2Department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Work, Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Catalonia. 3Department of History of Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Philosophy, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia. 4Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), Barcelona, Catalonia. 5 School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Catalonia. 6Ciber for Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain 1

Correspondence:

Cristina Larrea Departament d’Antropologia Cultural i Història d’Amèrica i Àfrica Universitat de Barcelona Montalegre, 1-6 08001 Barcelona, Catalonia Tel. +34-934037755 E-mail: larrea@ub.edu

Summary. This article examines the online comments written by readers of the major Spanish newspapers on the subject of pollution and contamination in Spain. The study offers a comparative analysis of the perceptions, ideas and discourse of those who post comments in the cases of fish contaminated with mercury and atmospheric pollution in the city of Barcelona. The research includes analysis based on some methodological principles of Grounded Theory, and reports differences between perceptions of food contamination —felt as a severe, imminent and global health problem— and of air pollution —perceived as a social and political problem. Readers’ comments reveal a significant tendency towards blaming the political and industrial sectors, among others, as well as a profound distrust of the institutions responsible for safeguarding public health. [Contrib Sci 10:35-47 (2014)]

Introduction The risks that are faced by citizens of Western countries are present every day in mass media narratives [4,6,54]. In such discourse, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the everyday products we use are often presented with a certain degree of suspicion, in relation to both their possible effects on human health and their environmental impact. Such suspicion and uncertainty appears in a context

in which, almost every week, news are published that are related to workplace or environmental accidents due to toxic substances, to food scares sparked by microbiological or chemical agents, to electromagnetic contamination, tobacco addiction, road accidents and the like. Consequently, citizens gradually gain awareness of the risks that configure what Beck calls “risk society” [6]. According to Beck, current dangers are different from those faced by society in the past, particularly because they

Keywords: atmospheric pollution · food contamination · internal contamination · digital press · readers’ comments · social perception of risk ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Pollution and contamination social discourse

Given that the personal information related to those who post comments online that can be accessed is minimal or non-existent, from the very outset this analysis suffers from a shortcoming: the absence of social profiles or knowledge of the cultural context of the people whose narrative is being analyzed. The only thing we know about them is that they are readers of the digital press and that they post comments on news related to the environment or health matters. For this reason, the considerations contained in this paper are not intended in any way to be a representative reflection of majority opinions within Spanish society, but rather a description of the tendencies that are expressed in comments: a collection of opinions and feelings. Others have previously explored the concept of public opinion in relation to discourse in the mass media in order to establish a relation between media discourse and social opinion [1,17,33,56], and have encountered various methodological difficulties along the way associated with the aim of presenting a definite image of the opinions of a society as a whole [4]. In contrast, the value of the opinions expressed here is to be found precisely in the fact that they are not the result of an ethnographic situation engineered for the purposes of obtaining data. The research method is closer to observation of discourse that arises in a real social situation, as proposed by García: saying something, telling somebody something, “is a social behavior that can be more revealing than that which is actually being explained” [18]. The value of this approach resides precisely in the fact that the comments represent behavior taken directly from a social reality—that of the chat rooms and comment forums of digital newspapers—that arises in the context of collective socializing made possible by communication technologies. This scenario allows honest and forthright opinions to be shared that might not otherwise be expressed in the presence of a researcher [24]. This work therefore distances itself both from the analysis of risk discourse in journalists’ texts and images in the mass media—which has been studied by other authors [4,53]—and from attempts to offer a snapshot of Spanish public opinion as a whole. Even so, the reflections contained in this work may provide us with a useful notion of some of the feelings, concerns, ideas and values that form part of Spanish society. To this end, we consider two themes: the presence of mercury in fish for human consumption and environmental pollution in the city of Barcelona. They are complementary topics, in the sense that each type of contamination involves different sources, and means of exposure and intake of toxic elements by humans: via food and air. Contamination by

are invisible. The individual citizen has no way of knowing whether chicken contains high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls; if a vegetable has been treated with potentially toxic pesticides; or how contaminated the sea is, before deciding to take a swim. Some pollutants are difficult to detect: they are colorless, tasteless and odorless. The risks they pose are imperceptible to our primary senses; senses that once served precisely to identify possible health risks. This fact has important consequences for how we structure social knowledge of risk. Nowadays, to gain knowledge of such risks, we have to rely on science and technology; so the citizen is dependent on that knowledge to remain informed about potential health risks. There are those who produce and disseminate scientific and technical knowledge: experts and public administration; and those who receive that knowledge: citizens. Interacting with these two spheres we find the mass media, which transmits knowledge on risks to the lay public. Without dismissing the role of experience or narratives of everyday life [8,31,52], analysis of what occurs in the mass media is important if we are to examine the ways in which knowledge of risk is incorporated into citizens’ social discourse, into their practices and into their everyday experiences [8]. Discourse, knowledge, facts and narratives regarding risk are transmitted to the public, to a great extent, through the mass media; so social experiences and our interpretations of daily life are fundamentally mediated by the relationship between citizens and the mass media [54]. Sources of risk, their possible consequences and the causal links between them are all defined within the field of media narrative [8]. For this reason, the study of the perceptions, ideas and reflections of media audiences is important in the analysis of the construction and representation of risk in social discourse. The aim of the current work is to analyze qualitatively the comments that readers post on the webpages of the main daily newspapers in Spain. Analysis of comments in the digital press has recently been used to study different subjects [10,11,27,47,50], particularly from the field of communication [3,9,12,14,22,28,29,55,57], as a way to harness the potential of the Internet [23,26] to analyze lay discourse on important social issues. Themes related to public health or the environment that have previously been analysed using readers’ comments include climate change [5,25], the system of paying people to take their medicine [38], surrogacy [32] and tobacco [16]. However, to date, the issue of human contamination by chemical products and their toxicity has not been reported in any learned journal.

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toxic substances is a public health issue that raises important concerns within the scientific community, both in Spain [41– 43] and internationally [37,44,45]. Atmospheric pollution is a recurring theme in newspapers, which inform the public about, for example, the poor quality of the air in Spain and plans at the local, regional and national levels to reduce environmental pollution, which particularly results from land traffic. During the course of this research, several issues caused controversy in the pages of the Spanish press, including: the strategic location of apparatus to measure contamination; the possibility of offering tax rebates to the owners of environmentally-friendly vehicles; the management of road traffic in large cities; and the reduction of the speed limit to 80 km/h on some roads in Catalonia. The presence of toxic elements in fish for human consumption is also particularly important in Spain, which is one of Europe’s largest producers and exporters of fish [13,36]. Spain is also one of the greatest consumers of fish in Europe, with an average of 45 kg/person/year compared to a European Union average of just 17 kg/person/year [13]. This issue resurfaced in the Spanish press on 30th June 2011, due to certain recommendations made by the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN)—which in January 2014 merged with the National Consumers Institute and became the Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition. Due to the high levels of mercury detected in some types of fish, the AESAN recommended that pregnant women or those of childbearing age, avoid eating swordfish, shark, red tuna and pike; and that children aged 3 to 12 reduce their intake to 50 g/week. The already sizable reaction of newspaper readers to this information increased a day later, when El País [http://elpais.com/ diario/2011/07/01/sociedad/1309471203_ 850215.html] published that the Spanish government had suppressed a report on the presence of mercury in fish for 7 years and had not made it public until it was legally obliged to do so due to legal action taken by the Non Governmental Organisation Oceana.

lonia and Balearic Islands, as one of the themes chosen was centred there. Throughout the text we include quotes from readers, which are referenced by two or three letters that represent the name of the newspaper and the date of the comment. For example, a comment in El País on 1st July 2011 is referenced as: “EP1/7/2011”. The codes used are: El País=EP, El Periódico=EPD, Público=PU, ABC=ABC, La Razón=LR, La Vanguardia=LV, El Punt-Avui=PA, El Mundo=EM, Última Hora=UH, El Segre=ES, Diari de Tarragona=DT, Diari de Balears=DB, Ara=ARA. We searched for news using the search engines provided by the digital versions of the newspapers and also via the portal My News Hemeroteca [http://mynewshemeroteca. es], an online service to search for news items. The keywords for our searches were the equivalents in Spanish of: “mercury”, “fish”, “tuna”, “toxic”, “toxicity”, “contamination/pollution”, “water”, “sea,” and “river”, for news on mercury in the fish; and “air”, “Barcelona”, “contamination/pollution”, “atmospheric” and “environmental”, for news on environmental pollution. We also included all possible combinations of these words. All the texts containing readers’ comments were included (news items, letters to the Editor and interviews). We retrieved a total of 78 hits: 56 on environmental pollution—with 862 readers’ comments—and 22 on the presence of mercury in fish—with 566 comments. All the 1428 comments were analyzed. We were not able to gather news on environmental pollution from the newspaper El País due to a change in format of the digital edition which led to the omission of readers’ comments. The data were analyzed using some of the main methods of Grounded Theory [21,49], through the identification and classification of emerging concepts and categories in the texts. In our initial analysis we identified categories and concepts that refer to discourse on contamination in Spain. In that analysis, carried out independently by several members of the group, we identified both discourse already present at the heart of Spanish society and also some ideas and values that were specific to the medium in which they were expressed. Based on that initial study, we performed a new codification in terms of thematic units and we then performed successive studies of the material in order to group it according to those units. This classification was examined to compare the ideas that arose in each specific publication and also to interrelate the different categories and thereby produce a broad qualitative description of the comments posted by readers of the Spanish digital press on the two themes studied.

Methodology We present a qualitative study of the comments posted by readers of the Spanish digital press during 2010 and 2011 on the webpages of the following newspapers: ABC, Ara, Diari de Balears, Diari de Tarragona, El Mundo, El País, El Periódico, El Punt-Avui, El Segre, La Razón, La Vanguardia, Público and Última Hora. The media included in the research are the main national newspapers and those of the regions of Cata-

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Pollution and contamination social discourse

Results

public health from the citizen. This political sphere was seen to include healthcare institutions, which the readers did not trust due to their lack of independence from both politicians and industry. A third social actor, “people” or “humanity,” was mentioned in order to refer to the practices of human beings: “we are destroying our health with our way of life,” “everything is a result of the behavior of people. We are destroying the planet and we are starting to suffer the consequences” (PU30/6/2011). These and other comments were infused with a sensation of distrust, both towards industry and towards political, economic and social interests. They also contained a certain sensation of sadness when faced with a world in decline. “We are a human plague, we devour everything, we destroy everything” (EP1/7/2011). Precisely that attitude caused some readers, a minority, to take offence from such critical discourse, which they considered to be “discourse of fear” whose result would be to keep people scared and, therefore, easy to control and manipulate: “Enough of all this ecologist nonsense with political undertones. There have always been high levels of pollution when there is high atmospheric pressure in winter” (EM9/2/2011). “What they want to do is keep the public out of it; send us out of our minds becoming hypochondriacs and sick” (LV30/6/2011). This discourse of denial was more conservative than the critical discourse; it offered a vision in which the present is a coherent consequence of a past that it is not very different from. The readers commented, for example, that we have always eaten all kinds of food without any problems: “Indecent nutritional alarmism with no foundation. Nothing is wrong, and even if we had hundreds of times more mercury there would still be nothing wrong” (PU15/4/2011). In fact, this idea is in sharp contrast to the current scientific evidence on the damage of exposure to pollutants such as mercury [2,51]. These readers also defended climate change as something natural, a phenomenon that has always happened since the start of planet Earth. With respect to climate change, it is interesting to note that while similar studies carried out on the press in the United States [5,25] find that discourse of denial is the most common among newspaper readers, here it is a minority position. In addition to climate change and nutrition, the discourse of denial argued that life expectancy in the Western world is greater than in the past and that it is still increasing. “Why won’t the ecologists get off our backs? Pollution will disappear due to the effects of technological development!”

Criticism and denial: readers’ discourse. The comments posted by the newspaper readers did not form a homogeneous whole with respect to knowledge and recognition of food and respiratory risks. In the texts studied, two basic types of discourse could be identified, in marked opposition to each other, which ran through the comments on all the news in several forms. The first was critical discourse with respect to the current contamination situation; this was discourse concerned with certain conditions of life that include contamination as an unavoidable component of our current way of life. In contrast, the second type of discourse claimed that the present conditions of life are better than those of the past and that the problems of our current way of life are outweighed by its benefits. According to this discourse of denial, human habitat and life are sufficiently well protected by legislation and, despite that, there are ecologist groups who make exaggerated and alarmist claims. The critical discourse, which was greatly extended among the readers of the newspapers studied, implies the existence of collective awareness of a social problem and of a need to implement solutions. As one reader commented, “We are letting the planet be pushed around: we poison the air, the subsoil and the water, and nobody will be able to continue living here” (EP1/7/2011). The problems of contamination were seen as being difficult to resolve at the personal level, although it was recognized that everybody should change their individual patterns of consumption. Therefore, responsibility was placed within the political arena. According to this line of thought, it was the responsibility of politics and politicians to deal with the social problem of contamination, whether atmospheric or of food. Specifically, comments characteristic of the critical discourse referred to three types of social actors who interact in the processes of the creation and solution of the problem of contamination. On the one hand, industry was seen as the source of contamination, whether of food or airborne pollution. Industry was perceived as a collection of entities at the service of economic profit, largely unaware of the damage they cause and unconcerned for citizens’ welfare. For this reason, the political sphere—the second actor—should apply policies that are more effective to safeguard public health. However, the measures actually adopted were the object of criticism on the part of the newspaper readers, who argued that government and official institutions do not enact effective policies and, in addition, that they hide important information concerning www.cat-science.cat

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industrial spills in general, pesticides, mass urbanization, tobacco, climate change, food additives, the pharmaceutical industry, genetically modified food, electromagnetic pollution, terrorism, economic recession, overpopulation of the planet, “mad cows” and chemical products. In the readers’ discourse, especially in the critical discourse, the presence of certain levels of mercury in fish seemed to form part of a situation of global hazard, which would fit in with Beck’s description of a “risk society” [6]. The concern expressed in the comments regarding food was extended to issues concerning energy, politics, economics and demographics. In the comments that the news of atmospheric pollution prompted, in contrast, the danger for human health was mentioned to a lesser degree, while most space was taken up by arguments concerning political responsibility to solve the problem of contamination caused by vehicles in cities: “Ordinary people keep being terrorized at every turn with a new danger. But people aren’t babies and the majority of us know that this is no more than another manoeuvre to distract our attention from the only danger that is really threatening us: politicians” (ABC1/7/2011). “What we need are brave politicians who are prepared to penalize those who pollute” (PA12/10/2010). These comments also mentioned dangers associated with environmental pollution, such as tobacco, traffic accidents, climate change and chemtrails; that is, danger associated with the air and cars. These types of comparison were made through their similarity with the subject referred to and were much more limited than those made in the case of food hazards. The differences in perception in terms of severity between one type of contamination and the other were considerable. While the question of toxic substances in fish was conceived as very serious, intolerable and extremely dangerous for health, atmospheric pollution was seen as a more social and political problem that was awaiting resolution. However, and although food contamination was perceived as very serious, some readers also considered that it could be managed by the individual in a more straightforward way than atmospheric pollution could. If provided with the appropriate information, the citizen could avoid food contamination through not consuming certain food. In the case of environmental pollution, individuals have no capacity to act and control what enters their bodies by breathing. So, the comments on the news referring to fish included many references to the possibilities that individuals have to control and manage their own health; while the comments on environmental pollution called on politicians to find solutions. This dialectic be-

(EM1/10/2011). This technocentric perspective [5] established a line that ran from the past—an unspecific past—and continued towards the future in a linear and coherent way. In contrast, defenders of the critical discourse expressed their despair at the imminence of large-scale changes caused by the current model of progress. Some judged progress positively; others considered that it was difficult for the positive consequences of progress to compensate against the negative ones. Of course, other readers occupied the middle ground, siding with neither one nor the other point of view consistently. Although there were comments that staunchly defended one of these positions, particularly those of the denial type, others used the reflections and arguments of both types of discourse in an inclusive and interrelated way; albeit sometimes contradictorily. However, it is particularly notable that both types of argument were found in all the newspapers studied, whatever political leaning they have. The two attitudes towards the problem of contamination were reproduced in all the newspaper, along with the differences of perception between food contamination and atmospheric pollution. Food and air. Comparison of the comments regarding air and food contamination revealed a much more pressing concern in the case of mercury in fish than in that of environmental pollution. “I don’t know what to eat anymore”, “We are poisoning ourselves”, “We are digging our own graves, this is the beginning of the end for the human race” (EP30/6/2011). Food contamination was seen as more dangerous than atmospheric pollution, as if it had a more important effect on health, was more immediate and affected the entire population. In this case, the public’s perception coincides with the scientific evidence [19,40]. The readers’ comments showed open concern with respect to the news they discussed, while they also expressed considerable indignation at the way the government had acted or suppressed the report mentioned above. “It is terrible the way we are getting used to our food being poisoned” (ABC1/7/11). This mention of poisoning, which was repeated very often by readers, attests to their concern. That concern also became apparent in the type of comparisons that people drew between risk associated with food and other types of hazard. In the comments on mercury in fish, the readers employed a wide range of arguments that included, among others, reflections on the nuclear accident at Fukushima—which occurred during our field work—and

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Pollution and contamination social discourse

Some journalist texts, a minority, attempted to explain the process of the formation of atmospheric pollution. In such cases, we found readers’ comments that examined the data contained in the news and provided new information or cited scientific studies. This generated debate and reflection which led to discussion of the adequateness of the data provided by the newspapers and the different scientific theories regarding the formation of pollution, the hole in the ozone layer or climate change. It is true that readers entered into dialogue and negotiation over the information that was offered to them, they contested it, they supported it or they refuted it; that is, they did not simply accept the information passively [35,48]. Nevertheless, the themes of the discussion were set beforehand by the subjects presented in the news items, the selection—and ruling out—of certain themes and the way in which they were presented; all of which influenced the comments in one way or another [46]. The content of news items influences the comments that they provoke, so that the social relevance of risk and of the dangers associated with contamination are constantly constructed and reinforced in this way [54]. This is how a complex interrelation is established between the emitter of a message and those who receive it, which contributes to the construction and representation of social reality.

tween personal decisions and collective measures is also central to many debates on public health. In this case, the idea that food contamination is more easily managed than air pollution is in contrast with current scientific evidence, which brings to light the need for effective health policies in the case of food as well [19,39]. Readers and mass media. It is commonly believed that the mass media is aligned with certain economic powers, political parties and ideologies. For that reason, the similarity of the discourse encountered in the comments of the readers of all the different newspapers is relevant to our analysis which, once this had been established, was carried out as if we were dealing with just one single text, in the semiotic sense. The two positions adopted with regard to the problem of contamination were present in all the newspapers studied, as too were the differences between the cases of food and atmospheric contamination. In the same way, comments that criticized or praised political parties were spread equally among all the newspapers. A newspaper such as ABC, for example, traditionally conservative and aligned with the major party in Spain, the Partido Popular (PP), received both comments praising that party and comments criticizing it. Readers of La Vanguardia criticized both the ousted left-wing coalition that had governed Catalonia and also, on occasions, the new coalition of Convergència and Unió. Although it is true that some of the comments in each newspaper matched the ideology that the paper is supposed to have, it is also the case that such comments were not unanimous. In this way, they reflected attitudes and public opinion that cut across conventional political ideological divides. However, the way in which the information was presented and placed in context, and the subjects dealt with in the news did influence the readers’ comments, in the sense that they laid out the route for the comments to follow. In news that presented the recommendations of the AESAN, the general tendency in the comments was to show alarm and to reflect on the situation in terms of human food consumption. In contrast, in news on how this information had been suppressed by the Spanish government, the readers criticized this fact, which led to surprise and indignation. When another news item treated the effects of toxic substances on human health in a general way, the readers’ comments tended to propose solutions. In this way, although the information contained in the news “does not have the power to tell people how to think, it does manage to impose an agenda of what the public is to think about” [46].

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Risk and blame. A large number of comments on news that referred to contamination, whether of food or air, dealt with the causes and who was to blame for the situation. The news on the presence of mercury in fish and on the suppressed report generated a flood of comments that were seething with indignation, calling for resignations within the government and denouncing how unfair it was not to inform the public in addition to the politicians being responsible not having adopted more effective measures to resolve the issue of contaminated fish. Industries that contaminate the seas and rivers were also criticized, together with the food industry, whose economic motivation prevented it from correctly informing consumers of the contents of products. Western societies are “almost ready to treat each death as chargeable to someone’s account, every accident as caused by someone’s criminal negligence, and every sickness a threatened prosecution. Whose fault? Is the first question” [15:15-16]. The comments posted on atmospheric pollution in Barcelona criticized the authorities for allowing cities to become polluted. Those who were politically responsible were criticized for not having developed plans to reduce the city’s traffic. They were criticized for implementing projects

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food for human consumption could contain substances that are potential health risks. Meanwhile, they reiterated their place within a system in which political and healthcare institutions are responsible for ensuring compliance with these moral values. In this way, the question of contamination serves to uphold a specific vision of the world; a moral community that legitimates or condemns certain policies [15]. Some of the comments within the discourse of denial dealt with the interests of ecologist groups: “My humble opinion is that behind this there is no other explanation than to decrease national demand for these products so that in this way a much more lucrative export market can be consolidated, as is the case of the Japanese market” (ABC1/7/2011). And even: “These catastrophe hunters are devoted to scaring us in order to justify biased publicity in favor of other products. Who is paying them?” (ABC1/7/2011) Although these accusations were not backed up by facts, the comments suggested that the so-called environmentalist lobby was masking other objectives that were related to the political or economic interests of the environmentalist groups. In this way, the discourse of denial also used the notion of risk to construct a certain moral vision of the environmentalist movement. The notion of contamination and its different meanings can also serve certain groups in their fight against institutions, abuses of power and political fraud. In addition, given that the notion of “individual” is central to our society, certain concepts of risk also serve to protect it [15]. In this way, the comments of readers aligned with the critical discourse expressed indignation at the violation of individual and collective rights to healthcare and information, and also at the way in which responsibility is deposited in the hands of the citizen: “We live in a country in which no politician or public body takes any responsibility. It is better to comment on it, delegate the decision to the consumer and if anyone becomes ill after consuming it [...], to say that they had been warned. It is intolerable” (EP30/6/2011). The notion of contamination serves to call for a social order in which the individual is at the center of the system and is the focus of social and moral priorities. Thus, the notions of risk deal with the relation between the individual and “otherness”; that is, with how the relationship between the individual and the surrounding world is established [30]. Some readers’ comments, particularly those dealing with food, went further than to lay blame in the political arena and referred to “humanity” as being responsible for the problem of contamination. They referred to “we”, to “hu-

whose sole aim was to generate more income for the city’s coffers but which did not solve the problem of poor air quality. The search for who was to blame monopolized these comments, which focused indignation on the political arena more than on the other actors involved. According to some readers’ comments, the different public administrations are responsible for adopting measures to mitigate the problems caused by pollution. Although it was recognized that individuals should change their transport and consumption habits, it was also mentioned that these changes could not be carried out without a series of political measures to accompany and promote them. In the case of food contamination, the main thing standing in the way of such changes was the actions of the industry, whose polluting practices were not sufficiently pursued or sanctioned by the administration. In the case of atmospheric pollution, in contrast, the car industry was hardly criticized at all; in contrast, emphasis was placed on the ineffectiveness of the political management of the issue. Mary Douglas argued in Risk and Blame [15] that the issue of contamination is particularly useful when it comes to assigning social responsibilities and establishing blame. Although Douglas was referring to external contamination and specifically from the point of view of American society, our analysis of comments on two specific themes showed that the controversy regarding risk is also a political and cultural issue in our context; it prompted a hunt for where to place responsibility and blame, wherever that might be. We were surprised by the scarcity of comments that referred to the possibility of social organization and political mobilization of citizens; those that were concerned with the search for solutions left them up to the actions of politicians and industry, with no call for civil action to force those sectors to change their ways. So we can see that society looks for somebody to blame for every phenomenon, as a way to organize and protect itself. The current meaning of “risk” is not neutral; it has a cultural, moral and political meaning, since it serves to proportion responsibility to certain social groups and positions, while denying other sources of responsibility. Through the specific election of what is dangerous and what is not, the concept of “risk” helps to create and maintain a certain vision of the world and in this way establish what is morally acceptable and what is not [15]; just as could be seen from the comments posted by newspaper readers. The texts on the contamination of fish expressed resounding disapproval of the situation, which was deemed unthinkable and morally unacceptable. Readers showed their moral condemnation of the fact that

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mans”, who, through our way of life, are poisoning the planet and destroying the life forms on it. Referring to humanity as this generic being in who risk is constructed and unfolds would respond to an integral vision of a globalized world which no longer pays much attention to local contexts of risk, but which centers its attention on global and transnational phenomena, just as Anthony Giddens also noticed [30]. These comments would, in part, be along the argumentative line followed by those who think that progress is bringing about the destruction of the planet; that modern life destabilizes the social system on which it is based; and that scientific development has outstripped the limits of nature in the wrong direction [7]. This type of argument reinforces the idea that the notion of risk is associated with moral defects and that it can be used to denounce and criticize them [15]. In some comments that adopted critical discourse, scorn was directed at progress and its moral implications. In the past there was also fear of the destruction of nature and humanity, but its origin was placed in entities such as God or fate. At present, these fears are related to the perception that human activity has made catastrophe imminent [30]. The readers’ comments were clear: “The only solution involves radically changing human beings and our way of life and that is really very difficult” (EM10/11/2010). The comments often criticized the Western system of social life, which was seen as being based on mistaken moral values, and whose institutions are not worthy of trust. In that way, humanity would be to blame for its own self-destruction: “The year is 2020: after several decades of consumerist rampage, capitalism explodes and takes with it an extremely beautiful planet that had been carved with infinite patience for millions of years. Up until the very last minute, one species (the most intelligent, it presumed) reveled in its own magnificent achievements” (EP30/6/2011).

profit is the top priority of these companies and that this is valued above all else. “We are trapped between mafias that get rich at the expense of our ignorance. What matters is the lowest cost and greatest presence of the product, not the quality or the nutritional value; and the last on the list is the health of those who eat it” (EP30/6/2011). The criticism was extended to the entire food industry: “We have had enough of them toying with our health in relation to what we eat, you cannot trust anyone. For years I have been watching what I eat because I don’t trust what I am sold; it is rotten to the core, business is more important than our health!” (EP30/6/2011). Along similar lines, some of those who made comments considered that politicians, who should take responsibility for the regulation of business activity, are as a whole corrupt and inefficient; at the service of the interests of industry and of their own profits. “In this country, nothing that affects businessmen can be touched. The businessman is sacred” (PU15/4/2011), one reader said. “Do we need any further evidence to make it absolutely clear that governments do not serve the people but businesses; the multinationals that devour everything, including the planet?” (EP30/6/2011). Readers expressed the opinion that politicians take decisions in accordance with the benefits they stood to make, whether monetary profit or political gain, without taking into account the consequences for the environment. The readers asked questions related to justice and social equality when they argued that politicians are major contaminators of the environment while at the same time they pass laws in favor of the environment. According to those readers, politicians are protected by an economic situation that allows them to pay the fines that they themselves are imposing: “It is totally clear that the political classes are deeply conditioned by capital, given that many politicians end up on some board of directors once their political career is over” (EP1/7/2011). Among the political institutions criticized we also find those that are specifically in charge of public health. In addition to the AESAN, those who posted comments also criticized supranational organizations such as the World Health Organization or the European Union, whose roles in the swine flu crisis some readers reflected on as decisive in causing social alarm which ended up benefiting the pharmaceutical industries. The feeling of mistrust was patent: “The only thing I had not yet seen in this life! That the institutions which are trusted to safeguard public health recommend moderate consumption of a toxic product!” (PU1/7/2011). The concept of trust is central to the work of Giddens on

Uncertainty and mistrust. Both those who favored critical discourse and those who aligned themselves with the discourse of denial demonstrated open mistrust not only of the institutions whose job it is to manage the problem of contamination, but also towards the narrative that surrounded that management. Readers’ comments identified four basic areas on which they centered their criticism: industry, politics, communications and science. Contaminating industries—and sometimes by extension, all industrial activity—were seen as the main obstacle to overcome in order to effectively protect the environment and public health. Readers perceived that economic

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can’t remember right now, once said: never trust any survey or any study that you have not manipulated yourself” (EPD15/10/2010), “What criterion do they follow? There was a time when olive oil was bad for you, now it’s the best there is. Nobody can understand that” (EP30/6/2011). In today’s society, citizens are obliged to trust science when making choices and assessing the risks they are faced with. “People now cannot simply rely on local knowledge, tradition, religious precepts, habits or observation of others’ practices to conduct their everyday lives, as they did in premodern and early modern times. Rather, they must look principally to experts they do not personally know and are unlikely ever to meet to supply them with guidelines” [30:75]. However, this scientific knowledge is also subject to doubt and criticism. “The fact that experts frequently disagree becomes familiar terrain for almost everyone” [20]. Thus, modernity creates a universe in which knowledge is constantly shifting and the individual adapts to this by choosing between an ever increasing series of options. This situation, as can be seen from the opinions studied for this research, seems to contribute to creating a collective feeling of mistrust, insecurity and anxiety. The readers expressed their skepticism towards the institutions that govern them, towards the information offered by newspapers and towards the scientific data that all of them rely on. The vision of science expressed by the readers is similar to that presented by Beck in Ecological politics in an age of risk [7]. According to Beck’s perspective, modern science has a monopoly on the definition of danger, that is, not only is it the cause of danger but it is also responsible for concealing it. Central components of modern scientific discourse contribute to legitimizing and, on occasions, minimizing the risks that the public are subjected to [7,34]. One reader commented: “It seems that these days science has to be devoted to resolving the problems that science itself has caused. You mustn’t eat spinach because it contains too much of what they give to it to produce lots of it. Fascinating!” (EP30/6/ 2011). One of the concerns of readers was related to the openness and the truthfulness of the information that they receive via the newspapers. Frequently, those posting comments expressed the conviction that both those who are politically responsible and industry suppress information that would be valuable to safeguard public health. In the texts on food, readers commented: “They tell us now because the risk is real but how long have they known? What are they hiding from us?”, “They don’t want to tell us the truth and they release the news to us one snippet at a time and all dressed up”

risk [20]. In a situation in which citizens must trust scientific knowledge and institutional risk management, trust becomes a vital requirement [30]. However, that trust is tainted with uncertainty, partly due to the contradictions expressed within the scientific community and within the political field. In this sense, readers’ comments expressed profound suspicion towards the institutions that govern society. Skepticism also affected areas devoted to science and communication. Faced with the contradictory data and information that frequently appears in the mass media, readers commented that scientific studies can be politically manipulated and, therefore, they are not worthy of much confidence. In fact, some readers offered external studies that showed mistakes in the information offered by the newspapers. It was also said that the mass media is at the service of both its own interests and other people’s, and that in this way it fails in its duty to inform the citizens impartially. Those who adopted a more critical discourse expressed the opinion that the mass media provides little information on the problems of contamination, and that it does so too late: “And by the way, dear journalists, could you inform the public of this, as it is your job to do so?!” (ABC10/2/2011). Those who leaned towards the discourse of denial also criticized the newspapers for publishing alarmist news with the supposed intention of selling more papers: “Watch out for the mass media and their terrible responsibility in handling this type of information, ... They almost always let themselves be dragged into sensationalism” (EP30/6/2011). According to these voices, the scientific discourse, mediated through the newspapers, offered the perfect arguments for alarming the public, manipulating them and feeding them the government line. The case of tobacco—the laws regulating which were made more restrictive in Spain during this research (Act 42/2010)—exemplifies the way in which the scientific discourse was questioned by a large section of the readership, who highlighted the paradox between implementing bans on the consumption of tobacco, but failing to implement effective measures against the contamination generated by private vehicles. In this way they denounced the use of scientific reports to legitimize measures in accordance with political aims: “It is an axiom these days that when somebody backed up by the false image of being scientific issues a judgment sanctioning something, we have to discover the other side of things and find out where the money is going. Who are they trying to benefit?” (EP30/6/2011), one reader commented. Others, along similar lines, indicated the political and economic use of scientific studies: “A politician, whose name I

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as a less polluted place than the city and as a healthier place to live; although some news items explained how contamination also builds in the outskirts of cities. The readers considered that living in the city brought with it the acceptance of a lower quality of life than living in the countryside; understanding by countryside everything outside the metropolitan limits. So, this countryside was related with the natural, healthy and less polluted. Paradoxically, some city resident complained that those who live in the countryside pollute the cities when they drive into them by car to work, without taking into account that they surely also pollute the places they come from. The countryside was also related with the past; a past that was linked to a simpler and slower way of life than the present, and that used local resources. So it was said that the fish that people ate in the past was fish that they caught themselves or that their neighbors caught. Individuals exercised control over their immediate surroundings and they were not mediated by today’s technology: “Years ago, everything our grandparents ate was from their fields or their farm, they drank freshly collected milk, … And they were healthy!” (PU4/7/2011). The most natural food, linked with the countryside and with the past, was fresh food; that is, food that has not been processed by the food industry: “People used to eat meat from their livestock, vegetables from their land, milk, cheese, bread, ... did not undergo chemical treatments, it was more natural, ... and it still had all its vitamins and nutrients” (EP1/7/2011). In contrast, packaged food was seen as artificial, potentially manipulated and possibly containing additives. This association is particularly interesting because of the paradox it throws up in the case of fish, given that fish is fresh food that has not been processed by the food industry but which, nonetheless, is suspected of being toxic. The future was generally mentioned in a negative way, with references to a contaminated planet with sick inhabitants: “If the human race survives in the future, historians will be horrified by our contamination and poisoning of ourselves” (PU15/4/2011). The critical discourse tended to consider that the future would see major changes compared to the present. Food, for example, would be artificial food: energy pills or cocktails of synthetic products. In contrast, adherents to the discourse of denial saw a much greater degree of continuity over time and did not establish a dichotomy between past and future, but rather continuity through scientific and social progress. That progress, according to them, would allow an ever better quality of life,

and “economic and political interests are hiding the truth with deceptive measures” (EP30/6/2011). Many comments suggested that the real cause of the recommendations not to consume fish was to be found in the (then) recent Fukushima nuclear accident; the effect of the resultant radiation on the fish would be the real reason to recommend that the public do not consume much of it: “They are not telling us the truth, just as they didn’t tell us the truth about Chernobyl, since the nuclear lobby made sure the truth was hidden” (PU15/4/2011). In this way, institutions would be devoted to covering up the real consequences of the Fukushima accident in order to protect the interests of the energy industry and of the political groups that fund and protect it. These comments do not take into account the fact that the report on mercury in fish was already in the government’s hands 7 years before the Fukushima accident, as the information was only published in El País. According to the comments, people were being deceived, just as they were over the swine flu crisis, depriving people of the real information about the risks they faced. Those who posted comments on the newspaper stories displayed an important sensation of vulnerability and anxiety, particularly regarding the news on the presence of mercury in fish. Without vital information or the necessary tools to fight the danger they faced, they could not trust the institutions that govern society either. So they expressed the impossibility of taking action personally to control what they were exposed to. “From vegetables to the air we breathe, where will all this lead? We cannot be sure about anything” (EP30/6/2011), “My God, how I worry for my daughter!” (PA12/10/2010), “Is there anything left in this world of greed that is not contaminated??? Can we be sure about what we are eating???” (EP30/6/2011).

Past and future. Reflection on the risks society faces is, in part, implicit reflection on what the future will be like. However, the readers’ comments focused more on the past and on considering the differences between the past and the present. Comments within the critical discourse established a dichotomy between an idealized past and a future that is undesirable for human welfare. This dichotomy was related, in addition, to two further dichotomies: rural–urban duality, which came up in relation to the news on environmental pollution; and the natural–artificial division, which was evoked in the news about food. The countryside was seen

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greater life expectancy and increased availability of food products. Nevertheless, there were more opinions within the critical discourse. Their notions regarding the past referred to a simpler way of life than our current system, one in which local resources were managed by the individual. In contrast, packaged food and the use of cars forms part of a complex system in which individuals do not control the important things in their lives or their health, and in which technology acts as a mediator of many of the processes that individuals performed themselves in the past. In this sense, those who posted comments were aware that the problem of contamination forms part of the political system and that this issue is related to the complex social and economic discourse of the state and of Western capitalism. The feelings of mistrust and vulnerability expressed by readers could be related, in part, to this perception of a lack of control, as well as to the notion of a complex structure of social institutions to which the citizen has no direct access. However, such a basic idea of the individual caught up in an overly complex social system was complemented with the belief that the real solutions to the problem of contamination will involve global and public measures; that is, collective management of social life. Although citizens can and must adopt environmentally-friendly individual practices, such as getting around by bicycle or eating organic food, the real solutions to pollution require public and collective management from the political arena, which is responsible for implementing systems of regulation and eradicating contaminating practices. So, the social community structure and its institutions, which some readers seem to mistrust, are also seen as absolutely necessary for social change to tackle the problems of contamination.

food contamination, but more difficult to solve. The rural–urban dichotomy emerges as a paradigm of the ambiguities in this field. Our analysis indicates the existence of a paradox that forms part of the dialectics between the individual and the collective. Although readers appeal to the need for changes in individuals’ conduct, they display a clear conviction that the only efficient solutions and ultimate responsibility for safeguarding public health must come from collective public institutions. However, those institutions—together with industry, science and the mass media—are criticized for their lack of effective action in safeguarding public health. The study shows, in addition, a scarcity of comments that call for the use of collective political action or public pressure to be brought on the institutions. In short, these convictions highlight the central role of the welfare state in the values of Spanish society; as well as a significant distrust of the current model of public management and of the possibility of collective action by citizens to change that model. Trapped in this paradox between the individual and the collective, we find a citizen who feels vulnerable, sceptical and disenchanted. On the other hand, the critical discourse seems to be more focused on food contamination, which is perceived as more serious, more imminent, more global and, paradoxically, more easily managed by the citizen than atmospheric pollution is. The dichotomy natural–artificial emerges in the collective thinking and it is also related with the idea of poisoning, which those who posted comments allude to both in terms of the individual and with reference to the planet. The finding that the concept of poisoning is adopted as a metaphor for food contamination is important for our understanding of the collective perception of the issue of human contamination. This notion within popular thought—historically associated with the opposite idea, that of an antidote—once again appeals to the possibilities of personal management of one’s own contamination which, as we have seen, is related in a highly complex way with the idea of collective management of the problem. In addition, this finding opens up new lines of research that could examine in greater depth the modes in which the idea of human contamination is perceived in citizens’ discourse and how scientific knowledge can be related to this lay discourse in our society.

Conclusions This study deals with the ideas, values and concerns of part of the Spanish public with respect to the subject of contamination. Our findings unveiled some issues that are relevant for reflection and for proposing public and private policies that will safeguard public health and the environment. Our analysis of the comments in this study shows that atmospheric pollution and food contamination are perceived symbolically in very different ways. Two thematic axes thus emerge. On the one hand, environmental pollution is perceived as a social and political problem, not as serious for health as

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Acknowledgements. This study forms part of broader research into discourse and sociocultural practices associated with the bodily experience of contamination by chemical products, in general, and specifically with internal contamination by persistent toxic compounds (PTCs) in Spain. It is carried out by the research group of Toxic Bodies and Sociocultural Etnoepidemiology of the Internal Contamination by Persistent Toxic Substances in

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Spain, Department of Anthropology, University of Barcelona; and is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation’s National Program for Basic Research Projects (CSO 2010/18661). Competing interests. None declared.

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45. Prüss-Ustün A, Vickers C, Haefliger P, Bertollini R (2011) Knowns and unknowns on burden of disease due to chemicals: a systematic review. Environ Health 10:9 46. Rodrigo Alsina M (2005) La construcción de la noticia. Paidós, Barcelona 47. Rudwick S (2010) “Coconut” notes: Discursive constructions of race identity in South Africa. Arch Orient 78:55-73 48. Shaw RL, Whitehead C, Giles DC (2011) “Crack down on the celebrity junkies”: Does media coverage of celebrity drug use pose a risk to young people? Health Risk Soc 12:575-589 49. Strauss A, Corbin J (1990) Basics of qualitative research. Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA 50. Tardy CM (2009) “Press 1 for English”: textual and ideological networks in a newspaper debate on US language policy. Discourse Soc 20:265-286 51. Tchounwou PB, Ayensu WK, Ninashvili N, Sutton D (2003) Environmental exposure to mercury and its toxicopathologic implications for public health. Environ Toxicol 18:149-175

52. Tulloch J, Lupton D (2001) Risk, the mass media and personal biography: Revisiting Beck’s ‘knowledge, media and information society’. Eur J Cult Studies 4:5-27 53. Tulloch J, Zinn JO (eds) (2011) Health, Risk & Society, special issue: risk and media, 13. Taylor & Francis, London, UK 54. Tulloch J, Zinn JO (2011) Risk, health and the media. Health. Risk Soc 13:1-16 55. Vultee F (2012) Man-child in the White House. Journal Stud 13:54-70 56. Wilkinson I (1999) News media discourse and the state of public opinion on risk. Risk Manag 1:21-31 57. Xiao L, Polumbaum J (2006) News and ideological exegesis in chinese online media: a case study of crime coverage and reader discussion on two commercial portals. Asian J Commun 16:40-58

*** Resum. Aquest article analitza els comentaris en línia que escriuen els lectors dels principals

diaris espanyols sobre la contaminació a Espanya. L’estudi realitza una anàlisi comparativa de les percepcions, idees i discurs dels comentaristes en el cas de peix contaminat amb mercuri i en el de contaminació atmosfèrica a la ciutat de Barcelona. A partir d’una anàlisi basada en principis metodològics de la Teoria Fonamentada, es descriuen les diferències entre la percepció de la contaminació alimentària —sentida com un problema de salut pública greu, imminent i global— i la contaminació atmosfèrica —percebuda com un problema social i polític. Els comentaris dels lectors revelen una tendència significativa cap a la culpabilització del camp polític i industrial, entre d’altres, així com una profunda desconfiança cap a les institucions encarregades de vetllar per la salut pública. Paraules clau: contaminació atmosfèrica · contaminació alimentària · contaminació interna

· premsa digital · comentaris dels lectors · percepció social del risc

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RESEARCH REVIEWS Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:49-64 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.188

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Theoretical reflections on ethnobiology in the third millennium Ugo D’Ambrosio Catalan Society for Biology, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Ugo D’Ambrosio Botany Laboratory, Faculty of Pharmacy University of Barcelona Av. Joan XXIII, s/n 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia E-mail: ud6@kentforlife.net

Summary. As in several other scientific endeavors, ethnobiology has greatly diversified around the turn of the millennium. Despite several efforts being made during recent years, the discipline still gives the impression of being in needs to establish its identity among better defined fields of study. Trying to contribute to fill this gap, this review succinctly discusses the multidisciplinary foundations of ethnobiology and its paradigmatic, theoretical and conceptual diversification during recent decades. This field of study is characterized along these lines as “the investigation of the material and symbolic interrelationships between human beings and the rest of existing organisms.” Major ethnobiological perspectives, putative subdivisions, main research foci, and preponderant subjects are proposed and roughly outlined, in addition to the foremost dualistic paradigmatic approaches and multifaceted aims common in this branch of knowledge. The relationships and hybridizations between ethnobiology and political ecology in a critical perspective conclude the review, with a final speculation on supplementary future steps and challenges amongst ethnobiology practitioners. [Contrib Sci 10:49-64 (2014)]

Ethnobiological research has reemerged in recent decades with manifold novel perspectives, yet still relatively few and partial theoretical and epistemological frameworks are put forward in the literature. This is partly due to its diffuse history, relatively recent designation (a bit more than a century ago), its pluridisciplinary origins, along with its predominantly descriptive and applied foci. Additional factors such as geographical ubiquity and heterogeneity of ethnobiological developments both at academic and non-academic levels, along with its dynamic and intricate history contribute to the fluidity of the discipline. As a consequence, theoretical frameworks on ethnobiology are usually scattered along the literature, without extensive and comparative works dealing with these natures thus far, except a few books and edited

collections presented later. Having nurtured from a myriad of other fields of study, ranging from folk medicine and cognitive anthropology to conservation biology or bioprospecting, ethnobiology is increasingly becoming an academic context into which multiple questions and problems are intended to be studied, and if possible, solved. Nonetheless, still only few universities offer specific undergraduate or graduate degrees in ethnobiology per se, while for the most part still immersed within either anthropology or biology/botany departments, a limitation to transdisciplinarity that is still evident. A similar phenomenon happens—of course with a few exceptions— regarding academic funding sources, which tend to limit research projects according to their connection either to the natural, or the social sciences, but rarely both. To further

Keywords: history of ethnobiology · ethnobiological subdivisions · ethnobiological paradigms · research foci · critical ethnobiology ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Ethnobiology

Table 1. Major phases in the history of Ethnobiology, from prehistory to current days according to different authors Phase

Period

Characteristics

Clément 1998a

Hunn 2007

Svanberg et al. 2011

1. Pre-colonial (pre-classical)

Prior to 15 century

Background, roots Prehistory and ancient history

Pre-classical

Pre-modern

The recording man

2. Colonial (pre-classical)

15th to late 19th centuries

First major globalization and transculturation The scholar turn

Pre-classical

First steps

Nat. Hist. (Renaissance) Econom. bot. (18th c.) Explorers and armchair scholars (19th c.)

3. Formative (classical)

Late 19th century to 1940’s

Birth of modern ethnobiology The ethnographic turn

Economic usages (1860-1899) Recollection of additional information (1900-1931) First syntheses (1932-1953)

First steps

Popular medicine Folklore & plant name research Plant use (late 19th c. onwards) Ethnographical studies (early 20th c.)

4. Emic (classical)

1950`s to mid 1970’s

Cognitive ethnobiology The emic turn

Emic knowledge (1954-1968) Classification (1969-1980)

Cognitive ethnobiology

Prolongation of early 20th c. stages

5. Systemic (post-classical)

Late 1970’s to 1991

Consolidation The ecological and pharmacological turns

Associations (1981- 1992)

Ethnoecology

Emergence as independent discipline in Europe

6. Contemporary (post-classical)

1992 to present

Diversification The biocultural and reflexive turns

Resources and their management (1993 onwards)

Indigenous ethnobiology

Current trends

Adapted from [19,51,84].

illustrate this underrepresentation of this sphere of investigation, by the year 2014, only a handful of independent academic schools and research institutes of ethnobotany, ethnobiology or ethnoecology is to be found in universities around the world, while most are still immersed within parental disciplines, cognate fields or related spheres of investigation. In order to partially fill the aforementioned theoretical gap, the article you are about to read reflects on ethnobiology as a discipline and as a concept, reviewing briefly its historical developments along with representative works, as already established by several authors since ethnobiology’s configuration [20]. The consolidation and diversification of this sphere of investigation since late 1970’s are of special interest in this examination, as ethnobiology continues to explore its genesis, paths and boundaries, its research foci and paradigmatic foundations, amongst several other theoretical and methodological considerations [51,58,84]. The article continues with a description of key ethnobiological thematic and paradigmatic approaches in the recent decades, indicating major trends and foci. A final reflection is given on future directions of research as well as recent hybridizations between ethnobiology and other fields of study which more often than not tend to be analytically decoupled. Specifically connecting with political www.cat-science.cat

ecology, I propose at last for a critical ethnobiology, that is, the application of critical theory in the consideration of political ecology and economy within the discipline, along with the effect of social inequality, control and power relations on ethnobiological processes, phenomena, transformations and multifaceted conceptualizations. This review should be of interest to students and professionals engaged in the disciplines of ethnobiology (and subdisciplines), anthropological theory, economic and applied botany, environmental anthropology, conservation biology, political ecology, and philosophy of science, amongst others.

Brief historical considerations: past and present of ethnobiology as a disci pline and as a concept Historical developments in ethnobiology as a discipline have been reviewed by various authors in a number of journal articles and book chapters in edited books. Two major dichotomies arise when looking at the historiography of the discipline: On one side, reconstructions that give more emphasis either to anthropological or biomedical developments; on 50

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D'Ambrosio

Table 2. Relevant sources and works in the history of Ethnobiology until late 1940’s Phase

Period

Source

Exemplary contributions

Pre-colonial

Prior to 15 century

Trial and error Experience Knowledge transmission (oral and written) Innovation

Hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, farmers, fishermen, healers, cooks, craftsmen, traders, spiritual leaders. Polymaths from classical civilizations (e.g., Shénnóng and Zhang Zhongjing in China; Charaka and Sushruta in India; Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder in Europe)

Colonial

15th to late 19th centuries

Medicine & Pharmacy Botany & Agronomy Archaeology and museology Natural history Biological evolution

Authors: Chroniclers, explorers, polymaths (e.g., Li Shizhen, Avicenna, Ibn Al-Baytar, B. de Sahagún, M. de la Cruz, J. Badianus, A. de Mendaña, P.F. de Queirós, B. de las Casas, L. Fuchs, C. Linnaeus, A. von Humboldt; A.J.A. Bonpland; J. Cook, C.Darwin, A.R.Wallace, A. de Candolle, W.J. Hooker, R. Spruce).

Formative

Late 19th century to 1940’s

Aboriginal botany Ethnography and cultural anthropology (USA) Ethnology and cultural geography (Eur.) Economic botany Folk medicine

Authors: B.R. Ross (1860’s); H. Rusby.; E. Palmer; S.J. Powers; F.W. Putnam (1870’s); R.E.C. Stearns (1880’s); J. Harshberger, O.T. Mason (1890’s); C. Bessey; M.C. Stevenson (1900’s); B. Freire-Marreco (1910’s); P. Font i Quer; S. Barrett; N. Vavilov; H.H. Smith (1920’s); A.W. Hill; E.F. Castetter; A.E. Whiting (1930’s); A.G. Haudricourt; P.A. Vestal; R. E. Schultes; V.H. Jones; F.R. Fosberg (1940s).

Journals: American Anthropologist, American Naturalist

Sources: [19,20,40,51,68,84]. In bold, authors coining the terms ethnobotany, ethnozoology and ethnobiology.

the other, accounts that focus to the East or to the West of the North Atlantic. The historiography of ethnobiology with a tilt on North American contributions is detailed in various reviews [5,8,9,19,20,37–40,51,58], while the role and contributions of European scholars to the discipline are depicted in greater detail in the works of Cotton [24], but especially in Pardo-de-Santayana, Pieroni and Puri [68], and Svanberg et al. [84]. Regrettably, detailed historical developments with a focus on native ethnobiologists from other parts of the world are still missing for the Western audience, yet surely are very rich and varied. Especially focusing on the North American tradition, Canadian Daniel Clément considers 3 major periods in ethnobiology’s history (pre-classical, classical and post-classical) subdivided into 7 stages, in addition to the millennia prior to pre-classical (or pre-modern) times. These are: economic usages of plants and animals (1860–1899); recollection of additional information (1900–1931); first syntheses (1932– 1953); emic knowledge (1954–1968); classification (19691980); associations (1981–1992); and resources and their management (1993 onwards). A decade later, Eugene Hunn considered ethnobiology to have developed though four major phases, including: pre-classical (prior to late 1940’s); cognitive ethnobiology (1950’s to mid 1970’s); ethnoecology (late 1970’s to 1980’s); and indigenous rights (1990’s onwww.cat-science.cat

wards) [51]. On the other side, Svanberg et al. [84], focusing on European historiography of the discipline establish up to eleven stages showing the antiquity, vested interest, scholarship, and diversity of approaches in the Old World by the 19th century. Finally Martin [58] offers a more overarching account, which includes six foundational stages plus eight current trends, possibly in the most similar way as it is presented here. These overlapping phases and preponderant research subjects considered by the different authors have been slightly modified and combined in this review to six stages, which are summarized next (Table 1). For simplicity and historical coherence, pre-colonial, colonial and formative phases (up to the 1950) are concisely described first, followed by emic, systemic and contemporary developments taking place from 1950’s until nowadays.

Ethnobiology prior 1950’s Preformative and formative developments in ethnobiology are essential to understand the history of our discipline and the disparity of subjects, contributors and concepts at stake. Table 2 summarizes these initial phases in the history of ethnobiology as a field of study—until late 1940’s—including influencing theoretical bases, as well as pertinent “proto”-ethnobiologists. 51

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Ethnobiology

As Table 2 portrays, the origins of our discipline as a definite scientific field can be traced back to late 19th century [44,59] during the formative phase, although ethnobiological phenomena and their rationalization have existed for millennia since humans evolved, and most probably even earlier, as has also been observed and studied amongst other primates in what is called zoopharmacognosy [75]. During pre-colonial times (prior to 15th century), which lasted several millennia, most ethnobiological knowledge was transmitted orally, while written sources were limited to the ruling classes along with intellectuals and polymaths [58]. Hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, farmers, fishermen, healers, cooks, craftsmen or traders, amongst many others, all indirectly contributed to the history and advancement of the discipline. As centuries passed by and knowledge built up, medicinal, agronomic along with other copious compilations common in most classical civilizations (e.g., the works of Dioscorides, Pliny the Elder, Zhang Zhongjing and Charaka in Greece, Rome, China and India respectively), in addition to later developments linked to the exploration of “new worlds”, the invention of the printing press, the expansion of herbaria and museums filled with exotic objects, new ideas about biological evolution, and the consolidation of the science of plant life, constitute only a few key events during pre-classical stages of the discipline. Botanical gardens, arboreta, seed banks, encyclopedic works, museums and other collections expanding during the Middle Ages and beyond, clearly played a significant role to ethnobiology too, as ex situ conservation settings as well as primordial ethnobiological research centers. The third phase, called here the formative stage spans from late 19th century to late 1940’s. Still corresponds to Hunn’s phase I or the “first steps” stage, when an official name and definition is given to several subdisciplines of ethnobiological research, chiefly in the USA. One of the major subdisciplines within ethnobiology, ethnobotany, was the first to be coined, in 1895 by Harsberger [44], as did ethnozoology four years later [59]. Ethnobiology, per se, was properly defined four decades later by Castetter, in 1935 [17]. Moreover, ethnoecology and ethnopharmacology were not coined until 1954 and 1967 by Harold Conklin [23] and the edited work by Efron, Holmstedt and Kline [30] respectively, with the advent of the ethnosciences by mid 20th century. Nineteen century disciplines such as applied botany, aboriginal botany and economic botany, coined prior to ethnobotany, and sharing many characteristics with ethnobotany, are viewed even today as synonyms or cognate terms. Nonetheless, ethnobotany seems to have gained relevance over the other three as more inclusive for anthropologists as well as in www.cat-science.cat

general terms. A similar phenomenon occurred with 20th century coined subdisciplines such as cultural, human or historical ecology, cultural geography, as well as environmental or ecological anthropology, sharing many characteristics with ethnobiology in their definitions, interests or approaches; however, subtle differences also exist amongst them, especially the interest of ethnobiology in both material and symbolic interactions of humans and the rest of living beings, regardless of the temporal and spatial dimensions, or a given theoretical or paradigmatic framework. For further reference on formative times, Clément [20] gives a detailed and thorough description on the occurrences during this stage, from De Candolle to Harshberger and beyond in what the author also considers the foundations of the discipline. For European developments Svanberg et al. [84] offer a supplementary detailed historiography, with a completely different picture, especially as each European country developed independently producing intensive contributions to our field of study from disparate angles. Additionally, Bennett [8,9] gives a nuanced distinction between ethnobotany and economic botany in their search through time for a demarcation that is worth taking into consideration. Definitions about the aims of the discipline and cognate fields during the formative period did not vary greatly, as illustrated next with some examples. In the case of applied botany, for instance, was defined as the “study of the relations that exist between plants and the human species, comprising agricultural botany, medical botany, economic and industrial botany, historical botany, etc.” [28], or for aboriginal botany, as “all the forms of the vegetable world which the aborigines use for medicine, food, textile fabrics, ornaments, etc” [72]. Regarding ethnobotany per se, initial delimitations comprised plants used by “primitive and aboriginal people” [44], or “the interrelationship of primitive man and plants” [53]. As shown in these examples, most conceptualizations were restricted either to aboriginal peoples or only to usage of plants. Other than the cited relevant figures during the 19th century of De Candolle, Powers and Harshberger, authors such as William Hooker and Richard Spruce in England, and James Mooney in the USA are worth mentioning for their works during formative times of ethnobiology. At the turn of the 20th century significant contributors to the field included amid others Charles Edwin Bessey, Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson, Samuel Barrett, Frans Olbrechts, Arthur William Hill, Edward Castetter, André-Georges Haudricourt as well as Volney Jones. In 1935, “the father of ethnobiology” Edward Castetter characterized ethnobiology as the study of “primitive con52

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D'Ambrosio

cepts of living things; the relation between organic environment and the lives, practices, thoughts and outlook upon life, of the group studied; the uses (for food, medicine, ceremony, practical arts, etc.) to which living things are put by a given people; the degree of their knowledge regarding the structure, functions and activities of living things; the nature of their concepts regarding the classification of organisms; and what may be learned regarding the workings of the primitive mind by the study of its concepts and names for living things and their parts and functions” [17]. During his work, Castetter makes an attempt to integrate ethnobotany and ethnozoology, considering the distinction meaningless, and stressing the importance of both biological and ethnographic training amongst ethnobiologist [18]. Castetter also considers that ethnobiology is not a new discipline or science but a field of investigation between biology and anthropology. By the end of this phase the first works by R.E. Schultes set the stage—especially in the Americas—for later extensive works on ethnopharmacology and the use of entheogens, phenomenon which had already been initiated in Europe at least as early as 1784 by Swedish Samuel Ödmann, studying Vikings-fly agaric relations. The Botanical Bulletin (later-called Botanical Gazette and currently known as the International Journal of Plant Sciences) was a reference publication venue during early stages of the discipline in the USA. A similar role was carried out by the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society in England, amid others. The works of the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1879 onwards also pioneered in the USA a new wave of publications on nature-culture relations.

Berlin, Breedlove and Raven [12], Hunn [48–50] and Ellen [31] amongst others. These works set the start of comparative ethnobiology through ethnotaxonomy and the emic approach in the North American tradition with an apparent ecological perspective. Adding to the ethnoscientific focus, studies on folk biology (e.g., Nancy Turner in Canada), ethnoornitology (e.g., Ralph Bulmer in Oceania), and ethnopharmacology keep on being undertaken (e.g., Norman Bisset on ethnobotany of Strychnos and ethnopharmacology of alkaloids), as continued the works on entheogenic plants and fungi by R. E. Schultes and his students Timothy Plowman and Wade Davis in the USA. The emergence of paleoethnobotany (aka economic prehistory) during this period is also worth mentioning, with significant works carried out by Hans Helbaek, Willem van Zeist and Eric S. Higgs, to name a few. The Economic Botany journal was first published by the New York Botanical Garden in 1947, it being the main publication venue for academic ethnobiological studies since mid 20th century. In 1959 the Society for Economic Botany is subsequently founded, with a first annual meeting of the Society the year after in Purdue University, Indiana. Some of the conceptualizations proposed during the emic phase for ethnobiology (and ethnobotany) include “[a] field open to those unafraid to transgress academic boundaries (that) lies in the no-man’s-land between anthropology and botany and geography” [16]; the “interaction of man and the plant world” [54, cited in 9]; “…ethnobiology’s interests include three precise dimensions: classification, nomenclature and identification of living organisms” [10]; or the “…direct interrelationships between humans and plants” [37, cited in 9]. As can be seen, authors stress in their definitions aspects of geography and transdisciplinarity, ethnoscience, or ecology, depending on their disciplinary background and interests. Since the late 1970’s the discipline has clearly consolidated and profoundly diversified into a myriad of topics and foci, more theory-driven and answering why questions into what is sometimes considered the post-classical stages of ethnobiology. These last decades have been called here the systemic (late 1970’s to 1991) and contemporary stages (1992–onwards). In general, the first is characterized by the consolidation of the discipline with two main turns, the ecological (systemic) and the pharmaceutical (molecular), while the second is featured by a further diversification of approaches along with two main turns, the biocultural and the reflexive. As an illustration of the consolidation of the discipline, the Society of Ethnobiology (registered in Arizona, USA) was established in 1977 with a first conference the following year in Prescott, Arizona. Volume 67 of Anthropological Papers

Ethnobiology from 1950 onwards As anthropology, biology, linguistics, and a myriad of other fields, subfields and methodologies progressed during the 20th century especially after WWII, so did ethnobiological inquiries and declinations. These recent developments in the history of ethnobiology since 1950’s onwards are briefly summarized in Table 3, including influencing fields and research topics, as well as some exemplary authors, journals and countries of researcher’s affiliation based on a Scopus bibliographic database search. The emic phase is characterized—especially in North America—by the relevance given to cognitive aspects of ethnobiological relations and roughly spans from the 1950’s to mid 1970’s. It is considered to begin with the works of Conklin amongst the Hanunoo in the Philipines beginning in the 1950’s [23], followed in the 1970’s by the contributions of www.cat-science.cat

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Ethnobiology

Table 3. Major phases in the recent history of Ethnobiology as a discipline, since 1950’s onwards Phase

Period

Fields and topics

Exemplary contributions*

Emic

1950`s to mid 1970’s

Ethnosciences Linguistics Terms and taxonomies Popular medicine Phytochemistry Ethnopharmacology

Authors 1950s: H. Conklin; R.E. Schultes 1960’s: D.J. Roger; S.Y. Hu; C. Lévi-Strauss; Efron, Holmstedt & Kine 1970s: B. Berlin; D.E. Breedlove, P.H. Raven; R. Ellen; E. Hunn; N. Turner; M. Bell; N. Bisset; R.I. Ford; K. M. Peschel.

Ecology & conservation Ethnotaxonomy TEK and its change Political economy and post-colonialism Bioprospecting Entheogens Archeobiology

Authors: N.L. Etkin; E.W. Davis; P.A.G.M. De Smet; J. Fleurentin; H. Fabrega; G.H.N. Towers; C.B. Heiser; O.R. Gottlieb; E.F. Anderson; E. Elisabetsky; G.A. Cordell; R.A. Bye; B. Holmstedt; P.A. Cox; L.A. Camino; N.G. Bisset; E. Messer; M.K. Nations; J.D. Phillipson; M.J. Plotkin; L. Rivier; P.J. Ross; F. Sandberg; R.E. Schultes; F.B. Walker.

Systemic

Late 1970’s to 1991

Journal: Economic Botany

Journals: J. of Ethnopharmacology, Economic Botany, Social Science and medicine, Fitoterapia, Human Ecology Top 10 countries: USA (by far), UK, India, Canada, France, Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, Mexico, China.

Contemporary

1992 to present

Indigenous rights & community development Globalization Sustainable development Food, medicine, health and agroecology Biocultural diversity Migrations and history Intracultural variation Global change Systems thinking Political ecology Research ethics and reflexivity

Authors: M. Heinrich; U.P. De Albuquerque; A. Pieroni; J. Van Staden; P. Van Damme; A. Begossi; R.W. Bussmann; N. Hanazaki; A.H. Ladio; A.J. Afolayan; J.T. Arnason; R.R.N. Alves; M. Rahmatullah; E. Elisabetsky; C.L Quave; M.A. Ramos; E. Rodrigues; A.M. Viljoen; I. Vandebroek; J. Vallès; M. Pardo-de-Santayana; M. Leonti; S. Ignacimuthu,; V. Reyes-Garcia; M.A. Khan; R. Jahan; A. Casas; D.D. Soejarto; M.J. Balick; E.O. Ajaiyeoba. Journals: J. of Ethnopharmacology, J. of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, Economic Botany, J. of Ethnobiology, South African Journal of Botany, Pharmaceutical Biology, Biodiversity and Conservation, Acta Horticulturae Top 10 countries: India, USA, Brazil, UK, China, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Canada.

*Taking into account the limitations of a database search, Scopus was used to establish most productive authors, journals and countries from 1980 onwards. Authors for the period 1980–1991 include those with 2 or more publications in Scopus database. After 1991, exemplary works include those authors with 15 or more publications. Considered journals are also based on a Scopus search. Countries are referred by first author’s affiliation. In bold, authors coining the terms ethnoecology and ethnopharmacology. Sources: [19,40,51,68,,80,84].

published in 1978 devotes a series of articles to “[t]he nature and status of ethnobotany” [37]. By the year 1981, the first issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology is further published. The International Society of Ethnobiology is established in 1988 with a 1st Congress in Belem, Brazil which shaped the Declaration of Belem. Five years later, in the year 2003, the first volume of the journal Ethnobotany Research & Applications is released. The ethnoecological and ethnopharmacological turns extend during the systemic period, while more countries enwww.cat-science.cat

gage in ethnobiological research, especially in Europe and emergent economies. Concepts such as bioprospecting, biodiversity, traditional ecological knowledge and biocultural diversity gained special relevance. In addition, attention to research ethics and reflexivity developed and grew since the 1990’s. Whereas ethnographers and anthropologists had properly reflected on the ethical and interpretative implications of their research for at least four decades, field biologists and ethnobiologists started to consider issues relating to intersubjectivity, power relations in the field, the role of 54

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thropologica, “L’Ethnobiologie / Ethnobiology” from 1998, and the special issue of volume 12 of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute “Ethnobiology and the science of humankind” from 2006. Since 1981 to 2013, more than 4500 articles, almost 900 reviews, in addition to more than 200 other document types can be accessed in Scopus bibliographic database including the words “ethnobotany, ethnobiology, ethnoecology, ethnozoology, ethnomicrobiology, ethnomedicine, ethnopharmacology, economic botany, ecological anthropology, environmental anthropology, biocultural diversity, ethnotaxonomy, folk classification or folk biology” in their titles, abstracts and/ or keywords. These bibliographic references, obtained doing a search in Elsevier’s-owned Scopus database—which holds more than 20,000 peer-reviewed journals and more than 50 million records—were used to explore major ethnobiological subjects, authors and journals in recent decades [80]. As the Scopus search results show, the USA, which had a tendency of being the country of affiliation of most researchers and publications, is now being equaled and even surpassed by countries such as India and Brazil. This shift is especially apparent around 2005. Journal articles on ethnobiology and cognate fields also increase in number and sources of publication almost exponentially in recent decades, peaking around the year 2010, while apparently plateauing or even decreasing thereafter. The amount of authors during the last decades researching about ethnobiological questions has also increased exponentially. Due to limitations of space, authors previously mentioned in Table 3 correspond to a small sample of current researchers, based on the Scopus search formerly explained, and are given mainly for reference and as much objectivity about research focus as possible. To conclude this historical review, key concepts used to define ethnobiology in contemporary time are contrasted next. Schultes [78], for instance, when defining the discipline stresses notions such as “complete registration”, “uses and concepts about plant life”, and “primitive societies”. Three years later, as a co-author with Von Reis [79], emphasis shifted to “human evaluation and manipulation of plant materials, substances and phenomena, including relevant concepts” still being restricted to “primitive or unlettered societies”. Cotton [24], in a similar way, includes only “traditional peoples” in his definition, yet includes the idea of “mutual relationships”, an influence of the ethnoecological systemic turn. Supplementary wide-ranging and systemic conceptualizations proposed around the 1990’s, include “complex relationships of plants to present and past societies” [11], “field of biocultural inquiry, independent of any specific paradigm, yet rooted in scientific

the researcher and questions about rights and ownership over biological and cultural resources, at least two decades after ethnographers and anthropologists [3,4,14,83]. During these last contemporary times, several authored books, and most commonly edited books have been consecrated to the discipline—in a staggering proliferation—characteristic of the contemporary stage of the discipline. While in previous stages, most publications had a geographical or cultural concentration; recent endeavours are characterized by having a overarching scope. Examples, predominantly on ethnobotany include: Ethnobiology, implications and applications [73]; Ethnobotany: evolution of a discipline [79]; Ethnobotany: a methods manual [57]; Plants, people and culture: the science of ethnobotany [7]; Ethnobotany: Principles and applications [24] Selected guidelines for ethnobotanical research [3]; Ehtnoecology: situated knowledge/located lives [67]; Ethnoecology: Knowledge, resources and rights [42]; Ethnobotany: a reader [61]; Ethnobiology at the millennium: past promise and future prospect [39]; Applied Ethnobotany: People, Wild Plant Use and Conservation [25]; Ethnobiology and biocultural diversity [82]; Women and plants: gender relations in biodiversity management and conservation [47]; Ethnobiology [5]. Adding to these, edited books dealing with specific ethnic groups or geographical areas have continued to increase in recent decades. The “People and Plants Initiative” (1992-2004) a collaborative effort by WWF, UNESCO-MAB, and RBGK became a significant program for ethnobiological initiatives and publication materials since the 1990’s. This initiative has grown up in recent years into People and Plants international [74]. An additional publication series worth mentioning is Advances in Economic Botany from the New York Botanical Garden which has been publishing at irregular intervals 16 volumes since 1984. Another significant collection during more recent years is Berghahn books’ series “Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology” with 20 volumes being published since 2005, including both authored and edited books, and with Professor Roy Ellen as editor-in-chief [33]. Several of the titles in this series worth mentioning include: Local science vs global science: Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development [81]; Travelling cultures and plants: the ethnobiology and ethnopharmacy of human migrations [71]; Landscape, process and power: Re-evaluating Traditional Environmental Knowledge [46]; Ethnobotany in the new Europe: people, health and wild plant resources [69]; and Landscape ethnoecology: Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space [52]. Special issues in particular journals, add to the richness of sources in contemporary years too, such as volume 40 number 1 of Anwww.cat-science.cat

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Ethnobiology

Fig. 1. Schematic view of contemporary ethnobiology (central orange and blue circles) in relation to other disciplines and areas of knowledge (outer rectangles), temporal dimensions (upper arrow dichotomy), along with dual paradigms and approaches (lateral arrow dichotomies). Figure adapted by author from [43].

epistemology” [6], “the science of people’s interaction with plants” [86], or “the study of the interactions of plants and people, including the influence of plants on human culture” [7]. I adhere to definitions that are wide-ranging and do not exclude certain human groups, research foci or paradigms.

concerned with the ideas that have been developed surrounding ethnobiological matters by academics and other professionals. It is therefore an area of enquiry that is holistic, both materialist and idealist, comparative, field-based, naturalistic, humanistic, and evolutionary; moreover, it ought to be reflexive, political and critical when necessary. A schematic view of the field of ethnobiology in relation to other disciplines and areas of study is presented in Fig. 1, showing the complexity and transdisciplinarity of the subject purported in the preceding historical section. Within most of the disciplines (including ethnobiology) a continuum between extreme paradigms and approaches also occurs internally, where middle ground perspectives are not rare. Moreover, as has been shown while describing historical developments, ethnobiological studies can be classified according to several characteristics, including the major “parental” discipline or strand (biology or anthropology) and

Major subdivisions and research foci amongst ethnobiologists As outlined here, the ethnobiological field investigates the material and symbolic interrelationships—in space and time—between the environmental, biological, cultural, transcultural, counter-cultural, socioeconomic, political, philosophical, and psychological dimensions of human beings, and the rest of existing organisms, as well as the environment they all share [26]. In its reflexive aspect, ethnobiology is also www.cat-science.cat

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within these, in relation to their specific areas or angles of study (Table 4). While some of the thirty subdisciplines considered in Table 3 have existed since the first steps of the formation of the discipline (e.g., ethnobotany and ethnozoology), others have not been officially proposed yet (e.g., philosophical ethnobiology or religious ethnobiology). Clearly, natural scientists have been more preoccupied to subdivide the discipline than social scientists. Following the latter, it is not my intention here to fragment ethnobiology into independent pieces, but

to give name to some of the derivations and perspectives that the discipline has had in the past and present, and their potential interconnections. As Carter suggested: “It is only because man has a finite brain that for ease of treatment we have split reality into small chunks, conveniently labeled biology, geology, pedology, botany, and so forth. We should never lose sight of the fact that the academic boundaries are but man-made, artificial divisions of convenience. At best they do violence to the unity of reality” [16]. Nonetheless, if ethnobiology was an undergraduate program per se, it should

Table 4. Typologies of ethnobiological research according to main strand (natural or cultural), along with some of their existing and suggested subdisciplines Perspective

Subdisciplines

Area/Angle of study

Natural sciences (mainly biology)

Ethnobotany Ethnomycology Ethnozoology (e.g., ethnoornithology) Ethnomicrobiology Ethnoecology (incl. ethnoagroecology) Ethnopharmacology (≈ Ethnomedicine) Paleoethnobiology (≈ Archaeoethnobiology) Evolutionary ethnobiology Holistic/Systemic ethnobiology (?) Ethnometeorology, ethnopedology, ethnohidrology (?) Zoopharmacognosy (≈Zoobotany)

Plant-culture relations Fungi-culture relations Animal-culture relations (e.g., bird-culture relations) Microbe-culture relations Environment-culture relations (incl. agroecosystem-culture relations) Drugs-culture relations (≈ Health-culture relations) Pre-historical human-biota relations in the archeological record Evolutionary theory applied to ethnobiology Complexity theory applied to ethnobiology Meteorology- culture relations, soil- culture relations, water-culture relations Drugs-animal relations

Social sciences & humanities (mainly anthropology & ethnology)

Cognitive/Linguistic ethnobiology Socio-cultural & economic ethnobiology Critical/Political/Radical ethnobiology Interpretive/Reflexive ethnobiology Ethnobiology of development & globalization Psychological/Behavioral ethnobiology Geography of ethnobiology Historical ethnobiology Artistic and literary ethnobiology Religious and sacred ethnobiology Legal ethnobiology Philosophical ethnobiology History of ethnobiology (?) Metanarrative ethnobiology

Language, ethnotaxonomy, cognition Ethnography, sociocultural & economic aspects Power and control, historical context, inequality Hermeneutics, reflexivity, autoethnography Modernization, urbanization, neoliberalism Attitudes, explanations, behaviors Space, landscape, migration, regional Historical perspective on culture-biota relations Culture-biota relations in the arts and literature Culture-biota relations in religious practices Culture-biota relations and legal affairs Philosophy in culture-biota relations Temporal developments of the discipline Narratives of culture-biota relations

Miscellaneous (transversal)

Theoretical ethnobiology Qualitative & quantitative methods Nutritional and medical ethnobiology Pedagogical ethnobiology Visual/Multimedia ethnobiology Computational ethnobiology

Theoretical aspects in culture-biota relations Methodological aspects of research Food and health in culture-biota relations Educational aspects in culture-biota relations Multimedia on culture-biota relations Quantification of culture-biota relations

Based on areas of study within ethnobiology attained performing a thorough bibliographic database search.

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Table 5. Typologies of ethnobiological research according to main scientific paradigm, research aims and subject focus or topic considered by researchers. In some cases, mixed categories also exist Element

Type

Main characteristics

Paradigma

Realist ethnobiology Idealist ethnobiology Critical ethnobiology Pragmatic ethnobiology

Materialist, positivist, empiricist, quantitative, etic, nomothetic Symbolist, constructivist, subjectivist, qualitative, emic, idiographic Radicalist, interventionist, participatory, emancipatory, empowering Pragmaticist, fallibilist, linking theory & practice, mixed methods

Aima

Descriptive ethnobiology Causal ethnobiology Diagnostic ethnobiology Interventionist ethnobiology Revisionist ethnobiology Radical ethnobiology

Gives descriptions Looks for causality (explanation vs. understanding) Tests concepts and methods Proposes an interference Reviews past or present disciplinary trends or concepts Challenges concepts and methods

Focus (& main topics)b

Uses of biota Declarative and procedural knowledge Molecules and pharmaceuticals Socioecological systems Symbols, agents and meanings Access, power and control Change

Uses of plants (economic botany), fungi, animals and microbes Nomenclature and classification systems, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK, IK) & its variation/transmission Secondary metabolites and other molecules, bioprospecting Agriculture, livelihoods, nutrition, medicine & the environment Reflexivity, hermeneutics, beliefs, spirituality and consciousness Critical, inequality, biopiracy, and property rights Development, modernization, migration & urbanization Biocultural diversity, conservation and transculturation Global change, adaptation and resilience Philosophical, ethical, theoretical and/or methodological aspects

Philosophy, theory and/or methods

Time frameb

Contemporary ethnobiology Historical ethnobiology

Concurrent to the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifetime Dealing with times previous to the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifetime and the historical record Dealing with pre-historical times and the archeological record

Paleoethnobiology a b

From various sources, especially [13] and secondarily [77]. Based on [26,58,80].

include to my opinion a balance between some of these suggested subdisciplines, while the meticulous researcher will certainly explore a combination of these angles of study throughout his or her career. Certainly, most courses, seminars and congresses in ethnobiology rising during this new millennium, deal with one or several of these angles. Adding to this classification into major subfields, basic and applied ethnobiological inquiries can also be subdivided according to paradigmatic frameworks followed by researchers (ontological and epistemological considerations), foremost research objectives (aims), main topic or focus of study, and the time frame considered in the study (Table 5). As it is characteristic of other areas of human knowledge [88,91], the main tendencies within ethnobiological paradigms offered in Table 5 range between two main positions: on the one side preponderantly materialist, positivist, emwww.cat-science.cat

piricist, quantitative, etic, and objectivist approaches most common in the natural sciences [36,62,41], and on the other idealist, symbolist, constructivist, qualitative, emic, and subjectivist approaches more frequent in the social sciences [1, 29,32,45,89]. Materialist paradigms tend to be experimental or quasi-experimental, correlational, reductionist, nomothetic, objectivist, for theory verification using deductive and retroductive logics, looking for causal explanation (erklĂ¤ren), and at times normative. Constructivist philosophies are, on the contrary, inclined to natural settings, phenomenology, context, hermeneutics, ideographic descriptions, intersubjectivism, interpretivism, ethnography, looking for interpretive understanding (verstehen) and theory generation by inductive and abductive logics [13,21,60]. To this classical disjunction, one could add two additional paradigms less represented in ethnobiological literature: the so-called critical, 58

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radicalist or transformative approach, and the pragmatist or pragmaticist stance. The first is characterized by being participatory, emancipatory, interventionist, seeks advocacy, radically questions previous paradigms, and is oriented to empowerment issues and change [15,35]; the second and least common in ethnobiological inquiries, is concerned in linking theory and practice, epistemological aspects of research, anti-reifying concepts and theories, using mixedmethods approaches, fallibilism, as well as is in naturalistic and instrumentalist assumptions [66]. These four paradigmatic approaches can, in fact, be reconciled, integrated into a perspective that includes multiple standpoints in research design, as can be seen in several of the edited books on the discipline, including materialist, symbolist and critical perspectives. Moreover, six main foci of study can also be distinguished when considering the literature: the descriptive (where descriptions of certain organisms, relations or phenomena are given), the causal (where a search for underly-

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ing reasons are sought either explaining or understanding), the diagnostic (where concepts or methodologies are tested), the interventionist (where some interference is proposed), the revisionist (where a review of historical or current trends of a certain aspect are analyzed), and the critical (where a challenging examination of theories and methods is performed). As occurred before, these foci combine in myriad of ways in the different works consulted and referenced in this review and elsewhere. Eight major broad research foci have also been linked to ethnobiological research in Table 5, with over 40 distinct narrower topics. Usually linked to the distinct subdisciplines presented earlier (Table 4), these foci include: Uses of biota such as animals of plants; declarative and procedural knowledge; molecules and pharmaceuticals; socioecological systems such as agroecosystems or medical systems; aspects dealing with symbolic representations, agency and meaning; questions of access, power and control; change both local and global; along with philosophical, theoretical and/or methodologi-

Fig. 2. Political ecology (center) at the intersection of 3 major research themes (blue circles). Other social and environmental disciplines (bold, outside the circles) and subdisciplines (non-bold inside the circles) interested in those themes are also taken into consideration. Blue circles correspond to overarching and pandisiciplinary research themes, highly similar to some of ethnobiological foci. Adapted from [87].

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cal foci. Lastly, most foci have been studied in 3 main distinct time frames, including contemporary, historical and archeological records.

evolution, and survival of the fittest’ paradigm [56]. In other disciplines, such as political ecology, it has also served as an incisive appraisal of modernist binaries and normative conjectures based on long-standing concepts of division and directionality. If theorized as a process, hybridity is an important and useful theoretical concept in nature-culture studies and a potential space within which transformation can, and does, indeed occur. Articulation and conjuncture are another two key concepts of political ecology [55,70] worth tying with ethnobiology. Articulation acknowledges the prearranged quality of different ethnobiological characteristics yet gives importance to the contingency of the ways in which, at specific conjunctures, they are coupled or articulated. Conjuncture, on the other hand, challenges us to examine unique biologies, anthropologies, histories and geographies, without losing track of their connection to explanations of identity, livelihood and landscape, which tend to be produced across diverse temporal and geographical scales [64,65]. To finish this review, while adding to the connections between ethnobiology and political ecology, some of the most promising recent derivations of nature-culture relational studies worth reflecting include aspects of global change and conservation, food and health transitions, symbolic and interpretive approaches, human migrations, urban environments, as well as the application of complexity theory into the discipline. These and other topics will continue to provide nuanced information and more refined methodologies in the following years. As several authors have pointed out [27], quantitative and computational ethnobiology will also be a subdiscipline that will continue to develop in future years, both in terms of data collection techniques, as well as data management and analysis procedures. Combined with the permanent development of newer technologies of information and communication, quantitative approaches will bring highly relevant information to the table. Coupled with future advances in qualitative as well as mixed-methodologies, fieldwork will be greatly enriched with innovative techniques. Urban and peri-urban ethnobiology will surely benefit urban life in an ever-increasing population moving to cities, where aspects such as urban food gardens, multicultural markets, pets-citizens relations, socioenvironmental academic institutions and researchers, users of new entheogens, along other ethnobiological processes will bring fruitful discussions to future ethnobiologists, and most importantly answer important questions and solve pertinent problems. Cyborg ethnobiology may be a little premature to envision, but several new frontiers will surely open with still-unknown upcoming technologies and machinery. Political ethnobiolo-

Interconnections between ethnobiology and political ecology, with supplement ary future directions To conclude, a final reflection is given on future directions of ethnobiological research as well as recent hybridizations between ethnobiology, and other fields of study. Especially connecting with political ecology and ethnobiological change, I propose herein for a critical ethnobiology, that is, the consideration of critical theory, and the application of political ecology and economy for the growth of our discipline, along with the effects of social inequality, control and power relations on ethnobiological processes, phenomena, transformations and conceptualizations. Finding this ethnobiology-political ecology nexus is nothing new [2,40], but putting it into new contexts and situations may help to develop new research frameworks [26]. In brief, political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economical and social agency and structure, with environmental issues and changes. The term, coined in 1935 by Frank Thone [85], became newly popular in the 70’s and 80’s through the works of Cole [22], Wolf [90], and Enzensberger [34]. The importance of the term arose from the recognition that investigating local ecological changes required analysis of the influences of larger socioeconomic and political forces on local land use decisionmaking [63]. Three major research themes of interest here are investigated in political ecological terms: environment and development issues, global environmental change, and sustainability (Fig. 2). Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena, and can be a fruitful framework to analyze ethnobiological phenomena as well. Several concepts in political ecology resonate with ethnobiological spheres too. For political ecologists, for example, hybridity is a valuable concept for understanding the transgressive, generally favorable effects of integrations of myriad types. In postcolonial and postdevelopment theories, hybridity has functioned as a powerful idea with which to confront preset and detached theoretical conceptions [76]. In evolutionary biology, hybridity demonstrates the preponderance and relevance of symbiosis, chimeric organisms, and the consequent reticular evolution, quite opposite to that of the prevalent ‘competition, arboreal www.cat-science.cat

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gy—tightly linked to political ecology in its various forms, as well as with the value of historical considerations in ethnobiological inquiry—will presumably continue to grow too. As greater concern is given to reflexivity and local participation, autoethnography becomes a future prospect in ethnobiological research already being used by several groups. Obtaining ethnobiological data directly by local communities may bring new perspectives and considerations into the discipline and to their own development, with consequences still unknown.

gard to the biological world (hence ourselves), when recognized in its totality. The interfacial nature of the discipline permits, in fact requires, the bridging of qualitative and quantitative research, material and symbolic considerations, with emic and etic viewpoints. This mixed-methods approach is increasingly encouraged and promoted by academic and research institutions in disparate fields. Nonetheless, this paradigmatic integration inevitably brings about a number of ontological and epistemological nuisances, as these matters rest mostly on a host of interpretive presumptions. Even so, through this review, I hope to expand upon the traditions of ethnobiology, in ways that help to broaden the field, bringing into it issues of past, present and future developments, as well as their relation to a myriad of authors, foci, and main concepts. Citations throughout the text indicate that there is a growing body of literature on ethnobiology both based on field research as well as taking into consideration more theoretical and historical perspectives. An interesting contradiction arises from intending to establish a grand theory for ethnobiology, hence trying to separate it from other fields of study, while at the same time considering its necessity to merge with other approaches and frameworks. This may be linked to the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum—such as reality—along with the need for greater ontological and epistemological discussion in ethnobiological research, helping to structure contradictory yet complementary theoretical frameworks and models. While this review has concentrated on a variety of theoretical aspects of ethnobiological research it does not, as yet, integrate them fully. Due to the holistic and pluridisciplinary nature of ethnobiology in general, along with the proliferation of academic subdisciplines, publications and viewpoints, finding strong and robust paradigmatic, theoretical, conceptual frameworks and meta-narratives engendered, are important challenges and undertakings within future ethnobiological inquiry. As Martin proposed right at the turn of the millennium, ethnobiology is in search of a new synthesis [58]. It gives the impression this broader definition may be starting to take place as ethnobiology keeps expanding into new representations and conceptualizations of human-biota relations.

Conclusions Clearly, it has been not my intention to cover here all historical developments, paradigmatic aspects, authors, or areas of study within this and supplementary ethnobiological literature, one main reason being that the more one digs into the foundations and philosophy underlying the discipline, the more complex the network of interrelations becomes, both within and between other subjects. Hence, only a preliminary account is given here, with supplementary sources being remarked throughout the text for further reference. Moreover, when reviewing the literature a main limitation arises from the amount of languages one is able to read and the materials one is able to access. This is why I have included here works mostly in English and secondarily in Romance languages, especially Spanish, Portuguese and French. Unfortunately, this sets aside other potential works especially in Asian, African and Amerindian languages. A different limitation arises from the constant evolution of terms, concepts and even disciplines, hence recording the temporal transformation of concepts is key for historical reconstructions, but hard to fully achieve even in an unlimited space. Still an added constraint happens from restricted access to certain published materials, as most sources require institutional access or payment. I have done my best to minimize these drawbacks. Ethnobiology’s triple roots and character, between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities provide to the discipline reminiscence to European Renaissance times, when distinctions between areas of knowledge lied elsewhere. This may be just one of the main reasons explaining the relatively small, except during recent years, of robust theoretical frameworks, all-encompassing definitions, key concepts within the discipline, reflexivity and self-analysis, along with some of their epistemological grounds and consequences. Ethnobiology allows us to produce and combine varied views on human circumstances and practices with rewww.cat-science.cat

Competing interests. None declared.

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60. Mertens DM (2005) Research methods in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA 61. Minnis PE (2000) Ethnobotany: A reader. University of Oklahoma Press, Oklahoma 62. Monteiro JM, Albuquerque UP, Lins-Neto EMF, Araújo EL, Amorim ELC (2006) Use patterns and knowledge of medicinal species among two rural communities in Brazil’s semi-arid northeastern region. J Ethnopharmacol 105:173-186 63. Moore DS (1996) Marxism, culture, and political ecology: environmental struggles in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. Routledge, London 64. Moore DS (1998) Subaltern struggles and the politics of place: remapping resistance in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. Cultural Anthropology 13:344-381 65. Moore DS (1998) Clear waters and muddied histories: environmental history and the politics of community in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. J Southern African Studies, 24:377-403 66. Morgan DL (2007) Paradigms lost and pragmatism regained: methodological implication of combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Journal of mixed methods research, 1:48-76 67. Nazarea VD (1999) Ehtnoecology: situated knowledge/located lives. University of Arizona Press, Tucson 68. Pardo-de-Santayana M, Pieroni A, Puri RK (2010a) The ethnobotany of Europe, past and present. In: Pardo-De-Santayana MA, Pieroni A, Puri R. Berghahn Press, Oxford 69. Pardo-de-Santayana M, Pieroni A, Puri RK (2010b) Ethnobotany in the New Europe: People, health and wild plant resources. Berghahn Books, Oxford, New York 70. Peet R, Watts M (1996) Liberation ecology: Development, sustainability, and environment in an age of market triumphalism. Routledge, London 71. Pieroni A, Vandebroek I (2009) Traveling cultures and plants. The ethnobiology and ethnopharmacy of human migrations. Berghahn Books, Oxford, New York 72. Powers SJ (1875) Aboriginal botany. California Academy of Sciences Proceedings 5:373-379 73. Posey DA, Overal WL (eds) (1990) Ethnobiology, implications and applications: proceedings of the First International Congress of Ethnobiology. Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém 74. PPI (People and plants international) (2014) Official web site. 10 April 2014 [Online] Available at: http://peopleandplants.org/

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75. Rodríguez E, Wrangham RW (1993) Zoopharmacognosy: The use of medicinal plants by animals. Plenum, New York 76. Said E (1978) Orientalism. Vintage books, New York 77. Saunders M, Lewis P, Thornhill A (2006) Research methods in business. Pearson Education Limited, London 78. Schultes RE (1992) Ethnobotany and technology in northwest Amazon: A partnership. Island Press, Washington DC 79. Schultes RE, Von Reis S (1995) Ethnobotany: Evolution of a discipline. Dioscorides Press, Portland 80. Scopus (2014). Bibliographic database Elsevier. Accessed 2 April 2014 [Online] Available at: http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus 81. Sillitoe P (2006) Local science vs global science: Approaches to indigenous knowledge in international development. Berghahn Books, Oxford, New York 82. Stepp JR, Wyndham FS, Zarger RK (2002) Ethnobiology and biocultural diversity. Georgia University Press, Georgia 83. Society for Economic Botany (SEB). (1994) Code of ethics. 14 March 2014 [Online] Available at: http://oldsite.econbot.org/_about_/index. php?sm=03 84. Svanberg I, Łuczaj L, Pardo-de-Santayana M, Pieroni A (2011) History and current trends of ethnobiological research in Europe. Wiley-Blackwell, London 85. Thone F (1935) Nature rambling: We fight for grass. The Science Newsletter 27:14 86. Turner N (1995) Ethnobotany today in northwestern North America. Dioscorides Press, Portland 87. Turner BL, Robbins P (2008) Land-change science and political ecology: Similarities, differences, and implications for sustainability science. Annu Rev Environ Resour 33:295-316 88. Valles M (1997) Técnicas cualitativas de investigación social: reflexión metodólógica y práctica profesional. Editorial Síntesis, Madrid 89. Waldstein A, Adams C (2006) The interface between medical anthropology and medical ethnobiology. J Roy Anthrop Inst S95-S118 90. Wolf E (1972) Ownership and political ecology. Anthropol Quart 45:201205 91. Zent S (1996) Behavioural orientations toward ethnobotanical quantification. New York Botanical Garden, New York

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Ethnobiology

About the author Ugo D’Ambrosio has a Ph.D. in Ethnobiology from the University of Kent, United Kingdom since 2013 and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Barcelona. He has undertaken extensive basic and applied research in Costa Rica for 15 years as a practicing ethnobiologist, mostly working with Ngäbe communities (and to a lesser extent with Brunka, Huetar and Bri-bri) as well as national and international academic institutions, NGO’s and grassroots. He also holds an M.Sc. in Organismic and Evolu-

tionary Biology from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst (USA), as well as a P.M.P in Environmental Management from the University for International Cooperation in San José, Costa Rica. He is currently collaborating with the Etnobiofic Research Group at the University of Barcelona and the Botanical Institute of Barcelona designing a research project on the ethnobiology of human migrations and processes of ethnobotanical transculturation in urban settings such as Barcelona. .

***

Resum. Com en d’altres camps de l’activitat científica, l’etnobiologia s’ha diversificat consi

derablement al tombant del nou mil·lenni. A pesar dels esforços fets durant els últims anys, la disciplina encara dóna la impressió de trobar-se en la necessitat d’establir la seva identitat respecte camps d’estudi millor definits. Amb la intenció de reduir aquestes mancances, la present revisió analitza breument els fonaments multidisciplinaris de l’etnobiologia i la seva diversificació paradigmàtica, teòrica i conceptual en dècades recents. Aquest camp d’estudi és caracteritzat en aquest text com a “la investigació de les interrelacions materials i simbòliques entre els humans i la resta d’organismes vius”. Es proposen i delimiten bàsicament les principals perspectives etnobiològiques, possibles subdivisions, principals focus de recerca, i temes preponderants, així com també les aproximacions paradigmàtiques primordials i les finalitats polièdriques comunes en aquesta branca del coneixement. Les relacions i hibridacions entre l’etnobiologia i l’ecologia política amb una perspectiva crítica conclouen la revisió, oferint unes conjectures finals sobre els passos i reptes futurs entre els professionals de l’etnobiologia. Paraules clau: història de l’etnobiologia · subdivisions etnobiològiques · paradigmes etnobiològics · focus de recerca · etnobiologia crítica

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RESEARCH REVIEWS Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:65-72 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.189

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Revisiting the border between Newtonian mechanics and General Relativity: The periastron advance Joaquim A. Batlle,1 Rosario López2 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalonia. 2Department of Astronomy and Meteorology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Joaquim A. Batlle Department of Mechanical Engineering Technical University of Catalonia Av. Diagonal, 647 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia Tel. +34-934016717 E-mail: agullo.batlle@upc.edu

Summary. The problem of periastron advance, which is the basis of one of the three classical tests of relativity theory, is revised with respect to both Newtonian mechanics and General Relativity and updated in the light of recent astronomical measurements of binary pulsars. We show that in Newtonian mechanics the addition of a corrective term to Newton’s law of gravitation, consistent with the principles of Newtonian mechanics, leads to the same formula of periastron advance as that used in General Relativity, which proves to be valid in all astronomical cases known, even in the cases of binary pulsars such as PSR B1913+16, PSR J1141-6545 and the so-called double pulsar PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J0737-3039B, which are considered as natural relativity laboratories. Thus, among the relativistic phenomena, the periastron advance is one that can be also understood in Newtonian terms by means of an ad hoc assumption. [Contrib Sci 10:65-72 (2014)]

Introduction In the following, we review and update the problem of periastron advance in the light of recent astronomical measurements, with the aim of providing a useful academic approach in the teaching of gravity. The advance of Mercury’s perihelion, which cannot be predicted in Newtonian mechanics by means of Newton’s law of gravitation, is one of the three classical tests of General Relativity [1,8,13,19,21,28]. At its origin, gravitation was envisaged as an attractive force whose precise analytical formulation was subordinated to astronomical measurements which, at the time of Newton, led to the known dependence on the inverse of the distance squared. Newton himself was aware of the

fact that formulations other than this one would imply a perihelion shift. The lack of evidence for that shift at that time was thus taken as a proof of validation of the aforementioned formulation [14–16]. Since the mid-19th century, as more accurate astronomical measurements became available and the advance of Mercury’s perihelion was detected, several ad hoc proposals were made in an attempt to account for the anomalous perihelion shift of Mercury’s orbit. Two alternative approaches were proposed: (1) modifying Newton’s law of gravitation and (2) explaining the phenomenon as a perturbation whose ingenious origin could be, among others, the existence of a new planet, Vulcan, near the Sun; a hypothetical satellite of Mercury, solar oblateness, a ring of planets between the Sun and Mercury, or a particular

Keywords: periastron · perihelion · gravitation · pulsar · Newtonian mechanics ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Contrib Sci

The periastron advance

Fig. 1. Interaction forces in Newtonian mechanics.

nics, as will be shown, if a simple corrective term—consistent with the principles of Newtonian mechanics—are added to Newton’s law of gravitation. The approximations leading to this formula are acceptable not only in the case of Mercury and other planets of the Solar System, but also, as will be seen, in the case of all pulsars with a measured periastron advance. In particular, PSR B1913+16, PSR J1141-6545 and the so-called double pulsar PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J0737-3039B are considered as natural relativity laboratories.

distribution of the matter responsible for the zodiacal light [3,29]. This second alternative proved to be unsuccessful because of its incompatibility with other astronomical measurements. At the beginning of the 20th century, General Relativity accounted for the anomalous advance of Mercury’s perihelion in a natural way, without any ad hoc assumption and without disturbing the agreement with other planetary observations. However, in the mid-20th century, the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation [2] appeared as an alternative to Einstein’s more popular theory of General Relativity. In the Brans-Dicke theory, the reciprocal of the gravitational constant G is itself a scalar field generated by matter, which has the physical effect of changing G. The field equations contain the dimensionless constant ω , called the Brans-Dicke coupling constant, which can be chosen to fit observations. Like General Relativity, the Brans-Dicke theory predicts Mercury’s perihelion advance. However, the value of ω must be very large—at least several hundred, an artificial requirement in some views—for the Brans-Dicke theory to explain the results from observations such as Mercury’s perihelion advance and the radio wave deflection by the Sun. Eventually, the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation lost relevance. The approximations made in the context of General Relativity when calculating the periastron advance lead to a formula that can also be obtained in Newtonian mechawww.cat-science.cat

Interaction forces in Newtonian mechanics In Newtonian mechanics, forces between two particles, A and B, are attractions or repulsions of equal modulus and thus are parallel to AB . Their dependence upon position and velocity in inertial frames is restricted by space homogeneity and isotropy, by the uniformity of time, and by Galileo’s principle of relativity. Accordingly, forces can only be a function of the distance ρ between the two particles, Its time derivative ρ and the modulus of the component orthogonal to AB of the difference between their velocities relatives to any inertial frame of reference (Fig. 1). Actually this last dependence is not found in the usual forces formulated in Newtonian mechanics, which are a function of just ρ and ρ . However, as will be demonstrated, its in66

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Batlle, López

troduction in the formulation of gravitation—in Newtonian mechanics the only true force between distant particles—allows a formulation that deals with the periastron advance.

non-spinning free spherical mass of negligible diameter follows a path defined by the geodesics of the Schwarzschild metric [4]. In this fram, the periastron advance per revolution θ is calculated from [5]:

Relativity corrections to Newton’s law of gravitation

First-order relativity corrections are used to formulate the periastron advance per revolution. As a first step, we consider the case of a particle in a central gravitation field. The results are then extended to the two-bodies problem. Because Einstein’s field equations are prohibitively hard to solve for multi-body systems like the Solar System, an alternative approach to address the study of motion in a gravitational field was developed: Eddington, Robertson, and Shiff began to establish the “post-Newtonian” approximation of the General Relativity. Note, however, that, despite its name, “post-Newtonian” does not mean a modified Newton’s law of gravitation, but rather a simplified Einstein’s gravity. The post-Newtonian formalism assumes a weak gravitational field and slow body motion—compared with the speed of light—with both conditions being fulfilled in the case of the Solar System. In this formalism, a set of parameterized correction terms are added to Newton’s law to account for relativistic effects. Nordtvedt introduced up to seven parameters, which became known as the “parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism” [17,18]. In particular, the PNN formula that eventually yield the perihelion advance includes contributions from the γ (the amount of space curvature produced by one unit of mass at rest) and β (the non-linearity in the law of gravitation) PNN parameters. Taking both parameters =1 (a condition needed to be consistent with Einstein’s equivalence principle), the general relativistic formula for the perihelion advance is obtained.

with

−1 2

dω − 2π ,

2µ ( 3 + ecos ω) , c2a (1 − e2 )

(1)

(2)

where c is the vacuum velocity of light, a is the semimajor orbital axis, e the eccentricity, and µ = MG (G = gravitational constant, M = mass creating the field). If q « 1, the first-order approximation of Equation (1) yields

θ =

6πµ c a (1 − e2 ) 2

(3)

This formula can be obtained from Newtonian mechanics if a corrective term consistent with Newtonian mechanics principles is added to Newton’s law of gravitation. A first-order relativity correction to Keplerian orbits can be considered as a perturbation coming from several corrective terms added to Newton’s law of gravitation [6]. A set of terms describes an attractive force, while a further term describes a force—unacceptable in Newtonian mechanics—tangential to the orbit and directed towards the side of increasing radius. Their value per unit of mass is

 µ 1  2µ r2 2 2  + β2v − γ2r − δ  rad = − 2 2  −α r c  r 1 − (2µ rc2 )  , (4)

Particle of infinitesimal mass moving in a central gravitational field

Ftan =

According to General Relativity, the gravitational field in the two-body problem is described in terms of curved space-time. The field equations that describe the spacetime geometry are nonlinear and the Schwarzschild metric is an exact solution to the Einstein field equations. Using the Schwarzschild coordinates, the motion of a particle of infinitesimal mass undergoing the attraction of a www.cat-science.cat

π = θ 2∫0 (1 − q)

r v µ 1 λ 2 2 r c 1 − ( 2µ rc2 )

(5)

where r is the distance to the field center, r is its time derivative, and v is the velocity. Coefficients α, β, γ, δ, and λ are dimensionless. As (2µ/rc2) «1, the denominator in the term of δ can be approximated as 1−(2µ/rc2)≈ 1 and, consequently, Equation (4) can be written as 67

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The periastron advance

Frad ≈ −

µ 1  2µ  −α + β2v2 − ( 2γ + δ ) r2  2 2  r c  r 

μ = G(m1 + m2); a = semi-major axis of the relative ellipse (10) or (11) μ = Gm2; a=ai

(6)

where ai is the semi-major axis of the elliptic orbit followed by Pi focusing on the system center of mass.

Corrective terms Frad and Ftan lead to Equation (3) of the periastron advance provided that –α+2β+2λ = 3 [7], while parameters γ and δ can be taken arbitrarily. In Newtonian mechanics, as λ=0, condition –α+2β = 3 has to be verified. If α = –3 and β = 0, Frad reduces to

Frad = µ2 6 µ2 ≡ µ2 q1 r

The case of planets of the Solar System The maximum value of q [Equation (2)] and those of q1 and q2 [Equation (9)], which must be «1 in order for the approximations leading to Equation (3) in General Relativity to be acceptable, are shown in Table 1 for each planet of the Solar System. As all q, q1 and q2 values are «1, the perihelion advance as calculated in General Relativity is the same as in Newtonian mechanics with the corrective term added to Newton’s law of gravitation.

(7)

cr r

while the reverse condition α=0 and β=3/2 leads, with γ=δ=1, to µ v2 − r2 µ

Frad = − 2 3= − 2 r

3 2

ν2 µ ≡ q2 c2 r 2

(8)

The case of binary pulsars

where ν is the modulus of the velocity component orthogonal to the radius. Any linear combination of corrective terms defined by Equations (7) and (8), with coefficients ε1 and ε2 verifying ε1 + ε2 = 1, defines a corrective force leading to the same periastron advance as that predicted by relativity mechanics by means of Equation (3) [22]. Certain sets of coefficients ε1, ε2 may be preferable if attention is paid to other phenomena. As the corrective terms defined by Equations (7) and (8) have been obtained from perturbation theory, they must be small compared to the value µ r2 which they correct:

µ q1 ≡ 6 2 <<11 cr

;

ν2 q2 ≡ 3 2 <<11 c

Gravitational forces much stronger than those acting in the Solar System can be found in binary systems, and hence the usual approximation made to calculate the periastron advance are questionable. Among binary systems, those with a pulsar are better known because the pulsar greatly helps in the measurement of system parameters. The PSR B1913+16 pulsar, illustrated in Fig. 2, was the first discovered pulsar belonging to a binary system. Its discovery by Hulse and Taylor [12] in 1974 in Arecibo granted them the Nobel Prize of Physics in 1993. With its well-known parameters [9–11,25–27], it has been considered a natural laboratory of relativistic experimentation because of the high gravitational attraction

(9)

Table 1. Maximum values of q, q1, and q2 for planets of the Solar System Planet Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto

Extension to the two-bodies problem So far, a particle of infinitesimal mass moving in a central gravitation field has been considered, but an extension to the two-bodies problem can be done provided that, for two particles P1 and P2 with mass m1 and m2 respectively, the following values are used in Equations (3), (7), and (8): www.cat-science.cat

qmax 109

q1 max 109

q2 max 109

170.0 82.0 59.0 40.0 12.0 6.3 3.1 2.0 1.7

190.0 82.0 60.0 43.0 12.0 6.6 3.2 2.0 2.0

73.0 40.0 6.1 19.0 5.6 3.1 1.5 0.98 0.6

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Fig. 2. Illustration of binary pulsar PSR B1913+16.

between it and its companion star. The mass of the pulsar is about one solar mass and its radius is around 10 km. Its companion star is of similar mass and radius. Their orbital period is around 8 h. Table 2 summarizes the principal parameters of the pulsar, among which the high value of the periastron advance. The last three parameters of Table 2 were obtained from the former parameters [11,25] by applying, among others, Equation (3) of the periastron advance—as applied to the two-bodies problem [Equation (11)]. The use of Equation (3) in this case is permissible because of the small value of q ≅ 3,6·10–5. In this case, q1 ≅ 1,8 ·10–5 and q2 ≅ 5,6·10–6 are also «1, and so the Newtonian approach to Equation (3) is also permitted.

Recently, data concerning other binary pulsars have been published [11]. Those with periastron advance > 1°/ year are collected in Table 3. The so-called double pulsar (PSR J0737-3039 A and PSR J0737-3039 B), is the current best laboratory for relativistic gravitation, both for conservative effects (like the periastron advance) and dissipative effects (gravitation-wave emission). Pulsar J11411-6545, discovered in 1999, is another convenient laboratory for General Relativity due to its short orbital period (0.2 sideral days) and large eccentricity (0.17) compared to other compact binary systems made of a neutron star and a white dwarf. In all cases, the published parameters lead to maximum values of q, q1 and q2 (Table 4), which are small enough, compared to unity, to allow the use of Equation (3) in both General Relativity and Newtonian mechanics with the corrected law of gravitation. From the structure of binary pulsars one can expect that this will always be the case.

Table 2. Pulsar PSR B1913+16 parameters [10,22] Projected semi-major axis

a1sini = 2.324 ± 0.0007 light s

Eccentricity

e = 0.617155 ± 0.000007

Binary orbit period

P = 27906.98172 ± 0.00005 s

Rate of periastron advance

θ = 4.226 ± 0.002 deg yr–1

Transverse Doppler and gravitation redshift

γ = 0.0047 ± 0.0007 s

Sine of inclination angle

sini = 0.81 ± 0.16

Mass of the system

M = 2.83 Msol (Msol = solar mass)

Pulsar mass

Mp = 1.39 ± 0.15 Msol

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Other causes influencing the periastron advance In previous sections, heavenly bodies were treated as particles. However their finite dimension as well as their spin69

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The periastron advance

Table 3. Other pulsars with high q. a90% confidence upper companion mass limit Pulsar

A1 sin(i) (lt −1 )

Eccentricity

θ’ (deg yr−1 )

Binary Period (days)

J0737-3039A

1.415032

0.0877775

16.89947

0.10225156248

2.58708

1.2489

±1.0 10

±9.0 10

±6.8 10

±5.0 10

±1.6 10

±7.0 10−04

1.5161

0.0877775

16.89947

0.10225156248

2.58708

1.3382

±1.6 10

±9.0 10

±6.8 10

±5.0 10

±1.6 10

±7.0 10−04

1.858922

0.171884

5.3096

0.1976509593

2.2892

1.02

±6.0 10

±2.0 10

±4.0 10

±1.0 10

±3.0 10

−06

J0737-3039B

−07

−03

J1141-6545

−07

−06

B1534+12 J1756-2251 J1906+0746

−04

−06

−04

−11

M2 (Msol)

−04

−11

−04

−10

UprMassa (Msol)

±1.0 10−02

−04

3.7294626

0.2736767

1.755805

0.420737299153

1.35

±8.0 10−07

±1.0 10−07

±3.0 10−06

±4.0 10−12

±8.0 10−02

2.7564

0.180567

2.585

0.319633898

±2.0 10−04

±2.0 10−06

±2.0 10−03

±2.0 10−09

1.420198

0.085303

7.57

0.165993045

±2.0 10

±3.0 10

±8.0 10

2.51845

0.681395

4.4644

0.33528204828

±6.0 10

±2.0 10

±1.0 10

−06

B2127+11C

−04

Mtot (Msol)

−06

−05

−02

−06

−04

(

)

3.486

±5.0 10

−11

8 2 Ωr0 cos φ θ " = −θ 1

(

15 µa (1 − e

(12b)

))

where r0 is the radius of the sphere, Ω its angular velocity, and φ the angle between the rotational axis and the direction orthogonal to the orbit plane. For the case of the planets of the Solar System, both corrective terms can be neglected when compared to the . value of θ For binary pulsars associated with a neutron star, the assumption of negligible diameter can be easily accepted

These studies lead to terms θ 1 ' and θ 2 " additive to the periastron advance θ given by Equation (3) [23] 2

2.867

−09

ning movement may influence the periastron advance. In General Relativity, Synge [24] studied the orbit of a particle in a field created by a motionless sphere with mass distribution showing spherical symmetry, and Rayner [20] extended Synge’s results to the case of a central mass with uniform spinning movement.

r  4+e θ 1 ' = θ  0  2  a  10 (1 − e )

4.442

(12a)

Table 4. Maximum values of q, q1, q2 a Maximum values of the other corrective terms that are not considered q (x104)

q1 (x105)

q2 (x106)

(v/c)2 (x106) a

J0737-3039A

0.27

2.61

3.04

1.01

J0737-3039B

1.27

2.61

3.48

1.16

J1141-6545

0.18

1.62

1.40

0.47

B1534+12

0.13

1.07

1.25

0.42

J1756-2251

0.52

4.76

1.18

0.39

J1906+0746

0.62

5.97

1.16

0.39

B1913+16

0.35

1.82

0.83

0.28

B2127+11C

0.94

4.09

0.90

0.30

Pulsar

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because of the small size of this kind of star. Actually, it is known in General Relativity that the effect of the structure of the bodies becomes evident at the fifth post-Newtonian order, which makes it almost impossible to distinguish with both Solar System and pulsar observations.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Ref 3, 61-62 Ref 3, 75 Ref 3, Chap. III Ref 3, 110 Einstein A (1976) La théorie de la relativité restreinte et générale. Gauthier-Villars, Paris, p. 140-141 9. Epstein R (1977) The binary pulsar–Post-Newtonian timing effects. Astrophys J 216:92-100 10. Fowler LA, Cordes JM, Taylor JH (1979) Progress report on the binary pulsar 1913+16. Austral J Phys 32:35-41 11. Hobbs G, Manchester RN, Toomey L (2014) ATNF Pulsar Catalogue, Version 1.50 [www.atnf/research/pulsar/psrcat] Updated: 6 May 2014 12. Hulse RA, Taylor JH (1975) Discovery of a pulsar in a binary system. Astrophys J Lett 195:L51-53 13. Landau L, Lifchitz E (1966) Théorie du champ. Editions MIR, Moscow, p. 271-275 14. Newton I (1687) Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. S. Pepys, Reg. Soc. Preases, London, I:45 15. Ref 14, III:12 16. Ref 14, III:13 17. Nordtvedt Jr K (1968) Equivalence principle for massive bodies II: Theory. Phys Rev 169:1017-1025 18. Nordtvedt Jr K (1969) Equivalence principle for massive bodies including rotational energy and radiation pressure. Physical Review 180:1293-1298 19. Rainich GY (1950) Mathematics of relativity. Applied Math Series, John Wiley, New York 20. Rayner CB (1955) The effects of rotation of the central body on its planetary orbits, after the Whitehead theory of gravitation. Proc R Soc Lond A, 232:135-148 21. Rindler, W (1966) Essential relativity. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 22. Schild D (1961) Verifiche delle teorie gravitazionali. Rendiconti �� della Scuola Internazionale di Fisica “Enrico Fermi”, XX Corso, C. Möller, Academic Press, New York, p. 78 23. Ref 22, 80 24. Synge JL (1952) Orbits and Rays in the Gravitational Field of a Finite Sphere according to the Theory of A. N. Whitehead. Proc R Soc Lond A, 211:303-319 25. Taylor JH, Fowler LA, Mc Culloch PM (1979) Measurements of general relativistic effects in the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16. Nature 277:437440 26. Taylor JH, Hulse RA, Fowler LA, Gullahorn GE, Rankin JM (1976) Further observations of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16. Astrophys J Lett 206:L53L58 27. Taylor JH, Mc Culloch PM (1980) Evidence for the existence of gravitational radiation from measurements of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16. Ninth Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. Ann NY Acad Sci 336:442-446 28. Tonnelat MA (1964) Les vérifications expérimentales de la relativité générale. Masson, Paris, p 54 29. Ref 28, 11

Conclusions The value of the periastron advance predicted by General Relativity in all known cases, even those regarded as natural laboratories of relativity (binary pulsars and the so called double pulsar) can also be predicted by Newtonian mechanics if a corrective term consistent with its principles is added to Newton’s law of gravitation. This term can reduce to the simple form defined in Equations (7) and (8) or be any linear form of them, with coefficients ε1 and ε2 verifying ε1+ε2 = 1. Newton himself was aware of the fact that formulations other than his law of gravitation would imply a perihelion shift. But during his time neither the advance of Mercury’s perihelion nor binary pulsars had been detected. Thus, among the relativistic phenomena, the periastron advance is one that can be also understood in Newtonian terms by means of the addition of a corrective term to Newton’s law of gravitations, consistent with Newtonian principles of mechanics. Acknowledgements. The authors thank the reviewers for their enlightening comments, which have much improved the final version of the article. Competing interests. None declared.

References 1. Bergman PG (1953) Introduction to the theory of relativity. PrenticeHall, New York, 211 2. Brans C, Dicke RH (1961) Mach’s principle and a relativistic theory of gravitation. Physical Review 124:925-935 3. Chazy J (1928) Théorie de la relativité, et la mécanique céleste. Gauthier–Villars, Paris, 1:204

***

Resum. El problema de l’avanç del periastre, que ha basat una de les tres proves clàssiques

de la teoria de la relativitat, és revisat des de les dues formulacions de la mecànica: la newtoniana i la relativitat general, i és actualitzat a la llum dels recents amidaments astronòmics en púlsars binaris. Es mostra que en la mecànica newtoniana l’addició d’un terme correctiu a la www.cat-science.cat

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The periastron advance

llei de gravitació de Newton, consistent amb els principis de la mecànica newtoniana, condueix a la mateixa fórmula per a l’avanç del periastre que l’emprada en relativitat general, que resulta vàlida en tots els casos astronòmics coneguts, fins i tot en el cas dels púlsars binaris tals com els PSR B1913+16 i PSR J1141-6545, i l’anomenat púlsar doble PSR J07373039A i PSR J0737-3039B, considerats com a laboratoris naturals de relativitat. Així doncs, entre els fenòmens relativistes, l’avanç del periastre n’és un que pot ser interpretat consistentment en termes newtonians per mitjà d’una suposició ad hoc. Paraules clau: periastre · periheli · gravitació · púlsar · mecànica newtoniana

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CONTRIB SCI 10:73-79 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.190

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OPEN ACCESS

On Open Access, Impact Factors and boycotting the top science journals: An interview with Randy Schekman Nicole Skinner,1* Lucía Sapiña,2 Manuel Gil3 Contributions to Science, London, 2Observatory of the Two Cultures, Mètode, Valencia, Mètode, Valencia

1 3

*Corresponding author: Nicole Skinner 23 Highbury Place N5 1QP London, UK Tel. +44-7557857728 E-mail: nicoskinner@gmail.com

In October 2013, US cell biologist Randy W. Schekman (Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, 1948) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with James E. Rothman and Thomas C. Südhof, in recognition for their contributions to our understanding of the machinery regulating cell membrane vesicle traffic. In the same week the medals were awarded, Schekman expressed his highly critical views about the prevailing structures for publishing and rewarding science. Writing in The Guardian, he announced that the laboratory he runs at the University of California, Berkeley, would no longer send research papers to be published in three of the leading—and commonly regarded as the most prestigious—scientific journals, namely, Cell, Nature, and Science [14].

Basic science, “luxury journals” Schekman can be considered one of the founding fathers of modern cell biology. Many of the basic premises governing this discipline, which we now take for granted, were established through the work carried out in his lab [3]. He received his PhD in 1975 from Stanford University, working on DNA replication under the direction of 1959 Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg. The year after, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley [7]. There he began studying cells of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that had malfunctions in their cell transport system and demonstrated that these were caused by genetic defects. In doing so, he managed to dissect the mechanics of vesicle formation and explain how different genes regulate different aspects of cell transport. In other words, how molecules inside vesicles are delivered to the right place at the right time [7,10,11,19].

*Text by N. Skinner. Modified from an interview of R.W. Schekman by L. Sapiña and M. Gil at the University of Valencia, on 3 June 2014, in the context of the Excellency Meetings VLC/CAMPUS, and Schekman’s participation as jury of the Rei Jaume I Awards, previously published in Mètode. [http://metode.cat/en/ Issues/Interview/Randy-Schekman].

Keywords: Open Access · Impact Factors · “luxury journals” · Randy W. Schekman ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Interview with R. Schekman

cially low numbers. Schekman’s two main criticisms of such journals are as follows. First, he argues that, by following a print-based business model, journals such as Cell, Nature, and Science restrict the number of papers they accept. In the 21st century, with more and more research being made available, distributed, and read online, these limitations are fabricated and lack of space is a meaningless argument—but luxury journals know that scarcity fuels demand. However, Schekman compares their position to that of “fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags” and points out that their behavior contributes more to the selling of subscriptions than to the publishing of the best research [14]. This relates to his second denunciation, that science as a whole is being distorted by the incentives offered by the top journals. In particular, he criticizes the “Impact Factor” (IF), a widespread metric that measures a journal’s quality by calculating how often recently published papers in that journal are cited on average. Originally designed by Eugene Garfield as a means to compare different journals within a certain field and help scientists choose where to publish [5, 6,18], the impact factor is now often used inappropriately, for example, to evaluate the quality or influence of individual pieces of research or to assess researchers [16]. Schekman argues that impact factors can introduce biases, for example, because “a paper can become highly cited because it is good science—or because it is eye-catching, provocative, or wrong” [14]. Furthermore, he adds that while luxury journals “publish many outstanding papers, they do not publish only outstand-

Because nearly all of the vesicle traffic steps are encoded by highly-conserved genes, Schekman and colleagues’ pioneering work led to the development of tools to study other types of cells. It turned out that some of the genes Schekman had discovered in yeast were also present in mammals, encoding the corresponding proteins and thus “revealing an ancient evolutionary origin of the transport system” [3,11]. As a result, according to the committee of the Dickson Prize in Medicine, an award he received in 2008, “it is nearly impossible to attend a large meeting in cell biology, biochemistry, genetics or molecular biology and not hear someone mention a homolog of one of the genes discovered by the Schekman lab” [3]. Schekman’s scientific pursuits have resulted in the publication of over 250 papers, many of them in leading scientific journals (Fig. 1). However, he is not only well known for his research, but also—especially over the last few years—for his engagement in the Open Access movement. And he is using the newfound prominence that invariably comes alongside a Nobel Prize to urge the scientific community to reconsider where and how they choose to publish their most important research [9]. He wrote: “I have published in the big brands, including papers that won me a Nobel Prize. But no longer.” And added: “Just as Wall Street needs to break the hold of bonus culture, so science must break the tyranny of the luxury journals” [14]. By “luxury journals” he is referring to certain leading academic journals that, in his opinion, have distorted how science and scientists operate by limiting publication to artifiwww.cat-science.cat

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Skinner et al.

ing papers. Neither are they the only publishers of outstanding research” [14]. However, scientists remain under huge pressure, from universities, grant committees and funding agencies, to publish in these high-IF journals, and this, he believes, is corrupting the nature of scientific enquiry. Accordingly, Schekman was one of the first signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Written during an Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in December 2012, this set of recommendations represents a serious and determined initiative, championed by scientists and research institutions from around the world, that demands a change in the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties [1]. Schekman also encourages scientists to make their research more accessible by publishing it online and by choosing Open Access journals [14] that are freely available for anyone to read (Fig. 2). A former editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA [19], Schekman is currently the founder and editor-in-chief of eLife [www.elifesciences.org]. This online, peer-reviewed, Open Access journal for biomedical and life sciences was founded in 2012 with sponsorship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA), the Max Planck Society (Germany), and the Wellcome Trust (UK). The journal tackles many of the criticisms Schekman makes of luxury journals: they are a unique, non-profit, researcher-driven initiative (thanks to the financial support of the three foundations backing the project); decisions to publish are made quickly (with an average of 90 days from submission to acceptance), and they work to expand and enrich the concept of research impact beyond the IF. Furthermore, articles are published in full length and the editorial board endeavors to cover the broad spectrum of the life sciences, with no bias in favor of what might be considered “glamourous” areas [12].

Yes, they have a very effective business plan, I would say. They prey on people’s vanity. People like to be part of an exclusive club and this is what these journals encourage by being very selective in what they choose to review. They look for things they think will be hot topics, you know, bestsellers. And then, even after they agree to review a paper, they impose increasing demands on the author to modify things, to somehow make it even more perfect. They consult with a large number of people, and they go through the paper over and over again—a process that can sometimes take over a year—and in the end, they may decide to reject the paper after all. This creates an enormous effort and added expense before the paper gets published, which I believe is a toxic influence. It causes a delay in the publication of science. Some months ago you announced that you will not publish in those journals, but you have prestige… Well, yes... I have been saying this for a long time. I actually haven’t published my own primary research in these journals for some years now. I also voiced my thoughts about the impact factor during the five years I was the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and the press never interviewed me about my position back then. But I won a Nobel Prize and now I have a louder voice. And I intend to use that voice to express my opinion. Would it be as easy for researchers who are just starting their careers to refuse to publish in these journals? Yes, they just have to have the courage to stand by their convictions. There are young researchers who have completely avoided publishing in them. We have a young scholar at Berkeley, Michael Eisen, an expert in genome analysis who was one of the original editors of the PLoS (Public Library of Science) journals. He has taken a very strong position against what he calls the “glamour journals,” and he has never published in them. And yet he has had a very successful career, becoming a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Chevy Chase, MD, USA). He is very bright and he is very successful. And he has realized that one doesn’t need to play these journals’ game in order to publish important work.

*** On 3 June 2014, University of Valencia’s Mètode magazine [www.metode.cat] and its Two Cultures Observatory [http:// metode.cat/Les-dues-cultures], devoted to the study of the relationship between scientists and the media, interviewed Randy W. Schekman in Valencia. Despite his affable look and permanent smile, Schekman’s is passionate about his mission and profoundly critical of the system it seeks to replace.

Does his institution support him in this decision?

You claim that scientific publications such as Nature, Cell, or Science distort the reality of scientific research. But these journals remain the most respected in the scientific community. www.cat-science.cat

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. In fact, at Berkeley, because of his position and because of my position, more and more of our colleagues are submitting their papers to open-access journals. Of 75

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Interview with R. Schekman

course, they continue to publish in Cell, Nature, and Science as well. But I think that increasingly, at Berkeley, we understand that the discussions about what one publishes in this or that journal have to give way to the real evaluation of knowledge.

survive because libraries have budget cuts and they have to look very carefully at what they subscribe to, or what they get licenses for. And it is possible that many journals will disappear, but maybe this is a good thing.

In open-access journals, the author must pay to publish.

What is the role of the Internet in the increasing number of journals?

Do you think that is a conflict of interest? Oh, it’s crucial. I mean, it signifies a complete change in the way that we read things. Most young scholars do not even peruse journals anymore; a hard copy of a journal is like a dinosaur. And the only reason why Nature and Science continue to flourish is because people want the journal to read the ‘front half’ sections, as opposed to the ‘back half” where the research is found. People read the current scientific events, not so much the papers. As a matter of fact, reading a paper in Nature or Science is a very unpleasant experience.

I mean that maybe it can give rise to a different kind of bias, sidelining groups with lower budgets. Yes, well, but remember that in many commercial journals, you have to pay to publish too. In eLife, however, we do not charge anything. It is completely subsidized for the time being. But this is not the most common situation.

Really? No, it’s not. I think we have an advantage, and I intend to make the most out of it.

Yes, because it is like a tiny little advertisement of the actual paper. For most research published in Science today, the bulk of the paper is relegated to the supplementary material, which is only available online and not in print. When you submit a paper to Nature or Science, it is normally a full paper. And if you manage to get it accepted, they will usually tell you to cut out most of the stuff and include it in the supplementary information. And again, this is because their model is based on the print version and they are trying to save money on the print. For me, this is a completely artificial commodity in the 21st century. They should not be doing this. Papers should all be available online in the full form so that people can read them.

Some months ago, John Bohannon, a journalist writing for Science, sent a fake paper—full of mistakes—to more than 300 open-access journals and 60 % of them accepted it. All those journals were open-access, yes… But he might as well have sent it to all the commercial journals too... Are Open Access journals less rigorous? The question is not whether they are Open Access or not. This is a false distinction. There are other journals that are commercial or run by scientific societies that may also have low standards. And I do not think that just because a journal is openaccess, this makes it somehow more suspicious. It is true that there are businesses out there looking to exploit the Open Access movement to make money, and the buyer must be aware. As I said earlier, if you want to publish in one of these new journals, look at the composition of the editorial board and see who is actually putting their time in to make it a successful venture. This should be the deciding factor.

A great deal of papers are not read and many experiments are not replicated. Without confirmation and the subsequent debate, where does all this knowledge go? We have a problem. Some people claim that important papers cannot be replicated. In my opinion, this is the argument used by pharmaceutical companies who make observations in the scientific literature but then cannot reproduce the results. But I wonder whether they are really trying to reproduce these experiments or they are simply trying to develop a drug in an animal model without repeating the experiments described in the publication exactly. It is unknown what fraction of the literature is wrong, so we are conducting an experiment. We have been approached by an organization called the Reproducibility Project, where a pri-

Is it sustainable to have so many scientific publications? Do you think we are faced with a bubble that could burst at any moment? Before the Open Access movement there already were thousands of titles, there were many journals. Now, it is tough to www.cat-science.cat

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Contrib Sci

Skinner et al.

Fig. 2. Covers of different publications: subscription journals (upper row), and open-access-only journals (lower row).

metode.cat/en/The-Two-Cultures-Observatory] in order to analyze the relationship between science and the media. Do you think that science publications set the agenda for the general media?

vate foundation has agreed to fund experiments to replicate fifty high-impact papers in cancer biology published between 2010 and 2012, and the work will be carried out independently by a network of expert labs (to learn more, visit The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology [https:// osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home/]). We have agreed to handle this and eventually publish the reproducibility studies in eLife, so we will know, at least for these fifty papers, how many of them are really reproducible. We are just getting started with this, so it may be a couple of years, but it’s what we’d like to do.

Yes, this is a problem that has developed over the years. There used to be many more science journalists, hired by newspapers, who would look at the papers published in various journals. But increasingly, unfortunately, these newspapers have fired, gotten rid of their science journalists. So now many newspapers are dependent on the press releases issued by the journals themselves to describe the work they publish, and this may be good for the journals, but I don’t think it is good for the general public.

How did your life change after the Nobel Prize? I get interviewed by the press much more. I travel a bit more… people somehow listen to me more than they used to. Unfortunately, the downside is that I have less time to spend in my lab. That is the downside, that I have less time for my lab and my life is much more hectic. I hope that everything will go back to some normality, perhaps in a year or so.

The number of papers has increased a lot. How can a journalist find what is really interesting without being influenced by the journals or the research groups? Well, it’s tough. That is why it is important to have science journalists working in newspapers who have the time to go and read the literature. I agree that it is a daunting task, though.

In Mètode, we started the Two Cultures Observatory [http:// www.cat-science.cat

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:73-79 (2014)

Interview with R. Schekman

Some scientists consider that journalists are too sensationalist, but can the scientists themselves sometimes exaggerate their research?

cell membrane by a process known as “membrane fusion.” When that happens, the inside of the vesicle becomes the outside of the cell, this special compartment opens and its contents are poured outside the cell. This is what is called “secretion” and cells execute this pathway through “vesicular traffic.” And this is responsible for all secretion from all cells, not only protein molecules but also brain neurotransmitters are secreted through this same pathway. What we discovered was that yeast cells use the same mechanism to grow and we devised a genetic approach to isolate and identify the genes that organize the process, and it turns out that these genes are the same in humans. The very same genes that allow a yeast cell to secrete its proteins are the genes in the human genome that allow the secretion or the transport of neurotransmitters.

Oh, absolutely. In order to get their papers published in Nature or Science they exaggerate the importance of their work, absolutely. Researchers are under pressure to get their work funded and so they think that if they get more publicity for their work, even in the media, this will help them obtain funding, or help them attain recognition, fame and glory. I mean, why should scientists be any different than other people? And what do you think about media coverage of cell biology? It does not get much attention. Science journalists tend to focus on research related to health and disease, or on discoveries such like planets and satellites in other planetary systems. Unfortunately, I find most science articles in newspapers unsatisfying, even those in leading publications such as The New York Times. Let’s say that a journalist talks about the discovery of a new drug for cancer, a topic that interests me. Generally, he or she does not say anything about how the drug works—its mechanism of action—and I find this very discouraging, because that is what I really care about, that is what science is. But I suppose they feel that for most people, for the majority of readers, that would be too much information.

*** As evidenced by Schekman’s skills in explaining his own research, he also believes that to communicate effectively with a broader public is a scientist’s responsibility. Following this idea, another interesting addition to every paper published in eLife, the journal he edits, is the ‘eLife digest’ an accompanying text written for a broader audience in which most of the technical language is removed. It is aimed at people who might be interested in that piece of research, but who have only a basic understanding of life sciences [8]. At the moment is it mainly the editors who are in charge of this section, but there is hope is, the scientists carrying out the research will eventually take over this task themselves.

Could you explain in layman terms, if possible, the importance of vesicle traffic in our cells? Sure. Our genome encodes around 23,000 genes. That means that our cells manufacture at least that number of protein molecules. Proteins are the molecules that catalyze the chemistry of life, they are all the little machines in our cells that allow them to grow and divide. And all the proteins in a cell are manufactured inside it, but some have to be shipped outside of the cell, like insulin, growth factors or the proteins in your blood. However, there is a barrier—the cell is surrounded by a membrane—and proteins like insulin, which are water-loving molecules, cannot just swim through the membrane, which is a water-hating barrier that doesn’t allow soluble proteins to just go through. So the proteins that are going to be transported outside of the cell, such as antibodies, have to be encapsulated inside the cell by little carriers called vesicles. And these carriers transport proteins like insulin up to the cell surface and then the vesicle, which is a membrane itself, merges with the www.cat-science.cat

How to break free Schekman’s criticisms of luxury journals have not gone without comment. Monica Bradford, executive editor of Science, said that there is nothing artificial about their acceptance rates—they are just a reflection of the journal’s scope and mission. Emilie Marcus, editor of Cell, explained that their raison d’être is to serve science and scientists, and offering value to both their authors and readers was a founding principle, not a luxury [13]. Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature, pointed out a longstanding relationship with the scientific community of over 140 years. He acknowledged that the research community tends towards an over-reliance of assessing research by the journal in which it appears, but he also maintained that he and his colleagues have for years expressed their concerns about the dependence on IFs [13,17]. 78

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However, as Stephen Curry, Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London, pointed out, “it is not sufficient to lay the problem at the feet of the research community when journals are part of that community” [2]. Schekman agrees that journals are only half of the equation. The demand for luxury journals also has to be addressed by the researchers themselves and by the institutions that use them to judge scientific quality. Writing in The Conversation he suggests four ways in which we can start to remove the incentives that make it rational to publish under the biggest brands: 1. Academics who participate in research assessment could shun all use of journal names and IFs as a surrogate measure of quality. New practices and processes must be devised and shared so that we can rapidly move forward. His Berkeley colleague Michael Eisen has added an important point: we must speak up in appointment and funding committees when we hear others use journal names this way. Here we need peer pressure as much as we need peer review [4]. 2. Researchers applying for positions, funding, and tenure should avoid any mention of IFs in their applications or CVs. Article metrics might have a role to play, but narrative explanations of research significance and accomplishments would be more helpful. 3. Funders, universities, and other institutions should make it clear to their review committees that journal brand cannot be used as a proxy for scientific quality. If reviewers object, they should find different reviewers. 4. The scientists who serve as editors or editorial board members of journals could insist that the publishers of these journals stop promoting IFs. Instead, the journals could emphasize the other valuable services they provide to authors and readers to promote their worth to the community. Schekman points out that no doubt others will come up with bigger, better, and maybe even bolder ideas to move science away from the problems it is currently facing. He hopes that his words have helped spark a discussion, but now is the time to turn attention to action [15].

2. Curry S (2013) Journals and researchers must respond to Schekman’s move. The Conversation. 12 December 2013 [Online] Available at: http://theconversation.com/journals-and-researchers-must-respondto-schekmans-move-21441 3. Dickson Prize in Medicine (2008) Recipient: Randy W. Schekman, PhD. [Online] Available at: http://www.dicksonprize.pitt.edu/recipients/ 2008-schekman.php 4. Eisen M (2013) Schekman’s ‘luxury journal’ boycott doesn’t go far enough. The Conversation. 11 December 2013 [Online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/schekmans-luxury-journal-boycott-doesnt-go-far-enough-21145 5. Garfield E (2009) The evolution of the Science Citation Index. Contrib Sci 5:63-70 6. Guerrero R, Piqueras M (2004) Open access. A turning point in scientific publication. Int Microbiol 7:157-160 7. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings (2014) Laureate – Randy W. Schekman. 30 June 2104 [Online] Available at http://www.mediatheque.lindaunobel.org/laureates/schekman 8. Lugger B (2014) Randy Schekman: Honest exchange of knowledge. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting Blog. 30 June 2014 [Online] Available at: http://blog.lindau-nobel.org/randy-schekman-honest-exchange-ofknowledge/ 9. McManus R (2013) Nobel laureate Schekman offers NIH his first postprize talk. NIH Record. 22 November 2013 [Online] Available at: http:// nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2013/11_22_2013/story1.htm 10. Nobel Media AB (2014) Randy W. Schekman – Facts. Nobelprize.org [Online] Available at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2013/schekman-facts.html 11. Nobel Media AB (2014) The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Press Release. Nobelprize.org [Online] Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2013/press.html 12. Oviedo H (2012) eLife: My Q&A with editor-in-chief Randy Schekman. Malypense. 22 June 2012 [Online] Available at: http://malypense.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/elife-my-qa-with-editor-in-chief-randy-schekman/ 13. Sample I (2013) Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals. The Guardian. 10 December 2013 [Online] Available at: http://www. theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-sciencejournals 14. Schekman R (2013) How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science. The Guardian. 9 December 2013 [Online] Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/how-journals-nature-science-cell-damage-science 15. Schekman R (2013) How to break free from the stifling grip of luxury journals. The Conversation. 20 December 2013 [Online] Available at: http://theconversation.com/how-to-break-free-from-the-stifling-gripof-luxury-journals-21669 16. Seglen PO (1997) Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. Br Med J 314:497 17. Swaminathan Sowmya (2014) Ending the tyranny of the impact factor. Nature Cell Biol 16:1. doi: 10.1038/ncb2905 18. Testa J (2008) The Thomson Scientific journal selection process. Contrib Sci 4: 69-73 19. Zagorski N (2008) Profile of Randy Schekman: Reflections on his first year as a PNAS editor-in-chief. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:2763-2765

Competing interests. None declared.

References 1. American Society for Cell Biology (2012) San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment [Online] Available at: http://www.ascb.org/doraold/files/SFDeclarationFINAL.pdf

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CONTRIB SCI 10:81-88 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.191 OPEN ACCESS

Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: How to expand access to research publications. Executive summary Janet Finch,* Simon Bell, Laura Bellingan, Robert Campbell, Peter Donnelly, Rita Gardner, Martin Hall, Steven Hall, Robert Kiley, Wim van der Stelt, David Sweeney, Phil Sykes, Adam Tickell, Astrid Wissenburg, Ron Egginton, Michael Jubb Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings

This report tackles the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them. It has been produced by an independent working group made up of representatives of universities, research funders, learned societies, publishers, and libraries. The group’s remit has been to examine how to expand access to the peer-reviewed publications that arise from research undertaken both in the UK and in the rest of the world; and to propose a programme of action to that end. We have concentrated on journals which publish research results and findings. Virtually all are now published online, and they increasingly include sophisticated navigation, linking and interactive services. Making them freely accessible at the point of use, with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used, offers the potential to reap the full social, economic and cultural benefits that can come from research. Our aim has been to identify key goals and guiding principles in a period of transition towards wider access. We have sought ways both to accelerate that transition and also to sustain what is valuable in a complex ecology with many different agents and stakeholders. The future development of an effective research communications system is too important to leave to chance. Shifts to enable more people to have ready access to more of the results of research will bring many benefits. But realising those benefits

*This article is a summary, by the authors, of a 140-page report prepared in 2012 by the UK Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by British sociologist and academic administrator Janet Finch, DBE. The Working Group was charged with recommending how to develop a model that would be effective and sustainable over time, for expanding access to the published findings of research. The whole report, which can be accessed at http://www. researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf [http://tinyurl.com/d2lxqks], has been published under a Creative Commons License Attribution 3.0 Unported. Contributions to Science publishes now the whole series of articles devoted to the Open Access Initiative appeared in 2013 in International Microbiology [Int Microbiol 16:125-132].

Keywords: Finch's Report · Open Access · accessibility to research publications ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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in a sustainable way will require co-ordinated action by funders, universities, researchers, libraries, publishers and others involved in the publication and dissemination of quality-assured research findings.

The issue we are addressing, therefore, is how to expand and improve access to research publications for the benefit of all who have a stake or an interest in research and its results. Barriers to access –particularly when the research is publicly-funded – are increasingly unacceptable in an online world: for such barriers restrict the innovation, growth and other benefits which can flow from research. The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable. Effective publication and dissemination is essential to realising that principle, especially for communicating to non-specialists. Improving the flows of the information and knowledge that researchers produce will promote: • enhanced transparency, openness and accountability, and public engagement with research; • closer linkages between research and innovation, with benefits for public policy and services, and for economic growth; • improved efficiency in the research process itself, through increases in the amount of information that is readily accessible, reductions in the time spent in finding it, and greater use of the latest tools and services to organise, manipulate and analyse it; and • increased returns on the investments made in research, especially the investments from public funds.

The issue Communicating research findings through journals and other publications has for over 350 years been at the heart of the scientific and broader research enterprise. Such publications have been remarkably successful in enabling researchers to build on the work of others, to scrutinise and refine their results, to contribute additional ideas and observations, and to formulate new questions and theories. They play a key role in the complex ecology of research, both for researchers themselves and for all those in society at large who have a stake or an interest in the results of their work. The internet has brought profound change across all sectors of society and the economy, transforming interactions and relationships, reducing costs, sparking innovation, and overturning established modes of business. Researchers and journal publishers were quick to embrace the digital and online revolutions. But there is a widespread perception, in the UK and across the world, that the full benefits of advances in technologies and services in the online environment have yet to be realised. Most researchers in the higher education (HE) and related sectors and in large research-intensive companies have access to a larger number of journals than ever before, at any time of day, and wherever they can connect to the internet. But in the rapidly-developing online environment they want more: online access free at the point of use to all the nearly two million articles that are produced each year, as well as the publications produced in the past; and the ability to use the latest tools and services to analyse, organise and manipulate the content they find, so that they can work more effectively in their search for new knowledge. Better, faster communication can bring better research. Most people outside the HE sector and large researchintensive companies –in public services, in the voluntary sector, in business and the professions, and members of the public at large –have yet to see the benefits that the online environment could bring in providing access to research and its results. For many of them, the only way in which they can gain access to quality-assured research publications is to pay up to £20 or more as a ‘pay-per-view’ (PPV) fee in order to read a single journal article. www.cat-science.cat

These are the motivations behind the growth of the world-wide open access movement. For it is clear that many benefits could result if we were to move world-wide to an open access regime, complete with peer review and with effective search, navigation and other value-added services currently provided by publishers, libraries and others. Moves towards open access have achieved a momentum that we believe will continue. The key policy questions are how to promote and manage the shift in an ordered way which delivers the benefits but minimises the risks. These are particularly important issues for the UK, whose researchers are world-leading in the quality as well as the quantity of the research they produce.

The current environment Research publishing already shows the influence of open access. There are now three principal interlocking channels for publishing, disseminating and gaining access to research findings. 82

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• Subscription-based journals predominate, published by a wide range of commercial and not-for-profit publishers, including many learned societies. These include the most prestigious and highly-ranked journals, others that play a major role within the disciplines they cover, and yet others that have a more niche market. Many publishers provide “big deals” under which institutions can subscribe to most if not all of their publications on discounted terms. But no single organisation can afford licences for all the 25,000 peer-reviewed journals currently being published; and people who do not belong to an organisation that can afford large packages of licences have at best very limited access through this channel. • Open access journals turn the subscription-based model on its head: instead of relying on subscription revenues provided by or on behalf of readers, most of them charge a fee to authors, generally known as an article processing or publishing charge (APC)(1), before an article is published. Access for readers is then free of charge, immediately on publication, and with very few restrictions on use and re-use. The number of journals operating in this way has grown fast in recent years, albeit from a low base. • Repositories do not act as publishers themselves. Rather, they provide access to some version of papers either before they are submitted for publication in a journal or at some point after they have been published, usually subject to an embargo period. Most universities in the UK, and in many other countries, have established repositories, but the rates at which published papers have been deposited in them so far has been disappointing. In a few areas such as physics, however, subject-based repositories have become an important element in the daily workflow for researchers.

the research they fund, plus value for money. Universities wish to maximise their research income and performance, while bearing down on costs. Researchers themselves wish to see speedy and effective publication and dissemination of research results, but also to secure high impact and credit for the work they have done. Second, there are potential risks to each of the key groups of players in the transition to open access: rising costs or shrinking revenues, and inability to sustain high-quality services to authors and readers. Most important, there are risks to the intricate ecology of research and communication, and the support that is provided to researchers, enabling them to perform to best standards, under established publishing regimes. Concern about these risks may restrain the development of wider access if it is not managed in a measured way. Third, research and its communication is a global endeavour. Measures to promote open access need to be similarly international in scope if they are to deliver their full potential. The UK has played a leading role in promoting open access, but there are limits to what the UK can achieve alone. Although researchers in the UK are among the best and most productive in the world, they produce only 6% of the research papers published in journals each year. Fourth, is the question of cost. Current funding regimes focus on providing access to research literature through libraries, via payments for subscription-based journals. Arrangements to meet the costs of APCs for open access publishing tend to be ad hoc and unsystematic. In the period of transition there are bound to be additional costs as both systems exist side by side. All four groups of issues need to be tackled if the transition to open access is to be accelerated in an ordered way.

Our recommendations

The variations within and the relationships between these three channels are complex. Some subscriptionbased journals, for instance, operate a hybrid model under which they also offer an open access option for individual articles; and subscription-based journals have developed relationships with some repositories. But the pace of the transition to open access has not been as rapid as many had hoped, for a number of reasons. First, there are tensions between the interests of key stakeholders in the research communications system. Publishers, whether commercial or not-for-profit, wish to sustain high-quality services, and the revenues that enable them to do so. Funders wish to secure maximum impact for www.cat-science.cat

Our view is that the UK should embrace the transition to open access, and accelerate the process in a measured way which promotes innovation but also what is most valuable in the research communications ecosystem. The process itself will be complex, since as the transition develops over the next few years, no single channel can on its own maximise access to research publications for the greatest number of people. We therefore recommend that: i. a clear policy direction should be set towards support for publication in open access or hybrid journals, funded by APCs, as the main vehicle for 83

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ii.

iii.

iv.

vi.

vii.

viii.

the publication of research, especially when it is publicly funded; the Research Councils and other public sector bodies funding research in the UK should – following the Wellcome Trust’s initiative in this area but recognizing the specific natures of different funding streams- establish more effective and flexible arrangements to meet the costs of publishing in open access and hybrid journals; support for open access publication should be accompanied by policies to minimise restrictions on the rights of use and re-use, especially for non-commercial purposes, and on the ability to use the latest tools and services to organise and manipulate text and other content; during the period of transition to open access publishing worldwide, in order to maximise access in the HE and health sectors to journals and articles produced by authors in the UK and from across the world that are not accessible on open access terms, funds should be found to extend and rationalise current licences to cover all the institutions in those sectors; the current discussions on how to implement the proposal for walk-in access to the majority of journals to be provided in public libraries across the UK should be pursued with vigour, along with an effective publicity and marketing campaign; representative bodies for key sectors including central and local Government, voluntary organisations, and businesses, should work together with publishers, learned societies, libraries and others with relevant expertise to consider the terms and costs of licences to provide access to a broad range of relevant content for the benefit of consortia of organisations within their sectors; and how such licences might be funded; future discussions and negotiations between universities and publishers (including learned societies) on the pricing of big deals and other subscriptions should take into account the financial implications of the shift to publication in open access and hybrid journals, of extensions to licensing, and the resultant changes in revenues provided to publishers; Universities, funders, publishers, and learned societies should continue to work together to promote further experimentation in open access

www.cat-science.cat

ix.

publishing for scholarly monographs; the infrastructure of subject and institutional repositories should be developed so that they play a valuable role complementary to formal publishing, particularly in providing access to research data and to grey literature, and in digital preservation; funders’ limitations on the length of embargo periods, and on any other restrictions on access to content not published on open access terms, should be considered carefully, to avoid undue risk to valuable journals that are not funded in the main by APCs. Rules should be kept under review in the light of the available evidence as to their likely impact on such journals.

What needs to be done Implementing our recommendations will require changes in policy and practice by all stakeholders. More broadly, what we propose implies cultural change: a fundamental shift in how research is published and disseminated. A new shared understanding needs to develop of the interlocking roles of the various parties: researchers, policy-makers, funders, university managers, librarians, publishers and other intermediaries. Our recommendations are presented as a balanced package, so it is critical that they are implemented in a balanced and sustainable way, with continuing close contact and dialogue between representatives of each of the key groups, and regular assessment of key indicators of progress. In the list of key actions below, we indicate where we believe primary responsibility lies. Key actions: overall policy and funding arrangements i. Make a clear commitment to support the costs of an innovative and sustainable research communications system, with a clear preference for publication in open access or hybrid journals (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities). ii. Consider how best to fund increases in access during a transition period through all three channels –open access publications, subscriptions, and repositories– and the balance of funding to be provided through additional money from the public purse, by diversion of funds from support of other features of the research process, and by 84

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iii.

iv.

seeking efficiency savings and other reductions in costs from publishers and other intermediaries (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities). Put in place arrangements to gather and analyse reliable, high-quality and agreed indicators of key features of the changing research communications landscape, and to review those indicators and the lessons to be drawn from them (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities, publishers). Keep under review the position of learned societies that rely on publishing revenues to fund their core activities, the speed with which they can change their publishing business models, and the impact on the services they provide to the UK research community (Government, Funding Councils, Research Councils, learned societies, publishers). Renew efforts to sustain and enhance the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in international discussions on measures to accelerate moves towards open access (Government, Research Councils, Funding Councils, universities, publishers).

support the payment of APCs each year, the sources of that funding, and how the funds are to be administered. c) How to work together with researchers, and in line with the principles of academic freedom, in making judgements about the potential for publication in journals with different levels not only of status, but of APCs. d) How support for publication should be integrated with other aspects of research management, for example the development of research capacity, and support for early-career researchers. e) Policies relating to payment of APCs when articles are published in collaboration with researchers from other institutions. x. Extend the range of open access and hybrid journals, with minimal if any restrictions on rights of use and re-use for non-commercial purposes; and ensure that the metadata relating makes clear articles are accessible on open access terms (publishers, learned societies). xi. Provide clear information about the balance between the revenues provided in APCs and in subscriptions (publishers, learned societies).

Key actions: publication in open access and hybrid journals vi. Establish effective and flexible mechanisms to enable universities and other research institutions to meet the costs of APCs (Government, funders); and efficient arrangements for payment, minimising transaction costs while providing proper accountability (universities, publishers). vii. Discuss with other funders in the commercial and charitable sectors how best to fund and promote publication in open access and hybrid journals (Government). viii. Establish publication funds within individual universities to meet the costs of APCs, making use of dedicated moneys provided by funders for that purpose, as well as other available resources (universities). ix. Develop in consultation with academic staff policies and procedures relating to open access publishing and how it is funded (universities). The issues to be considered should include: a) Whether to promote open access publishing as the principal channel for all research publications. b) How much funding should be provided to www.cat-science.cat

Key actions: licensing xii. Rationalise and extend current licence arrangements for the HE and health sectors, so that as many journals as possible are accessible to everyone working or studying in those sectors (Government, Funding Councils, universities, publishers, learned societies). xiii. Work together to find ways to reduce the VAT burden on e-journals (Government, universities). xiv. Discuss with representative bodies in the public, business and voluntary sectors the feasibility of developing licence agreements that provide access to relevant journals and other content across key parts of those sectors; and possible ways of funding such agreements (Government, publishers). xv. Examine the feasibility of providing licensed access to journals for small research-intensive enterprises with which universities have close relationships (universities, publishers, JISC Collections). xvi. Continue to work with representatives of public libraries to implement the proposal to provide 85

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walk-in access to the majority of journals in public libraries across the UK, and to ensure that the initiative has the maximum impact (publishers, British Library).

other organisations are able to reduce their expenditure on subscriptions even as their expenditure on APCs rises. We recognise that there is considerable room for debate about assumptions on all these issues; and that variations in them could bring significant changes in our estimates, both upwards and downwards. Much depends on how quickly the rest of the world moves towards open access. There are good reasons to believe that there is international momentum in this direction, but it is difficult to predict how fast or comprehensive it will be. It is clearly in the interests of the UK to enhance its role in international discussions on these issues. Much also depends on levels of APCs and also of the amounts that continue to be paid to publishers in subscriptions, and it is important that in the context of the mixed model we recommend for the medium term, both should be looked at together. Hence the importance of publishers’ providing clear information about the balance between the revenues provided in APCs and in subscriptions. But one of the advantages of open access publishing is that it brings greater transparency about the costs, and the price, of publication and dissemination. The measures we recommend will bring greater competition on price as well as the status of the journals in which researchers wish to publish. We therefore expect market competition to intensify, and that universities and funders should be able to use their power as purchasers to bear down on the costs to them both of APCs and of subscriptions. Taking all these factors into account, our best estimate is that achieving a significant and sustainable increase in access, making best use of all three mechanisms, would require an additional £50-60m a year in expenditure from the HE sector: £38m on publishing in open access journals, £10m on extensions to licences for the HE and health sectors and £3-5m on repositories, plus one-off transition costs of £5m. The uncertainties we have outlined clearly mean that there is a risk that the costs could be higher than we estimate. But that risk can be managed by slowing the pace of transition. Moreover, the costs are modest in relation to total public expenditure on research (£5.5bn from the Research Councils and Funding Councils alone). Indeed, we believe meeting the costs of transition is essential in order to manage in an ordered way the move from a research communications system which is becoming increasingly unsustainable as a result of the economic, technological and social changes we have highlighted. While any estimates of the benefits that will accrue to the UK economy and society

Key actions: repositories xvii. Continue to develop the infrastructure of repositories and enhance their interoperability so that they provide effective routes to access for research publications including reports, working papers and other grey literature, as well as theses and dissertations; a mechanism for enhancing the links between publications and associated research data; and an effective preservation service (funders, universities, JISC, publishers). xviii. Consider carefully the balance between the aims of, on the one hand, increasing access, and on the other of avoiding undue risks to the sustainability of subscription-based journals during what is likely to be a lengthy transition to open access. Particular care should be taken about rules relating to embargo periods. Where an appropriate level of dedicated funding is not provided to meet the costs of open access publishing, we believe that it would be unreasonable to require embargo periods of less than twelve months (Government, funders, universities).

Costs There will be additional costs during a period of transition which may last for several years; but we cannot be certain about the total costs of all the measures we recommend, particularly with regard to open access publishing. Our estimates are best available evidence at present, including average levels of APCs currently being paid by the Wellcome Trust. But any calculations as to costs for the future depend on a series of assumptions as to • the pace of change towards open access publishing, and in particular the extent to which the UK is on average ahead of the rest of the world; • the average level of APCs as more journals adopt the open access model; • the number and proportion of articles with overseas as well as UK authors for which UK funders and institutions would be required to pay a full APC and • the extent to which during the transition universities and www.cat-science.cat

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are similarly subject to much uncertainty, it is clear that the benefits will be real and substantial. In short, we believe that the investments necessary to improve the current research communications system will yield significant returns in improving the efficiency of research, and in enhancing its impact for the benefit of everyone in the UK.

that some test beds will be established by consortia of organisations in specific sectors. Repositories The further development of repositories will make them better integrated and interoperable, and higher standards of accessibility will bring greater use by both authors and readers. Institutional repositories will develop the roles they perform for their universities, both in providing a showcase for their research and in supporting research information management systems. In the wider scholarly communications sphere, repositories will develop their roles in preserving and providing access to research data, to theses, and to grey literature. Subject-based repositories will continue to develop refine their roles alongside publishers and their platforms, especially in those areas where such repositories operate effectively already, and have an established position in researchersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; regular workflows.

What will change The measures we recommend should begin to make a difference quickly but the whole transition process will come to fruition over a number of years. Open access publication Our recommendations and the establishment of systematic and flexible arrangements for the payment of APCs will stimulate publishers to provide an open access option in more journals. Most universities will establish funds for the payment of APCs, along with policies and procedures which will in some cases moves towards open access as the default mode of publication. That will give universities a greater role in helping researchers to make judgements, in line with academic freedom, about how they publish their work. Different universities may develop different ways of handling this in consultation with their staff. The result will be that a much higher proportion of the publications produced by researchers in the UK will be freely accessible to everyone in the world, with minimal restrictions on their use and re-use.

Overall Implementation of the balanced programme we recommend will mean that more people and organisations in the UK have access to more of the published findings of research than ever before. More research will be accessible immediately upon publication, and free at the point of use. Our recommended programme will accelerate the progress towards a fully open access environment in the UK, and we hope that it will contribute to similar acceleration in the rest of the world. We believe that such movement will bring substantial benefits in transparency and accountability, engagement with research and its findings, closer linkages between research and innovation, and improved efficiency in the research process itself. Our work has shown how representatives of the different stakeholder groups can work together to find ways to achieve those ends.

Subscriptions and licences Subscription-based journals will remain a key channel for the publication of research results from across the world for some years to come. Implementation of our recommendations will mean that staff and students in universities and in the health sector will enjoy a much more integrated information environment. Access to the great majority of journals and articles for walk-in users of public libraries across the UK will make a real and substantial difference to many people and organisations, especially if it is accompanied by effective marketing, training for librarians, and guidance for users. It will also bring a significant enhancement of the role of public libraries in their local communities. For people and organisations in the public, business and voluntary sectors, exploration of the scope for extensions to licensing for online access will be a step towards wider availability, providing evidence of its value. We hope www.cat-science.cat

NOTES 1) Other terms are used, including article publication charge and publication fee. We use the abbreviation APC throughout this report.

*** Working Group Members Dame Janet Finch, DBE (Chair) Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester 87

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Simon Bell Head of Strategic Partnerships and Licensing, British Library Dr Laura Bellingan, FSB Head of Science Policy, Society of Biology Robert Campbell Senior Publisher, Wiley Blackwell Professor Peter Donnelly, FRS Professor of Statistical Science, University of Oxford and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics Dr Rita Gardner, CBE Director, Royal Geographical Society Professor Martin Hall Vice Chancellor, University of Salford and Chair, Open Access Implementation Group Steven Hall Managing Director, IoP Publishing Robert Kiley Head of Digital Services, Wellcome Trust Wim van der Stelt Executive Vice President Corporate Strategy, Springer

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David Sweeney Director, Research Innovation and Skills, HEFCE Phil Sykes Librarian, University of Liverpool and Chair, Research Libraries UK Professor Adam Tickell Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Transfer), University of Birmingham Drs Astrid Wissenburg Partnerships & Communication and Deputy CEO, ESRC, and chair of the RCUK Knowledge Transfer and Economic Impact Group Ron Egginton, OBE (Observer) Research Base Directorate, Department for Business Innovation and Skills Secretary Dr Michael Jubb Director, Research Information Network 114 Sub-group on Licensing

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FORUM AND FOCUS Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:89-93 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.192

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OPEN ACCESS

Gold or Green: The debate on Open Access policies Ernest Abadal* Faculty of Library and Information Science, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Ernest Abadal Faculty of Library and Information Science, University of Barcelona, Melcior de Palau, 140, 08014 Barcelona, Catalonia. Tel. +34-934035787 E-mail: abadal@ub.edu

Introduction The earliest public demonstrations in favor of Open Access go back some 15 years, with the letter of the Public Library of Science (2001) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002). Both advocated a change in the model of science communication and essentially proposed unrestricted, free access to academic content. Now, more than 10 years later, the Open Access movement has matured, in the sense that it is widely known by all agents of science communication—whether they be authors, publishers or librarians. Moreover, it has acquired remarkable institutional support from universities, research funding agencies, and the European Union, among others. This maturity is also confirmed by the many studies on Open Access published in the intervening years and focusing on scientific journals, repositories, authors, legal aspects, etc. These have been partially compiled by Bailey in two bibliographies [2,3]. In addition, this topic has been dealt with in texts of wider dissemination. For example, STM Reports [15,16]—published by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers whose members are responsible for the publication of 66 % of all journal articles—analyzes the current state of science editing and devotes a good part of its content to Open Access. Prestigious journals such as Nature have also published several monographs on Open Access, including the recent “The Future of Publishing” [12]. Open Access advocates are convinced that science communication would be improved if all academic content was accessible on the Internet, unrestricted and free of charge. But, when will this vision become reality? How long will it take for all or most scientific publications to be openly accessible? Until recently, the growth of

* This article was previously published in International Microbiology [Int Microbiol 16:199-203]. Contributions to Science publishes the whole series of articles devoted to the Open Access Initiative appeared in 2013 in International Microbiology

Keywords: Open Access · scientific communication ∙ scientific journals ∙ repositories ∙ Open Access policies SSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Open access policies

Open Access had to be assessed qualitatively and indirectly. But today there are estimates on the quantitative impact of Open Access in the science communication system. These estimates have been made with respect to either the total number of journals or the total number of articles, which serve as two different kinds of indicators. As for the number of journals, in 2013, Ulrich’s directory, which included scientific journals from all over the world, listed 8,000 Open Access titles, corresponding to 13.5 % of all peer-reviewed journals (some 60,000 worldwide). If we focus exclusively on the elite journals, those listed by the Web of Science (WoS) or by Scopus, the percentages are a bit lower but in no case are they negligible. In 2013, out of the 10,763 titles in the WoS database, 1,111 (10.3 %) were Open Access journals (figures taken from the Ulrich directory), while according to Scopus among the 18,500 indexed journals some 1,800 (9.7 %) were Open Access titles (figures taken directly from Scopus). These similar, substantial percentages provide proof that the quality of Open Access journals has been acknowledged. The distribution of Open Access titles across countries is not homogeneous; rather two extremes are evident. At the lower end are countries with an important tradition in commercial publishing, especially the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany; on the opposite extreme are emerging economies, for example, Brazil, where over 90 % of the journals published are Open Access [11]. As for the number of articles with Open Access, several studies have provided data-based estimates, in both cases derived from samples. Laakso-Bjork [10] focused on articles indexed in Scopus, reporting in 2012 that 17 % were Open Access (12 % immediately after publication, and 5 % after an embargo period). A study conducted two years earlier and referring to the total number of articles published [4] estimated that 20 % were Open Access (8.5 % in portals from publishers and 11.9 % in repositories). Thus it has taken some fifteen years to have approximately 20 % of all scientific content unrestrictedly and freely accessible from the Web. This is remarkable progress, even if it is still insufficient to totally transform the science communication system. For Open Access to become widely adopted and cover all manner of scientific content, political measures that prioritize this means of publication and dissemination should be instituted. Two mechanisms were advocated by the Budapest Initiative (2002). The aim of what was later referred to as the “gold road” was to ensure that most journals are Open Access; this is in contrast to what was later called the “green road,” in which the focus is on archiving articles in www.cat-science.cat

repositories, as a transitional stage until full implementation of the Open Access model. These two mechanisms have been equally defended by the Open Access movement, as, by necessity, they are considered as being complementary. The UK’s Finch Report [7,8], published in 2012, advocated the exclusive adoption of the gold road in order to reach Open Access. Its conclusions have generated heated debate as to whether either of the two options should be given priority. The document has had a remarkable impact not only within the academic world but also among the general public, thanks to its dissemination through the media. In the following, we describe and assess the proposals included in the Finch Report and analyze their possible application to other countries, and particularly to Spain.

The Finch Report The British government charged Janet Finch, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, to conduct a study aimed at determining how all publicly funded research could be made accessible without restrictions and at no cost. The determining factors that had to be respected from the start were: (i) to maintain the high level of quality of the scientific publications (by means of peer review) and (2) to not harm the important British publishing industry. In the report, access to scientific information in the UK is analyzed, including a quantification of research and of journal subscriptions costs. Both the communication and dissemination of results as an integral part of research itself and the need for research budgets to include publication fees are recognized [8]. After establishing that Open Access is the horizon for science communication, the Finch Report suggests that the gold road provides a strategy for all science communications in the UK. Specifically, it recommends that the costs of science communication and dissemination be included in research budgets and the launch of a system in which Open Access journals are funded through author payments. This proposal respects the mandate of the Government while counting on the support of British science publishers. The report was released on 18 June 2012. A month later, the British Government announced that it had accepted its recommendations, a move accompanied by changes in the Open Access policies of the Research Councils, which are the institutions that fund research in the UK. However, the report generated intense controversy among academicians specialized in Open Access, because its recommendations did 90

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not take into account the function of repositories (thereby distancing itself from that segment of the Open Access movement that advocates the adoption of both roads) and it laid the burden of article processing charges exclusively on authors.

further, economic argument in favor of repositories: they entail no costs for the depositor.

Article Processing Costs The Finch model is based on author payment of publication fees. This decision has been welcomed by publishers, as their businesses will be maintained even if the collection of fees is shifter from users to authors. Among academicians, however, the concept of author payment has led to heated discussion as well as to doubts about the viability of the model since it is not entirely clear how authors without funds for their research will manage to pay publication fees. It is worth noting that publication in Open Access journals can be funded not only by the authors themselves but also by the publisher or, even, by libraries (as would be the case in the SCOAP3 project). In this regard, the Budapest Initiative is very clear; its recommendation 3.5 proposes a model of reasonable article processing costs and, importantly, favors institutional funding of Open Access journals. “3.5. Universities and funding agencies should help authors pay reasonable publication fees at fee-based OA journals, and find comparable ways to support or subsidize no-fee OA journals.” [5]

Underestimation of repositories The Finch Report focused primarily on journal articles, leaving aside monographs and “gray literature,” despite referring to both in several parts of the document. In addition, when it deals with repositories the report points out several already-known weaknesses, including the small volume of documents they contain, the lack of indexing of their contents in databases, and the often insufficient quality of the access services offered. The role of repositories is, in the end, to facilitate access to research, theses, and gray literature. Strengthening of the role of repositories to ensure a change in the model of science communication has been encouraged from many quarters. For institutions, the latest recommendations of the Budapest Open Access Initiative [5] maintain the validity of the two roads (gold and green) and insist on the need for repository infrastructures: “3.1 Every institution of higher education should have an OA repository, participate in a consortium with a consortial OA repository, or arrange to outsource OA repository services.”

The proposal of the Finch Report can be understood and appreciated in countries with a powerful and consolidated publishing market (as is the case in the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, and Germany), with strong national funding agencies, both public and private, that sustain R+D. In those countries, it is not difficult for authors to obtain financial resources for publishing. What happens, however, in countries and in disciplines where financial aid for research is in short supply? In such cases, the proposals of the Finch Report are not feasible and other ways, tailored to the particular conditions and circumstances, must be found. This is the case of Brazil, where Open Access is near 90 % (as stated above), and of other emerging countries but also of Spain and other countries in southern Europe. As mentioned above, the same problems confront the humanities and social sciences, since research in either field is only modestly funded. Scientists in these disciplines typically support Open Access but are quick to point out that the ‘author pays’ system is a serious disadvantage. According to the SOAP study [13], this problem was mentioned by 39% of researchers who would like to publish in Open Access journals but have difficulties in finding the financial resources

From the academic sphere, John Houghton and Alma Swan [9] agree that in a fully Open Access system the net benefits of the gold road are higher than those of the green one. However, taking into account that we are in a transitional phase, those authors concluded that repositories are still the most economical and flexible way to make progress towards Open Access, based on two advantages. Firstly, the green road makes it possible to include any research work, even those that are not strictly journal articles (i.e., doctoral theses, books, working papers, reports, and congresses), which is especially relevant in the humanities and the social sciences, in which research is not disseminated exclusively by means of scientific journals. Secondly, the obligation of depositing scientific production is a political decision that can be adopted unilaterally (which therefore makes it faster than the gold road, in which a more complex global agreement is required) by any funder or institution as well as at the state level, and at relatively low cost. Peter Suber [14] added a www.cat-science.cat

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to cover the necessary publication fees.

Thus, current legislation and regulations in Spain clearly advocate the green road, as it is consistent with the country’s science communication system, in which many journals have little commercial presence (only 28 %), a very low implementation rate of the ‘author pays’ system, but a good repository infrastructure.

Open Access in Spain Spanish support of Open Access has given rise to state legislation and university regulations that deal with this issue. Article 37 of the Science, Technology and Innovation Act [6] cites the obligation of depositing the results of research funded by the state’s budget in Open Access repositories, taking into account limitations based on author’s copyrights. In addition, the latest Royal Decree on Doctoral Studies (2011) includes the obligation of depositing all theses in Open Access repositories. University mandates regarding Open Access require that the scientific output of academic staff be published in Open Access journals or placed in Open Access repositories. These regulations apply broadly and not only to publications resulting from funded projects, as indicated in the Spanish law. One of the first Spanish universities to approve the mandate policies was the Technical University of Catalonia, in 2009. Since then, twelve other centers have joined in [1]. Both legislation and mandates give priority to the green road, i.e., the archiving of scientific production in repositories. While publication in Open Access journals is also valued, there are neither incentives nor state funding proposals, in contrast to the Finch Report. In Spain, the ‘author pays’ model is rarely used, although some journals offer the option of freeing articles. Spanish Open Access journals account for 35 % of the total—quite a bit higher than the above-mentioned worldwide average of 14 %. Most of these journals are funded by institutions linked to the public sector, such as universities and public research centers, or learned societies and academies, e.g., the Institute for Catalan Studies. In the sphere of the humanities and social sciences, no part of the scant funds devoted to research is allocated to the payment of publication fees. Currently, there are 112 repositories, according to the BuscaRepositorios directory. Most universities and research centers have this type of infrastructure, which is well known among the scientific community. According to Webometrics, seven of these Spanish repositories rank among the top 100 in the world. They are those of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Technical University of Catalonia, The National Science Research Council (CSIC), The Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Alicante, the University of Salamanca, and the Technical University of Madrid [http:// repositories.webometrics.info/ en/Europe/Spain]. www.cat-science.cat

Conclusions Open Access has grown moderately yet steadily over the last 15 years such that it is currently estimated to comprise 20 % of the total of the science communication system (journals and articles). To date, policies favoring Open Access have been based on two strategies, fostering publication in OA journals (the gold road) and the archiving of publications in repositories (the green road). The recommendations of the Finch Report, which exclusively supported the gold road, have ignited controversy. The merit of the Finch Report is its defense of a clear, global, and overwhelming policy supporting Open Access by the public administration. However, it has been criticized because it exclusively advocates the gold road and the payment of publication fees by authors, thus overlooking the role of repositories and access to materials that are not articles. In the case of Spain, state legislation and existing university mandates generally favor the green road. This model fits well with the characteristics of Spanish science communication, i.e., a significant presence of the humanities and social sciences (for which the article is not the essential item for publication), a low presence of commercial publishers of scientific journals, and a good existing infrastructure for repositories. In considering Open Access policies, we should carefully analyze the performance of the science communication system in each country to determine the most suitable approach to providing Open Access. Accordingly, the recommendations of the Finch Report should be confined to the UK and other countries with a powerful publishing industry and well-funded research. Finding the best road to Open Access in other countries is not possible without studying their research systems in detail. Acknowledgements. This study is a part of the activity of Acceso abierto a la ciencia research group [http://accesoabierto.net]. It was funded by the Spanish Plan Nacional de I+D+i CSO2011-29503-C02-01/SOCI. Competing interests. None declared.

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8. Finch J, et al. (2013) Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications. Executive summary. Int Microbiol 16:125-132 9. Houghton J, Swan A (2013) Planting the green seeds for a golden harvest: comments and clarifications on ‘Going for Gold’. D-lib magazine 19(1-2) [http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1045/january2013-houghton] 10. Laakso M, Björk B-C (2012) Anatomy of Open Access publishing - a study of longitudinal development and internal structure. BMC Medicine 10:124 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-10-124] 11. Rodrigues R, Oliveira AB (2012) Periódicos científicos na America Latina: títulos em acesso aberto indexados no ISI e Scopus. Perspectivas em Ciência da Informação 17(4):76-99 [http://portaldeperiodicos.eci.ufmg. br/index.php/pci/article/view/1593] 12. Several authors (2013) The transformation of scientific publishing: A new page (2013) Nature 495:405-544 13. SOAP (2011) Report from the SOAP Symposium, 2011: Berlin. SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) [http://project-soap.eu/report-fromthe-soap-symposium] 14. Suber P (2012) Open Access. MIT Press, Boston [http://mitpress.mit. edu/ books/open-access] 15. Ware M, Mabe M (2009) The STM report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journals publishing. STM, Oxford [http://www.stm-assoc.org/ 2009_10_13_ MWC_STM_Report.pdf] 16. Ware M, Mabe M (2012) The STM report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journals publishing. 3rd ed. STM, Oxford [http://www.stmassoc.org/2012_12_11_ STM_Report_2012.pdf]

References 1. Abadal E, Ollé-Castellà C, Abad-García F, Melero R (2013). Políticas de acceso abierto a la ciencia en las universidades españolas. Rev Españ Document Cient 36:e007 [http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/redc.2013.2.933] 2. Bailey CW Jr (2010) Transforming scholarly publishing through Open Access: A bibliography. Digital scholarship, Houston [http://digitalscholarship.org/tsp/ transforming.htm] 3. Bailey CW Jr (2005-2010) Open Access bibliography: Liberating scholarly literature with e-prints and Open Access journals. Assoc Res Libraries, Washington DC [http://www.digital-scholarship.org/oab/oab.pdf] 4. Björk BC, et al. (2010) Open Access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE 5(6) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0011273] 5. BOAI (2012) Budapest Open Access Initiative: Ten years on from the Budapest Open Access Initiative: setting the default to open [http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/boai-10recommendations] 6. BOE (2011) Ley 14/2011, de 1 de junio, de la Ciencia, la Tecnología y la Innovación. BOE 131, 2nd June 2011 [http://www.boe.es/boe/ dias/2011/06/02/ pdfs/BOE-A-2011-9617.pdf] 7. Finch, J (2012) Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: How to expand access to research publications. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings [http://www. researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Groupreport-FINAL-VERSION.pdf]

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Next generation scholarly communication: A researcher’s perspective Jordi Barquinero* Gene and Cell Therapy Laboratory, Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia

Correspondence: Jordi Barquinero Gene and Cell Therapy Laboratory Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Pg. Vall d'Hebron 119-129 08035 Barcelona, Catalonia e.mail: jordi.barquinero@vhir.org

Accessing scientific information Only a couple of decades ago, searching and accessing scientific articles in order to remain up to date in one’s field of research was very time-consuming, as it required access to a well-supplied, specialized, physical library (within a university, research institution, hospital, etc.). Nonetheless, the retrieval of some articles was not immediate because they had to be transferred from another library, which implied a delay of several days or even weeks. Fortunately, many changes have occurred since then; indeed, those times are gone and almost forgotten. Among these changes, in the 1990s it became clear that the current model of scientific publishing, which is still the one that prevails, was not only extremely irregular but also raised many ethical issues. The idea of Open Access (OA) that developed in response paralleled similar movements in many other fields, such as Open Source, which advocated free open software. One of the strongest arguments in favor of OA is the following: if scientific research is mainly paid for by citizens, in the form of taxes, why are its results not freely available to this same society? And why are the rights to disseminate these results in the hands of private commercial publishers? [5]. However, despite the obvious validity of this argument, OA has been struggling for more than a decade to compete in a world still dominated by the traditional subscription model of scholarly publishing. The director of the Harvard OA Project, Peter Suber, defined OA as “literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” In a previous article in this journal [1], Ernest Abadal precisely dissected the key concepts of OA, its two different forms, i.e., the gold and green ways, the controversy elicited by the Finch report [3], which overtly advocated the gold way (in which OA journals are sustained by the authors) over the green way (mainly based on freely accessible institu-

* This article was previously published in INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY [Int Microbiol 16:253-257]. Contributions to Science publishes the whole series of articles devoted to the Open Access Initiative appeared in 2013 in INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY.

Keywords: Open Access · scientific information · scholarly publishing ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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tional digital repositories). Abadal also pointed out that the latter strategy has advantages in countries where there are both good digital infrastructures for establishing these repositories and few and relatively modest science publishers, as opposed to countries such as the UK, the USA, Germany, and the Netherlands, where the largest science publishing companies are concentrated. The Finch report has been accused by some OA supporters of serving the interests of the publishing industry. However, as Abadal noted, many voices of authority consider the two ways to be complementary and that both need to be fostered if OA is to succeed. In the present article, I first offer my personal view, as a researcher, in commenting on some of the factors that may delay the spread of OA in scholarly publications and then speculate on the future of scholarly communication. In the long history of science, significant leaps forward have often been made in the form of breakthroughs that completely changed the way things were seen or done. Also very often, and almost as an inflexible rule, these revolutions and the people who have led them have been fiercely attacked by those representing mainstreams of conservative opinion. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century is an often-cited example of one such breakthrough. The Internet is another, obviously much more recent example, and it has deeply changed the world in just two decades. But the Internet is not only a revolution by itself, it is also a tool that has catalyzed revolutions in other fields. Among them is scholarly publishing, and OA is probably the movement that will change it forever. The Internet and related advances in media distribution have made the print versions of journals unnecessary for a growing number of people all over the world. Similar to what has happened in many other markets that make use of contents that are or have the potential to be virtual, including software, music, books, and movies, the Internet has turned the world of scientific publications on its head. However, for the former markets the change is largely in the way their contents are sold and distributed, while the transformation in scholarly publishing is much deeper, as it is not only formal but also conceptual. And this has to do with the fact that the status quo of scholarly publishing, which is still dominant in 2013, is a tremendously peculiar one. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consider why.

commonly provided by public local, regional, national, or supranational agencies and ultimately financed by taxpayers. Funding allows researchers to carry out their research and the generated results must be disseminated. Until recently, this last step necessarily involved publication in subscription based journals that, in addition to charging fees to subscribers, often also charged authors to publish or, in some cases, even to submit their manuscripts. Furthermore, the copyright for the published articles was not held by the authors nor by the funding agencies or learned societies that had financed the research, but by the publishers. Although researchers are both the authors and the main target of scholarly publications, and thus, together with taxpayers, the main players in this market, they were left out of the game, as publishers were the recipients of the entire economic profit and held the rights to continued gains. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, this model of scientific publishing continues to thrive. Over the last decade, institutional subscription fees for academic journals have risen so rapidly that they are making academic libraries, even those of the wealthiest institutions, unsustainable. For instance, institutional subscription fees to the print + online Journal of Comparative Neurology are more than 23,000 euros for countries in the Euro zone. It is therefore not surprising that, in 2012, a faculty council at Harvard University asked students and professors to no longer make use of scientific journals with the highest subscription fees. The recognition of this atypical structure of scholarly publishing and that journal subscriptions are progressively becoming unaffordable has served as a point of no return for the current scholarly publishing system. As for the emergence of the OA movement, the key to its rapid, unstoppable run is the Internet and its limitless potential. Nowadays, many believe that the future of science communication is OA, as its growing rates of implementation seem to show. Will OA fully replace the current subscription-based system? And how long will this take? Nobody yet has the answers to these questions, but perhaps the best indicator of the long-term success of OA is the clear support it has received not only from the governments of the, scientifically speaking, most relevant countries, but also from an increasing number of academic and private institutions. Of course, these institutions have powerful reasons for supporting OA, including ethical ones. Access to research publications is a tremendous limitation for many researchers and health professionals, mainly in developing countries. In this regard, OA is already contributing to democratizing science; more importantly, it is accelerating scientific progress, as an increasing number of people, including scientists, gain free, immediate,

Reasons for a change In the academic world, researchers generally must compete for funding of their scientific projects, with the funds most www.cat-science.cat

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and online access to the latest research articles published on any possible subject. OA publishing is especially valuable to scientific enterprises in countries that lack the economic resources to allow their professionals to access subscription-based scientific publications. As for the representation of OA in the global scholarly publishing market, in December 2013 there were 9804 gold OA scholarly journals, according to the Directory of Open Access Journals [http://www.doaj.org]. A list with links to more than 1000 OA journals can be found at [http://www.sciencemedia.de]. However, a report in 2012 noted that gold OA journals represented only 11 % of all scholarly journals [8]. Approximately 17 % of the 1,66 million articles published in 2011 and indexed in Scopus (a comprehensive article-level index of scholarly articles) are available by OA through journal publishers, either immediately or after an embargo of 12 months following publication [8]. Despite the optimism that OA generates, its undeniable advantages, and the support it has received from the majority of the most relevant players in science communication, its progress has been surprisingly slow. Many questions regarding the implementation of OA must still be answered, and there is some resistance to its broad acceptance, and not only from publishers. In my opinion, two main reasons explain the reluctance of authors to submit their articles to OA journals: (1) the greater prestige of many of the traditional subscription journals and (2) the perception that publishing in gold OA journals is expensive. Researchers tend to be very conservative, and, understandably, most authors aspire to publish their works in the most renowned journals. This is partly because the majority of their colleagues tend to believe that articles published in these journals, which typically have high impact factors (IFs), are intrinsically better than those published in journals with lower IFs, as is the case with most of the current OA journals. This belief is widely shared by media professionals, the average citizen and, even more worrisome, the people responsible for assessing the researcher and his or her research. In fact, as scientists, we and our work are currently evaluated mainly based on the number of authored or co-authored publications and the IFs of the journals in which they were published. In peer evaluations, the articles written by the target researcher are rarely read, nor are his or her possible scientific contributions analyzed. Usually, evaluators simply count the number of papers on the researcher’s CV and the Ifs of the journals in which they were published. The use of such metrics is easy and tempting, but it poisons and devaluates the research process and ultimately the results of research. It is like judging people www.cat-science.cat

according to the brand of the cars they drive. As the practical value of a research work is no longer defined by the intrinsic contributions it makes, but by the IF of the journal in which it is published, the goal of many becomes publishing more articles, and the higher the IF of the journal that accepts those articles, the better. Fortunately, digital communication allows the use of alternative types of measurements and metrics to assess the impact of an article, ones that are much more immediate and directly related to the article itself and not to the journal that publishes it. These “altmetrics” are able to collect all sorts of references to individual scholarly papers from all across the Internet, by gathering information from blogs, tweets, newspapers, and any other digital source [7].

Peer review and Open Access A related concern is the misconception that peer review in OA is more relaxed than in conventional subscription journals. This idea is probably fueled by the fact that the acceptance rates for submitted articles are usually higher in many OA publications, as space is not a limitation. Another factor that erodes the trustworthiness of OA is the emergence of “predator” publishers, i.e., illegitimate or blatantly corrupt operators whose sole aim is to make money from authors through articles processing fees, which have largely emerged under the gold OA market. An updated list of suspicious or questionable publishers can be found at [http://scholarlyoa. com/publishers/]. To counteract these threats and to maintain or gain confidence and prestige, OA will have to uphold and strengthen rigorous peer review policies and offer highquality publishing, so that a significant number of OA journals are at least as reliable, prestigious, and of the same impact as their top conventional subscription-based counterparts. The fact that some OA journals have already gained a strong reputation, with high IFs, in a relatively short period of time indicates that these goals are attainable. In the long term, the best solution will be a progressive change in the mentality of authors, publishers, journalists, and other players in scholarly publishing. This will lead to changes in the distorted current system of research assessment. An example is the Research Excellence Framework, the current UK system for assessing the quality of research, which in 2012 stated that no grant-review panel “will make any use of journal impact factors, rankings, lists or the perceived standing of publishers in assessing the quality of research outputs” [http:// www.ref.ac.uk/faq/researchoutputsref2/]. An additional, important concern is the perception that 97

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publishing in gold OA journals is costly. For a journal to persist, it has to be sustainable, no matter whether it is OA or not. If the articles are to be made freely available, the costs of publishing them must somehow be covered. One possibility is for authors to pay a fixed amount per article. This is the model adopted by many OA publishers, including the Public Library of Sciences (PLoS) and BioMed Central. Since PloS launched its first journal, PloS Biology, in 2003, it has published more than 100,000 articles. Its journal PLoS One, launched in 2006, is the largest gold OA journal worldwide. PLoS uses the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) for all of the articles it publishes. Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their articles, but they allow anyone to download, distribute, reuse, modify, reprint, and/or copy them, as long as the original authors and source are cited. When, in November 2013, Creative Commons announced a new generation of open licenses (version 4.0) PLoS decided to incorporate them in all of its journals [http:// www.plos.org/plos-welcomes-cc-v4-0-licenses]. PloS One has an acceptance rate for all submissions of almost 70 % (data for the period July 1, 2010–September 30, 2010) and charges 1350 USD per article. The average fee for publishing an article in an OA journal is 900 USD [10], but it may be as high as 3900 USD. It is true that these amounts of money are not negligible, but the fees can be reduced, e.g., in the case of PLoS One, to 500 USD for authors from countries of lower middle income or even waived for authors from low-income countries. Some institutions also partially or totally cover the costs of publishing articles by their staff researchers in OA. Other models can include authors being subsidized by funders of research. An example is eLife, an OA publication founded by the currently doubly famous (because his 2013 Nobel Prize and his speaking out against “luxury” journals [9]) Randy Schekman in 2012. The exclusively online journal eLife is sustained by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society, and others. Several current OA journals are subsidized or funded by a variety of institutions and they do not charge authors for submitting their articles. Another relatively new OA publisher of research articles in the biological sciences, medical sciences, and health sciences, Peer J, requires that all authors become members, with pre-paid (before acceptance of the first manuscript) fees ranging from 99 USD (one paper per year) to 299 USD (unlimited papers). An additional concern for many authors who are willing to publish their articles in OA is the fact that some funding agencies, universities, and research institutions do not facilitate the payment of author fees from the projects’ budgets. If publication fees have to be www.cat-science.cat

taken from grants, then publication in that journal will have to be seriously considered; otherwise the resources available for research projects will be further reduced, and this at a time of shrinking funds for research. Funding agencies and research institutions will have to be flexible enough to allow payments for publications arising after the investigator’s grants have expired. To gain a foothold in the OA revolution, an increasing number of traditional paid subscription journals have adopted a hybrid model that allows authors to publish their articles as OA upon payment of a fixed fee, usually about 3000 USD. However, although this OA option is likely to increase the number of citations [4], it is only chosen by a small minority, about 1–2 % of authors [2].The number of gold OA journals varies enormously among countries. The USA leads, with 1214 OA journals, followed by Brazil, with 911 (which represents 90 % of all scholarly journals published in that country). Spain is fifth in the ranking, with 522 OA journals (data as of December 2013) [http://tinyurl.comp/ p7fcc67].

Digital repositories In the OA green alternative, most experts agree that self-archiving scientific documents in institutional digital repositories can reduce the costs of publishing, which could easily be covered by universities or research institutions. In the biomedical sciences, the largest digital archive of full-text scientific articles is PubMed Central, developed by the US National Library of Medicine, which offers articles that can be read for free, with varying conditions for their reuse. Some participating publishers delay the release of their articles on this database for a period of time after publication in print (usually from six months to one year). PubMed archives, which in May 2013 contained over 2.7 million articles, is growing by around 70,000 articles per year. Another option for the retrieval of full-text OA articles is PubGet [http://pubget.com/]. In addition to providing free access, digital repositories offer the advantage that they store not only traditional but also non-traditional scientific texts, including Ph.D. dissertations, patents, conference proceedings, seminars, presentations, and other kinds of scientifically relevant digital information, collectively known as the “grey literature.” However, in countries with strong science publishers, experts tend to endorse the gold rather than the green way of OA, partly because it is less disruptive with respect to their own interests and allows them to eventually adapt to the new scenario, as they are already doing. On the other hand, in countries like 98

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Brazil or Spain, with a relatively short history of science publishing, OA proponents favor the green way. In November 2013 there were more than 2500 OA digital repositories (an updated list can be found at http://www.opendoar.org), and they were in various ways promoted by public research funding agencies (by requiring that their research institutions have their own digital repositories to be eligible for receiving grants). Yet, for areas such as biomedical sciences, digital repositories are still relatively underdeveloped, because authors in these disciplines who choose OA clearly prefer the gold way. For other disciplines, such as mathematics and physics, the situation is different, perhaps because the markets are smaller and authors are much more receptive to green OA. In fact, the digital repository [arXiv.org] has become the most strongly preferred tool for communicating mathematics and physics results. But for those researchers with limited access to the scientific literature such that they cannot readily obtain the article they are looking for (usually in their attempt to remain up to date in their specific disciplines or topics), there are not many alternatives. Either they have to pay the downloading fee, typically about 30 euros per article (if they have access to a good librarian they can obtain the article through the library), or they can request an electronic reprint by directly contacting the authors (whose email addresses can be easily found through the Internet), or they can try to find colleagues with access to the article, etc.

hundreds or thousands of dollars per article, comes directly from their own funds or their research grants. Moreover, some authoritative voices have substantial doubts about the future of OA (citing reasons such as poor sustainability and the eventual loss of quality). In 10 or 15 years, perhaps most scientific information will be OA but it is likely that, of the many OA journals and initiatives that arise, only a few will survive. However, it is also possible that the OA and non-OA worlds coexist in this future market, at least for a while. The outlook is uncertain and difficult to predict, and there is no guarantee that any particular format will succeed or prevail in the long term as the only one standing. For the moment, as authors continue to submit their research articles to reputable subscription journals, these publishers will lack incentive to turn their traditional model into OA. Still, most people agree that the future of science publication will be better than the status quo [6]. Competing interests. None declared.

References 1. Abadal E (2013) Gold or green: the debate on Open Access policies. Int Microbiol 16:199-203 2. Björk BC (2012) The hybrid model for Open Access publication of scholarly articles: A failed experiment? J Am Soc Inform Sc Tech 63:1496-1504 3. Finch J, et al. (2012) Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings. Int Microbiol 16:199-203 4. Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Larivière V, Gingras Y, Carr L, Brody T, Harnard S (2010) Self-selected or mandated, Open Access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS One 5:e13636 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013636 5. Guerrero R, Piqueras M (2004) Open Access: a turning point in scientific publication. Int Microbiol 7:157-160 6. Guerrero R (2013) Microbiology and the Black Swans. SEMaforo (bulletin of the Spanish Society for Microbiology) 56:3-4 [In Spanish] 7. Kwok R (2013) Research impact: Altmetrics make their mark. Nature 500:491-493 8. Laakso M, Björk BC (2012) Anatomy of Open Access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure. BMC Med 10:124 9. Schekman R (2013) How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science. [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/ dec/09/how-journals-nature-science-cell-damage-science] (Dec. 12, 2013) 10. Solomon DJ, Björk BC (2012) A study of Open Access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inform Sc Tech 63:1485-1495

The long road to Open Access Most subscription-based publishers must see a future dominated by OA because they are rapidly adapting to it by adopting either the hybrid model system (today there are more than 4000 such journals) or a direct, “pure” gold OA model. A remarkable recent development is the dramatic increase in these publications, as evidenced by the 13,400 OA articles in 2005 to the 119,900 in 2011. Indeed, the majority of OA articles are published by subscription-based publishers [8]. Nonetheless, in spite of the ethically and non-ethically related reasons that make OA theoretically superior to the traditional model of science publishing, OA is facing tremendous challenges that are slowing its progress. As mentioned above, one of them is the prejudices and attitudes of the scientists themselves. Since journal subscription fees are usually covered by institutional libraries, researchers tend to perceive access to articles as free merchandise, whereas the cost for publishing in OA journals, often www.cat-science.cat

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OPEN ACCESS

ALLEA Statement on Enhancement of Open Access to Scientific Publications in Europe* ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights Open Access to scientific publications is one among several other policies that will accelerate the move towards Open Science In its April 2012 declaration entitled “Open Science for the 21st century”, ALLEA stressed the need to promote (i) access to scientific publications as soon and as freely as possible (hereafter “Open Access” or “OA”), (ii) the development of open platforms allowing access to research data that are discoverable and re-usable (hereafter “Open Data”), (iii) support for interoperable e-infrastructures to manage the scale of future data flows (hereafter “Open e-Infrastructure”), (iv) the culture of open science based on online collaborations and high standards of quality and integrity (hereafter “Open Scientific Culture”). OA is a crucial element in reaching an Open Science model that will flourish rapidly. But the transition to Open Science requires more than just a fine-tuned policy on OA to scientific publications. While Open Data and Open Infrastructure mainly require the support of, and funding by, public authorities, OA to scientific publications requires a redesign of how scientific researchers, editors of learned journals, research funding bodies, libraries and archiving institutions interact with the publishing industry. In contrast to policies geared towards Open Data, Open e-Infrastructure or Open Scientific Culture, an OA policy can conflict with the copyright-based claims made by the publishers who, in general, are by assignment the owners of copyright on journal articles [1]. There is a need to respond to some demands of journal publishers [2], since their views on the publication process and on the legacy of the past cannot simply be disregarded. Ignoring them may help to explain why the implementation of the OA model has been somewhat delayed. ALLEA urges public authorities and funding institutions to adopt concrete steps towards an OA model [3].

*This statement was prepared on October 2013 by the ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. ALLEA, the federation of All European Academies, works to contribute to improving the framework conditions under which science and scholarship can excel. The working group was chaired by Prof. Joseph Straus (Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities) and Prof. Alain Strowel (Saint-Louis University, Brussels) is the lead author of the statement. It can be accessed at http://www.allea.org/Content/ALLEA/Statement_ALLEA_Open_Access_2013-11.pdf. Recently, the Institute for Catalan Studies, the Academy of sciences and humanities of the territories of Catalan culture, joined ALLEA.

Keywords: ALLEA (federation of All European Academies) · Open Access · Open Scientific Culture · OA models ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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The traditional system for the publication and dissemination of scientific journals has shown some limits The revenues of the scientific, technical and medical (hereafter the “scientific”) publishers amounted to €24.9 billion for 2010, with a growth of 4.3% compared to 2009, not with standing the difficult economic situation [4]. The scientific publishing sector is now quite concentrated with big players such as Elsevier (2200 journals, including Cell and The Lancet), Springer (around 2000 journals), Wiley-Blackwell (1500) and the Nature Publishing Group [5]. Scientific publishing still appears to be a profitable business. At the same time, the cost of journals for libraries has risen dramatically. According to the libraries, the payments for journals quadrupled between 1986 and 2011, with an average annual increase of 3.5% above inflation. “This increase cannot only be explained by the increased number of scientific articles published” (see COM(2012) 410 final, p. 4). This leads to the conclusion that public bodies which subsidise research have also to pay for permitting other researchers to access published research results. But scientific publishers also include smaller players, for instance many University presses and learned societies, whose economic model might substantially differ. Not all academic publishers operate solely for commercial gain and the implementation of OA should be rolled out in such a way as to preserve the best of existing publishing practices. It is useful to note that many not-for-profit organisations such as academies, learned societies and professional associations raise a substantial part of their income from their publishing activities and this is then used to cross-subsidise other parts of the research system such as early career fellowships, mobility grants, etc. Any OA policy has to take into account the varying situations of publishers. In particular, large publishers may enhance revenue by offering electronic (and/or paper) journals in packages, with the result that libraries may be obliged to subscribe to the whole bundle, although they are only interested in some parts of it. In contrast, small publishers may well not have the stock to engage in such a practice; and so may be free from any objection of this kind. Some members of the scientific community have quite properly voiced their concern about the rising cost of accessing knowledge. Others have even called for the boycott certain publishers. The objections are particularly acute in the field of natural and medical sciences, probably less for journals in the humanities and social sciences, such as economics, politics, history and law reviews. www.cat-science.cat

A new compact between the different parties involved in the financing of research, the production of scientific articles, their assessment through peer-review, their dissemination and their preservation appears necessary. The tensions with commercial publishers and some entrenched practices in journal publishing probably slow down the indispensable move towards an OA model.

Open Access relies on fundamental legal principles and is rightly supported by authorities, in particular the European Commission i) Fundamental legal principles OA is supported by the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” that is enshrined in Article 27(1) 01 the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a principle that has become a binding norm as Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). At the same time, Article 27(2) recognises “the right to the protection the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, (...) production of which he is the author”. In Europe, the freedom of scientific research is recognized by Article 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, while “intellectual property” is equally protected under Article 17(2) of the Charter. ii) Towards OA in Europe The Berlin Declaration on OA of 2003 was a landmark in the drive towards better access to scientific materials. Since then, several national and international bodies have pleaded in favour of OA. For many years, the European Commission has supported the move to OA. In its “Horizon 2020” which follows the previous Framework Programs, the Commission envisages that all research results should be made freely accessible online. In a July 2012 Communication entitled “Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits public investments in research” (COM(2012) 401 final), the Commission has identified some barriers hindering the transition to OA. The lack of coordination between universities, research institutions and libraries, the absence of a transparent path for moving out of the standard publishing model, the lack of information and infrastructure that will allow researchers to comply easily with OA via self-archiving, the fear of contractual disagreements with their existing publisher and the absence of mechanisms for enforcing OA policies, all help to explain why the transition to OA is slow. 102

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In its July 2012 Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information (C(2012) 4890 final), the Commission distinguished several issues that require action: on top of recommending “open access to scientific publications”, the Commission advocates the “open access to research data” (e.g. searchable and linked datasets), the “preservation and re-use of scientific information” (e.g. system of electronic deposit), the development of “e-infrastructures” (the electronic systems for underpinning the dissemination of scientific information), the multi-stakeholder dialogue at different levels and the coordination between Member States. iii) Towards OA in the U.S. On February 22, 2013, President Obama’s Executive Office issued a memorandum on “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research”. Under the Name “Public Access to Scientific Publications”, this document stresses that the results of unclassified research that are published in peer-reviewed publications directly arising from Federal funding should be stored for preservation in the long term. Also those publications should be made “publicly accessible to search, retrieve, and analyse in ways that maximize the impact and accountability of the Federal research investment”. In developing this Public Access policy, the U.S. agencies are asked to “maximiz(e) the potential to create new business opportunities” and to “prevent the unauthorized mass redistribution of scholarly publications”. iv) Positive impact of OA Similarly, ALLEA believes that, on top of the obvious gains in terms of improved access, the development of OA could create new business opportunities and reduce the level of unauthorised dissemination of publications. Publishers might play a new and important role in an OA model that would reduce the financial burden for libraries, research organisations, universities and, ultimately, the funding institutions. At the same time, the move towards OA does not mean that copyright has norole to play in the open environment: rather than ensuring revenues directly commensurate to the number of copies distributed, copyright, and in particular its principles on attribution of authorship and integrity of works, should govern the Open Scientific Culture that goes along with OpenScience. However, it would be naïve to think that OA will automatically reduce the financial burden for the funding institutions. It might even grow initially when the OA infrastructures are being established. www.cat-science.cat

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ALLEA supports the European and U.S. policy objectives for OA relating to scientific publications, and urges that steps towards implementation be set in train ALLEA fully supports the European Commission’s recommendations of July 2012. In particular, ALLEA wants to stress the need to: In general: • “Define clear policies for the dissemination of and OA to scientific publications resulting from publicly funded research”; beyond general policies, concrete objectives and indicators should be used, based on implementation plans and awareness programs; • Put in place much needed financial planning for the move to OA; For the funding institutions: • Ensure that they define clear policies for OA to the publications resulting from the funded projects; • Include in the career evaluation of researchers not only traditional publications in (peer-reviewed) journals, but also publications in open mode; For the timing of OA implementation and the embargo periods: • Require OA to be implemented as soon as possible. Some flexibility is needed; in certain areas of research, shorter embargos make sense; For the public institutions involved in the negotiation with publishers: • Improve transparency about the terms and conditions negotiated between publishers and public institutions which foster research; • Promote partnerships between public institutions (in particular libraries) at national and European level; For the researchers: • Give guidance to researchers on how to comply with OA policies and make them more aware of what the standard publishing contracts allow them to do(for example authors tend to underestimate what they can do with prepublication versions, e.g. self-archiving, use in course packs, etc.); • Foster the awareness among researchers of the copyright licences needed for OA to be quickly implemented and “encourage researchers to retain their copyright while granting licences to publishers”; • Support the academic careers of researchers who acCONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:101-106 (2014)

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tively share the results of their research;

In its July 2012 Communication, the Commission retains the usual distinction between “Gold” OA and “Green” OA: while Gold OA shifts the payment publication costs from readers (vi a subscriptions) to researchers and their institution, Green OA is synonymous with self-archiving [6].

research should preferably be published in the Gold mode. However, the government did not indicate how it would be financed [7]. In the Commission’s FP7 and under Horizon 2020, Gold OA is eligible for funding as part of research grants. The Gold OA might present some advantages, but ALLEA stresses that the price for a publication under the Gold OA must remain reasonable. It appears that the price to be paid for a Gold publication is usually between €1500 and €5000 [8]. According to some experts, a fee between €500 and €1000 would appear reasonable [9]. The publishers should remain reasonable in setting the price for the Gold model. This price should cover the costs resulting from publishing and be as transparent as possible. Public authorities should ensure that the price asked by publishers remains commensurate with the overall funding of the project. For large scientific projects, it is easier to allocate a reasonable amount for Gold publication; for research projects supported by smaller grants, such as in the humanities and social sciences, the payment of the same fee might not appear adequate. Thus the Gold model could be favoured in certain fields and for large projects. Some disciplines (e.g. astrophysics) have a long-standing, researcher driven commitment to use of OA tools to drive scholarly communication, while others have yet to embark in a meaningful way upon an OA pathway. The implementation of a Gold model must allow for different pace and level of engagement across the disciplines. Funding institutions should be encouraged to outline clearly how they will support and fund meaningful OA. A key element of this should be a commitment to resource OA as a specific item within research grants made by public research funders. The implementation of a retrospective requirement for OA should be avoided. A worrying feature of any author-pays model is that it could inhibit publication by independent or under-funded researchers, for instance coming from less wealthy countries. This is another reason for not favouring a Gold model across the board. ALLEA is opposed to a research assessment system that would only take Gold publications into account: the adoption of such an assessment system would very probably lead to an increase of the price to be paid for Gold publications, as researchers and institutions will be locked in the Gold OA model.

i) Gold OA Gold OA is favoured by scientific publishers and sometimes supported by public authorities. In the UK for instance, the government considers that the results of all publicly funded

ii) Green OA In the “Green” model, the published and peer-reviewed article “is archived by the researcher in an online repository before, after or alongside its publication” (COM(2012) 410 final,

For entrepreneurs who directly need access to scientific knowledge: • Allow unaffiliated persons and SMEs to access scientific publications under reasonable conditions. ALLEA also supports the adoption by European funding agencies of objectives similar to those outlined in the February 2013 memorandum of the Obama administration: • “Ensure that the public can read, download, and analyse in digital form final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents”; • “Ensure full public access to the metadata of publications without charge upon first publication in a data format that ensures interoperability with current and future search technology”; • “Ensure that attribution to authors, journals, and original publishers is maintained”; • “Ensure that publications and metadata are stored in an archive that i) provides for long-term preservation and access to the content without charge (and) ii) uses standards, widely available and, to the extent possible, nonproprietary archival formats for texts and associated content”. Now that there is a broad consensus with regard to the policy orientations in Europe and in the U.S., all measures supporting OA should be implemented within a strict time frame.

ALLEA in particular supports the Green OA model, but invites funding institutions and public authorities to help the scientific community to put in place self-archiving solutions

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p. 5). Publishers can recoup their investment by selling subscriptions and charging pay-per-download/view fees during the embargo period and after. ALLEA tends to favour the Green model for humanities and social sciences. But the Green model could also apply to small research projects in other disciplines. This model supports the long-standing scholarly principle of “freedom to publish” by ensuring that researchers retain ultimate authority as to where and how they publish their scholarly outputs. A short embargo should apply. The embargo could vary depending on the discipline. In last moving research fields, the embargo could be for six months; some fields like physics and maths are relatively slow moving, and a longer embargo thus appears adequate. Efforts should also be made to ensure that a draft version can be archived before the publication (but after peer review clears the way) and that, more importantly, the final version is archived alongside the publication in the journal. To maintain the high quality of scientific literature is of utmost importance. There are indications of an increasing number of cases of misconduct in research, and therefore high quality peer review is more important than ever. In a model where the researcher pays for publication, it may be tempting for publishers to accept contributions of questionable scientific quality. Therefore, it appears necessary to define standards to be applied by the publishers for high quality peer review. iii) In General Although ALLEA supports an OA policy, both the Gold and the Green models may create problems. It is essential to address those problems. ALLEA encourages the European Commission to assess OA policies so as to enable policymakers and the scientific and scholarly community to understand better the costs, savings and benefits arising from OA. Various licence models could be adopted for the Gold and Green OA models. ALLEA believes that most researchers would favour a model of open licence that requires the author to be named (attribution), but prohibits commercial reuse (model of the Creative Commons - BY - NC). Further consultation with the research communities is needed before a model is agreed upon for this element of OA practice. The best solution may be to leave some choice as to the type of open licence to adopt. ALLEA also considers that OA, which allows short-term access to publications, should be complemented by a system ensuring the long-term preservation of publications (and rewww.cat-science.cat

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search data). This could be done by an effective system of deposit, but also through the preservation of the hardware and software needed to read the publications (and data) in the future. It is also essential that the universities and research institutions put in place a repository system. The European Commission should fund the development of those institutional repositories. It should also define the standards for online repositories (this also relates to the need to invest in e-Infrastructure; see above on the factors that promote Open Science). A ranking of repositories might be a way to indicate quality standards. More should be done to assess the quality of OA repositories. It is probably not useful to have OA repositories containing pre-prints, working papers and postprints all together in the same spot. The lack of quality standards for repositories is a disincentive for scientists to publish under an OA model. ALLEA hopes that moving to OA will help scientific institutions to save money, but it is important to realize that an OA model might impose new burdens on researchers and their employers. New tasks for the researchers should in any case be kept to a minimum. As stressed by five leading UK learned societies: “Implementing OA policies will require a substantial shift in community altitudes and behaviour in some disciplines, and all stakeholders need to increase their efforts to communicate more effectively with researchers” [10]. This is also an important element to be taken into account by the European authorities before embarking on a possibly far-reaching reform of the practices of scientific publication. The policy and guidelines to be adopted should in any case take into account the important differences which exist between the interests of scientists and publishers in the area of natural sciences, on one side, and in the area of humanities and social science, on the other.

Notes 1. Within the bread issue of open access to scientific information, it is thus important to distinguish the issue of open access to peer- reviewed research articles (referred to as Open Access or OA) and the issue of access to scientific research data (referred to as Open Data). 2. In its July 2012 Recommendation (C(2012) 4890 final), the Commission mentions that “(15) Given the transitional state of the publishing sector, stakeholders need to come together to accompany the transition process and look for sustainable solutions for the scientific publishing process”. 3. For example, in September 2012, the UK announced a ₤ 10 million investment to help universities with the transition to open access to publiclyfunded research findings and to kick-start the process of developing poli-

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4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

cies and setting up funds to meet the costs of article processing charges (see: http://www.stm -assoc.org/industry-news/uk-government-invests10-million-gbp-to-help-unversities-move-to-open-access/). See: http://www.stm-assec.org/wp-content/uploads/STMStatOct2011. jpg. Le Monde, March 2, 2013, p. 4 Supplement. According to the Commission’s Communication (p. 5), “currently some 20 % of all scientific articles are available in open access form,60 % of which follow the “Green’ model”. More clearly, the Wellcome Trust has said the Gold OA should be paid out of the research grant which would be adjusted accordingly. Le Monde, March 2, 2013, p. 5 Supplement.

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9. B. Rentier, President of the University of Liège, quoted in Le Monde, March 2, 2013, p.5 Supplement. 10. Open Access in the UK and what it means for scientific research. A joint statement from The Academy of Medical Sciences, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society of Biology, February 2013, p. 2. Accessed at: https://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/z_events/2013/scientific-discussion/oa-workshop/2013-Open-Access-Joint-Statement.pdf.

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HISTORICAL CORNER Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

CONTRIB SCI 10:107-110 (2014) doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.195

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Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972), a woman for all seasons Núria Radó-Trilla Barcelona Knowledge Hub, Academia Europaea, Barcelona

Correspondence: Núria Radó-Trilla Barcelona Knowledge Hub Academia Europaea Carme, 47 (IEC building) 08001 Barcelona, Catalonia Tel. +34-932701727 E-mail: nrado@acadeuro.org

In Spain, women did not have the right to enter research institutes and universities until 1910 [16]. At best, they could attend a Teacher Training College (Escuela Normal, in Spain), a kind of junior college devoted to train high school graduates to be teachers. However, it was unimaginable a woman could become, for example, a physician, a lawyer or a scientist. It would still be more than twenty years before women’s suffrage arrived. With the Second Republic, in 1934, Spain was one of the last European countries to adopt it. However, very soon a bloody and cruel Civil War (in 1936–1939) would truncate projects and dreams of a whole generation of young Spanish people. In this scenario, Margalida Comas Camps (Fig. 1) went on to become the first Spanish woman to be awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences [18]. It was not without obstacles and impediments, which made it more like a steeplechase than a scientific career. Margalida Comas was born in 1892 in Alaior, a small village on the island of Minorca, in the Balearic Islands. She was extremely influenced by her father Gabriel Comas (1864–1942), a liberal vocational teacher and educator who started a free night school for adults and who transmitted to his children that education was the key to achieving the development of society [19]. In time, she became “the most important Spanish female scientist of the first third of the twentieth century, and one of the most important educators of the first half of the twentieth century” [14]. Indeed, her mother Rita Camps, also contributed to Margalida’s vocation. But let us start from the beginning. Powerfully drawn to science, Comas obtained excellent grades in high school and she won the High School Special Award of the Science Section with a project entitled “Flowers and insects: reciprocal adaptations to cooperate in pollination”. In September 1911, once she finished high school, she asked for permission to take the exam of the subjects she needed to complete and obtain the degree of elementary, middle and high school teacher. She asked to take the exams directly because doing so she would skip going to the Teacher Training College, as it was customary at that time. So, at the end of 1911 (she was only 19) Comas became a teacher, with excellent grades.

Keywords: Margalida Comas (1892–1972) · natural sciences · Second Spanish Republic · women in science ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

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Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972)

Fig. 1. Margalida Comas in Alcaufar (Minorca), in the 1920s.

As it can be found in the detailed biography edited by María Ángeles Delgado and published in 2009 by the Government of the Balearic Islands [14], Comas cultivated her pedagogical facet and scientific experimentation in parallel in order to offer to future teachers an appropriate scientific and academic training. She also wanted teachers to have an interest in modern scientific methods. Throughout her life, Comas never distinguished science pedagogy from scientific knowledge. To her, the ideal of scientific training consisted of “placing students in the same position as the researcher, not because they should discover by themselves what had taken centuries to be discovered, but because they should look through researchers’ eyes and handle their scientific instruments in order to acquire the qualities of observation and reasoning typical of scientists and to apply them to other aspects of their life” [3]. She was convinced that science education could not be separated from usual scientific practice. She argued that the main objective of science education (“to train students in the observation, reasoning, inventiveness and ingenuity, and to prepare them to train their students this way” [15]) could not just be learned in books but also in the lab. This is why, once she became a tenured teacher of physics, chemistry and natural history at the Teacher Training College in Santander (Canta bria, Spain), she continued her scientific formal education. www.cat-science.cat

In 1918 Comas began her studies at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Barcelona as an unofficial student. Her great interest in research then led her to continue her studies in laboratories in Paris and London, while she was also working as a teacher at the Bedford College for women, at King’s College, and at Sir John Cass Institute. In 1921, when she returned to Spain, she completed her degree and wrote her first scientific work, entitled “Sobre la estructura microscópica del corazón de los cefalópodos” (“On the microscopic structure of the cephalopods’ heart”), that was published in the 24th Newsletter of the Royal Spanish Society of Natural History [4]. Some years later, she took the exams for her doctoral courses and started her doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1926, she started working in the Laboratoire d’evolution de êtres organisés, under the direction of Prof. Caullery. There she studied the extremely topical (at that point) concept of biological inheritance. Specifically, she studied the relationship between sex and temperature in the frog Rana temporaria. She also worked on the study of chromosomes in the mosquito Chironomus, getting to design an innovative way to get generations of Chironomus in captivity, which would mark her scientific career. During the period she spent in Paris, Comas published five notes on her research in scientific journals in French. First, “Sur le mode de penetration de Paramermis contorta dans la larve de Chironomus thummi Kieff” [5] and “Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de Chironomus” [6], which were published in the Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie. Those pigments are haemoglobine, because the larvae of Chironomus need to catch the low concentrations of oxygen present in the anoxic mud where they live. She also published “Notes biologiques sur Chironomus thummi Kieff” [7] and “Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa Notata Meigen (Chironomidae)” [8] in the Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France. Finally, her article “Sur l’intersexualité chez Paramermis contorta V. Linzt” was published in the Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Belgique [9]. Despite her fruitful research, she wanted to return once again to the Teacher Training College in Tarragona. However, Prof. Caullery offered her the possibility to go back to Paris during the academic year 1927-1928 to go into depth with her research. During that period she focused on the study of chromosomes of Paramermis contorta, the origin of the intersexuality of such species and the inheritance of the lack of pigment in certain Chironomus. She made the most of that stay writing her doctoral thesis, entitled “Contribución al conocimiento de la biología de Chironomus y de su parásito Paramermis contorta” (“Contribution to the understanding 108

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Fig. 2. First page of Margalida Comas’ doctoral thesis (Madrid, 1928).

Fig. 3. Margalida Comas and 14-months-old Miquel Sintes Comas (one of her nephews) in Barcelona in 1933.

of Chironomus thummi biology and of its parasite Paramer mis contorta”) (Fig. 2). Her thesis defense, in January 1928 at the Central University of Madrid, obtained an excellent grade. For this reason, the work was published in the Memo rias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural [10]. And this is how Comas became the first Spanish woman to be awarded a research-based doctorate in the natural sciences. Scientists are said to always remain scientists. And Comas continued to be a very productive researcher after her doctoral studies, publishing several papers every year. For example, she published, along with her thesis supervisor Prof. Caullery, “Le determinisme du sexe chez un nematode parasite des larves de Chironomes” [2]. She also published “Sobre la influencia de la tiroidina en el desarrollo de Chironomus thummi Kieff” (“On the influence of tiroidine on the development of Chironomus thummi Kieff”) [11] in the Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, and another work about sex determinism in Paramermis contorta v. Linzt [12] in the Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural. So, as it was pointed out in the report on her doctoral thesis, Comas showed a “remarkable aptitude for scientific research” [14]. Unfortunately, it was not easy to be a female

scientist: such skills were not encouraged in Spain, Europe or America, while her male colleagues had better chances to go on with their careers. In 1929, having exhausted Comas all possibilities to carry on with scientific research, she returned to the Teachers Training College in Tarragona and focused on her educational task. She revitalized educational methods; she tried to achieve a better-educated society, more cultured, fairer, freer and more egalitarian. She fought for equality between women and men, and one of her key aims was to modernize the Spanish society of that time. So, as many Spaniards did in that time, Comas committed to the Republic’s ideals. In 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed, Comas was appointed Director of the Teachers Training College of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) [14]. Also that year, on March 26, she married photographer Guillem Bestard, an old friend, widower and with a son. Three years later, she became Asso ciate Professor of elementary biology and natural science methodology at the University of Barcelona (Fig. 3). In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began. As discussed by Barona [1], the military uprising in Spain in 1936 was a fatal blow to the nascent scientific community in Spain, and Comas

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she tried to combine both fields by introducing her students to scientific field. Who knows what the future would have brought her and what research Margalida Comas would have done if she could find much better circumstances in her professional life.

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References

Fig. 4. Margalida Comas in the 1920s.

was one the many promising scientists who suffered the consequences of the war. Committed to republicanism, in 1937 Comas was appointed by the Ministry of Public Instruction of the Spanish Republic to collaborate with and advise the National Joint Committee and local Committees regarding the education and instruction of the Basque children taken to England to protect them from the war. According to C. Ryan in this journal [18], on May 27, 1937, the ship La Habana sailed for Southampton carrying four thousand Basque children. During her years in England, Comas worked for the Republican cause and the welfare of these child refugees [17]. This new occupation was time consuming; she became engaged in full-time teaching and acting as parent for the Basque children who lived in the school. In April 1939, the cruel Spanish Civil War ended with the victory of the fascists. Thus, Comas, as happened with hundreds of thousand other democratic Spaniards, remained in exile until the end of her life (Fig. 4). Since 1942 until her retirement (in 1959), Comas taught in the innovative Dartington Hall School, in Totnes (Devon County, UK). The first time she could go back to Majorca for some days was in 1955, 19 years after she left the island. Once she retired, she and her husband lived out of a suitcase between Totnes and Majorca. She died in Exmouth due to an acute pneumonia in August 28, 1972, three years after her husband. It is obvious that Comas was forced into exile at a crucial stage in her career and that this changed her life forever. However, her many years of work as a teacher also reflected the difficulty for women at that time to take up careers in scientific research [13]. Perhaps in response to this challenge,

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1. Barona JL (ed) (2010) El exilio científico republicano. Publicaciones Universitat de València, Valencia 2. Caullery M, Comas M (1928) Le determinisme du �� sexe chez un nematode parasite des larves de Chironomes. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires de séances de l’Academie de Sciences 186:646-648 3. Comas M (1922) La enseñanza elemental de las ciencias en Inglaterra. Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 744:80-83 4. Comas M (1924) Sobre la estructura microscópica del corazón de los Cefalópodos. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 24:313-320 5. Comas M (1927) Sur le mode de penetration de Paramermis contorta dans la larve de Chironomus thummi Kieff. Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie 96:673-675 6. Comas M (1927) Sur l’origine des pigments des larves de Chironomus. Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie 96:866-868 7. Comas M (1927) Notes biologiques sur Chironomus thummi Kieff. Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 3:127-133 8. Comas M (1927) Sur les métamorphoses de Prodiamesa Notata Meigen (Chironomidae). Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 52:174-178 9. Comas M (1927) Sur l’intersexualité chez Paramermis contorta V Linzt. Bulletin Biologique de la France et de la Belgique 61:186-189 10. Comas M (1928) Contribución al conocimiento de la biología de Chironomus y de su parásito Paramermis contorta. Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 13:369-427 11. Comas M (1928) Sobre la influencia de la tiroidina en el desarrollo de Chironomus thummi Kieff. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 27:309-314 12. Comas M (1929) Contribución al conocimiento del determinismo del sexo en Paramermis contorta v. Linzt. Memorias de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural 15:47-52 13. Delgado Echeverría I (2007) El descubrimiento de los cromosomas sexuales. CSIC, Madrid 14. Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca 15. Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), Madrid. Archive (1920) Expediente personal de Margarita Comas Camps. Manuscript �� document. 16. Margallón Portolés C (1998) Pioneras españolas en las ciencias. CSIC, Madrid, 406 pp 17. Ryan C (2009) Margarita Comas Camps: The English connection. In: Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892– 1972): científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, pp 11-21 18. Ryan C (2011) Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972): Scientist and science educator. Contrib Sci 7:77-84 19. Sureda Garcia B (2009) Conèixer i ensenyar: la nissaga del Comes. In: Delgado Martínez MA (ed) (2009) Margalida Comas Camps (1892-1972): científica i pedagoga. Govern de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, pp 31-37

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CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10:107-110 (2014)

INDEXES VOLUMES 7, 8, 9 Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Catalonia

OPENAACCESS

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Contents, volumes 7, 8, 9 (2011, 2012, 2013) Alegret S → Some salmon-colored keywords regarding various aspects of chemistry, 7: 71 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.111 Alsina C → Professor Pere Pi Calleja (1907–1986), 7: 85 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.113 Asensi Botet F → Fighting against smallpox around the world. The vaccination expeditions of Xavier de Balmis (1803–1806) and Josep Salvany (1803–1810), 8: 99 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.140 Aymerich M → Castellà A Aymerich MS → Franco R

Chica C → Latindex: A tool to extend the dissemination of scientific publications and to improve their quality assessment, 9: 151 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.174 Ciurana J → 9: 113 Clotet J → First International Conference of Biology of Catalonia (CIBICAT), ‘Global questions on advanced biology’ (Barcelona, 9–12 July, 2012), 9: 43 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.162 Cope D → Forty Years On, 8: 121 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.143

Ballabrera-Poy J → Salat J Beato M → What is our level of knowledge about the genome today? 8: 155 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.149 Berlanga M → Guerrero R Bolufer P → Science and technology in the 20th century as seen through the journal Ibérica (1914–2003), 7: 185 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.125 Bradley RS → Natural archives, changing climates, 7: 21 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.104 Bradley RS → Where do we stand on global warming?, 7: 45 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.107 Bradley RS → What can we learn from past warm periods?, 8: 53 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.134 Buceta J → Multidisciplinary approaches towards compartmentalization in development: Dor soventral boundary formation of the Droso phila wing disc as a case of study, 9: 57 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.164

de Gispert N → Foreword, 8: 119 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.142 Domínguez F → CAPCIT: The Advisory Board of the Parliament of Catalonia for Science and Technology, 8: 131 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.144 Domínguez M → Gozzer S

Calisto BM → The race to resolve the anatomic structures of the ribosome. On the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath, 7: 125 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.117 Camarasa JM → Roca-Rosell A Camí J → Bioethical challenges in personalised medicine, 8: 171 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.152 Cañigueral S → Martínez-Francés V Cardona P-J → Will personalised medicine be the key to eradicating TB? 8: 181 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.154 Casadesús J → Bacterial pathogenesis as an imperfect symbiosis, 9: 51 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.163 Casanovas O → Jiménez-Valerio G Castellà A → Annual Conference of the EPTA Network 2012. Presentation, 8: 137 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.145 Castilla JC → Conservation and social-ecological systems in the 21st century of the Anthropocene era, 8: 11 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.129 ISSN (print): 1575-6343 e-ISSN: 2013-410X

Escalas R → Temperament and tuning of early 19th century Hispanic keyboard instruments: A study of the monochord integrated into a fortepiano made by Francisco Fernández (1828), 9: 75 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.166 Esteller M → Forecasting limits in personalised medicine, 8: 145 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.147 Fernández P → Salat J Fita I → Calisto BM Folch R → The immediate future: Challenges and scales, 7: 51 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.108 Franco R → Smart cell-surface receptors: On the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka, 9: 25 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.160 García-Lladó A → Ciència magazine, first period (1926–1933): A project for the recovery and dissemination of the Catalan scientific heritage, 9: 169 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.176 Genescà M → Ibérica magazine (1913–2004) and the Ebro Observatory, 9: 159 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.175 Giner S → Foreword, 8: 9 Giner S → Piedmont and Catalonia: the unification in Italy and Spain. Some comparative remarks, 7: 171 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.123 Gonzàlez i Sastre F → Serrat D Gozzer S → Global climate change in the Spanish media: How the conservative press portrayed Al Gore’s initiative, 7: 65 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.110 Granados A → Challenges for industry developers, 8: 167 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.151

Guerrero G → Annual Conference of the EPTA Network 2012, Conclusions, 8: 187 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.155 Guerrero R → An integrate ecogenetic study of minimal ecosystems: The microbial mats of Ebro Delta and the Camargue (Western Mediterranean), 9: 117 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.172 Guerrero R → Piqueras M Hahn E → Martínez-Francés V Herms A → The CCD sensor: a semiconductor circuit for capturing images. On the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Charles Kuen Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George E. Smith (II), 7: 117 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.116 Jiménez-Valerio G → Anti-angiogenic therapy for cancer and the mechanisms of tumor resistance, 9: 67 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.165 Juan OM → Dendritic cells (DC) and their Toll-like receptors (TLR): Vital elements at the core of all individual immune responses. On the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 awarded to Bruce A. Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann, and Ralph M. Steinman, 8: 61 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.135 Juan-Vicedo J → Martínez-Francés V Lewin SA → Evolution at the ecosystem level: on the evolution of ecosystem patterns, 7: 11 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.102 Llebot JE → Can we be confident with climate models?, 7: 27 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.105 Lleonart J → The history of Scientia Marina, 7: 175 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.124 Llimona X → Professor Creu Casas i Sicart (1913– 2007), 8: 107 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.141 Llorca J → Energy from hydrogen. Hydrogen from renewable fuels for portable applications, 7: 57 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.109 Lovelock JE → Climate change on a live Earth, 7: 17 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.103 Luttikhuizen F → Professor Ignasi Ponseti i Vives (1914–2009), 7: 205 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.128 March Noguera J → Science on the Balearic Islands. A collection on the past that looks toward the future, 7: 191 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.126 Marco J → The role of autobiography, biography, and history in the works of Mario Vargas Llosa. On the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa, 7: 155 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.121 Martínez J → Salat J CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Martínez-Francés V → Ethnobotanical study of the sages used in traditional Valencian medicine and as essential oil: Characterization of an endemic Salvia and its contribution to local development, 8: 77 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.137 Martínez-Vidal A → García-Lladó A Massó E → The accelerated universe. On the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess, 8: 69 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.136 Mena FX → Companies, markets, and management of common property. On the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson, 7: 141 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.119 Molina T → The theme of Earth Day and the social perception of what is really happening to our planet, 8: 33 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.131 Mompart J →The Gedankenexperimente of quantum mechanics become reality: On the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland, 9: 33 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.161 Montero-Pich O → García-Lladó A Murià JM → A transition from indigenous to European technology in colonial Mexico: The case of tequila, 8: 93 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.139 Nair P → The United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNUGCM) in Barcelona: Mission and vision, 9: 101 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.168 Olivar MP → Lleonart J Omedes A → Piqueras M Piniella JF → Crystallography and the Nobel Prizes: On the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Dan Shechtman, 9: 17 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.159 Piqueras M → The Museu Blau, a natural history museum for the 21st century, 8: 85 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.138 Piqueras M →The American dream of Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908), 9: 109 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.170 Piqueras M → David Cardús (1922–2003), the physician of the space, 9: 183 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.178

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Piqueras M → Ramon Casanova (1892–1968) and the pulse jet engine, 9: 195 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.179 Plasència A → Global health challenges and personalised medicine, 8: 175 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.153 Pretus JL → Daniel Simberloff: Creative and devastating, 9: 5 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.157 Puche C → The Institute for Catalan Studies and the International Women’s Day, 2006–2013, 9: 107 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.169 Ríos S → Martínez-Francés V Roca-Rosell A → The Foundation of the Sciences Section of the Institute for Catalan Studies (1911) and its early years, 7: 195 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.127 Ros J → Biodiversity: Origin, functions and threats, 7: 37 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.106 Ros J→ Rachel Carson, sensitive and perceptive interpreter of nature, 8: 23 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.130 Ros J → Foreword, 9: 113 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.171 Rovira L → CARHUS Plus+: A classification of social science and humanities journals on the basis of international visibility standards, 9: 141 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.173 Ryan C → Margalida Comas Camps (1892–1972): Scientist and science educator, 7: 77 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.112 Salas E → Complex diseases: the relationship between genetic and sociocultural factors in the risk of disease, 8: 161 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.150 Salat J → The contribution of the Barcelona World Race to improved ocean surface information. A validation of the SMOS remotely sensed salinity, 9: 89 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.167 Salvador K → Salat J Santaló J → Changing the perception of our own nature. On the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Robert G. Edwards, 7: 149 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.120 Serrat D → Foreword, 9: 97 Serrate-Casado L → Rovira L Siguan M → Writing with the eyes. On the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Herta Müller, 7: 131 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.118

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Simberloff D → Biological invasions: Much progress plus several controversies, 9: 7 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.158 Simó R → Sea and sky. The marine biosphere as an agent of change, 8: 47 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.133 Solà Morales O → Sustainability of personalised medicine, 8: 149 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.148 Suriñach E → Recent large earthquakes from a geophysical perspective, 8: 41 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.132 Tomàs-Salvà M → Activities of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Balearic Islands, 9:199 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.180 Tort L → Foreword, 9: 1 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.156 Tugores Ques J → Unemployment and other challenges. On the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen, and Christopher A. Pissarides, 7: 163 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.122 Tusell L → Telomeres, the beginning(s) of the end. On the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak, 7: 101 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.114 Umbert M → Salat J Vallmitjana M → Ciència magazine, second period (1980–1991): Recovering normality for the Catalan scientific language, 9: 177 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.177 Vallmitjana S → Transmission of light by fibers for optical communication. On the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Charles Kuen Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George E, 7: 109 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.115 Vendrell M → Personalised medicine: needs, challenges, and considerations, 8: 139 doi:10.2436/20.7010.01.146 Vila R → Martínez-Francés V Zarzoso A → García-Lladó

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Authors Index, volumes 7, 8, 9 (2011, 2012, 2013) Alegret S → 7: 71 Alsina C → 7: 85 Asensi Botet F → 8: 99 Aymerich M → 8: 137 Aymerich MS → 9: 25 Ballabrera-Poy J → 9: 89 Beato M → 8: 155 Berlanga M → 9: 117 Bolufer P → 7: 185 Bradley RS → 7: 21, 45; 8: 53 Buceta J → 9: 57 Calisto BM → 7: 125 Camarasa JM → 7: 195 Camí J → 8: 171 Cañigueral S→ 8: 77 Cardona P-J → 8: 181 Casadesús J → 9: 51 Casanovas O → 9: 67 Castellà A → 8: 137 Castilla JC → 8: 11 Chica C → 9: 151 Ciurana J → 9: 113 Clotet J → 9: 43 Cope D → 8: 121 de Gispert → 8: 119 Domínguez F → 8: 131 Domínguez M → 7: 65 Escalas R → 9: 75 Esteller M → 8: 145 Fernández P → 9: 89 Fita I → 7: 125 Folch R → 7: 51 Franco R → 9: 25 García-Lladó A → 9: 169 Genescà M → 9: 159 Giner S → 7: 171; 8: 9 Gonzàlez i Sastre F → 7: 97 Gozzer S → 7: 65 Granados A → 8: 167 Guerrero R → 8: 85, 187; 9: 117, 183

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Hahn E → 8: 77 Herms A → 7: 117 Jiménez-Valerio G → 9: 67 Juan OM → 8: 61 Juan-Vicedo J → 8: 77 Lewin SA → 7: 11 Llebot JE → 7: 27 Lleonart J → 7: 175 Llimona X → 8: 107 Llorca J → 7: 57 Lovelock JE → 7: 17 Luttikhuizen F → 7: 205 March Noguera J → 7: 191 Marco J → 7: 155 Martínez J → 9: 89 Martínez-Francés V → 8: 77 Martínez-Vidal A → 9: 169 Massó E → 8: 69 Mena FX → 7: 141 Molina T → 8: 33 Mompart J → 9: 33 Montero-Pich O → 9: 169 Murià JM → 8: 93

Salvador K → 9: 89 Santaló J → 7: 149 Serrat D → 7: 9, 97 Serrate-Casado L → 9: 141 Siguan M → 7: 131 Simberloff D → 9: 7 Simó R → 8: 47 Solà Morales O → 8: 149 Suriñach E → 8: 41 Tomàs-Salvà M → 9:199 Tort L → 9: 1 Tugores Ques J → 7: 163 Tusell L → 7: 101 Umbert M → 9: 89 Vallmitjana M → 9: 177 Vallmitjana S → 7: 109 Vendrell M → 8: 139 Vila R → 8: 77 Zarzoso A → 9: 169

Nair P → 9: 101 Olivar MP → 7: 175 Omedes A → 8: 85 Piniella JF → 9: 17 Piqueras M → 8: 85; 9: 109, 183, 195 Plasència A → 8: 175 Pretus JL → 9: 5 Puche C → 9: 107 Ríos S → 8: 77 Roca-Rosell A → 7: 195 Ros J → 7: 37; 8: 23; 9: 115 Rovira L → 9: 141 Ryan C → 7: 77 Salas E → 8: 161 Salat J → 9: 89

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Keywords Index, volumes 7, 8, 9 (2011, 2012, 2013) Acquired resistance → 9: 67 Adenosine Receptors → 9: 25 Adrenergic receptors → 9: 25 Advisory Board of the Parliament of Catalonia for Science and Technology (CAPCIT) → 8: 121, 187 Aerosols → 8: 47 Agave tequilana → 8: 93 Aging population → 8: 139 Albedo → 8: 47 An Inconvenient Truth → 7: 65 Angiogenesis and metastasis → 9: 43 Anthropocene era → 8: 11 Anthropogenic climate change → 7: 27 Anti-angiogenic therapy → 9: 67 Aquaculture → 9: 43 Archeological remains → 7: 21 Arctic Oscillation → 7: 45 Argentine Mathematical Union → 7: 85 Articles citation analysis → 9: 141 Assisted reproduction techniques → 7: 149 Attenuation → 7: 109 Autobiographical realism → 7: 155 Autobiography → 7: 131 Balearic Islands → 7: 191 Balmis, Francesc Xavier de → 8: 99 Barcelona Music Museum → 9: 75 Barcelona Society for Biology → 9: 1 Bell Labs → 7: 117 Biocides → 8: 23 Biodiversity → 7: 37 Bioethics → 7: 149 Biological control → 9: 7 Biological invasion → 9: 7 Biology of reproduction → 9: 43 Biomarkers → 8: 145, 161 Biomechanics → 9: 57 Biophysics → 9: 43 Board for Advanced Studies (JAE) → 7: 77 Boston Public Library → 9: 109 BRCA1 → 8: 145 Bryophytes → 8: 107 Cancer → 8: 145 Carcinogenesis → 7: 101 Cardio inCode → 8: 161 Cardiovascular disease → 8: 161 Cardús, David → 9: 183 Carhus Plus+ → 9: 141 Casanova, Ramon → 9: 195 Casas i Sicart, Creu → 8: 107 Catalan → 9:177 Culture → 9: 177 Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) → 8: 137

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Catalan Institution of Natural History (ICHN) → 7: 175 Catalan language → 7: 171 Catalan scientific-medical-technological lexicon → 9: 169 Catalan Society for Biology (SCB) → 9: 1, 43 Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (SCHCT) → 7: 191 Catalanism → 9: 169 Catalyst → 7: 57 Categorical challenges → 7: 51 Cavity quantum electrodynamics → 9: 33 CCD sensor → 7: 117 Cell damage and death → 9: 43 Cell signaling → 9: 43 Center for Mathematical Studies (CRM) → 7: 85 Centres forTherapeutic Innovation (CTI) → 8: 139 Channels and transporters → 9: 43 Charge transfer → 7: 117 Chemical industry → 8: 23 Chile → 8: 11 Chromatin functions regulation → 9: 43 Chromatographic identification → 8: 77 Chromospheric flares → 7: 185 Climate change → 7: 17, 65; 8: 33 Climate models → 7: 27 Climate skepticism → 7: 65 Climate system → 7: 27 Cloud formation → 8: 47 Clubfeet → 7: 205 Coastal regions → 8: 53 Common-pool resources → 7: 141 Commonwealth of Catalonia (Mancomunitat de Catalunya) → 7: 97 Compartmentalization → 9: 57 Complex diseases → 8: 161 Computational biology → 9: 43 Conservation → 8: 11 Cosmological constant → 8: 69 Cosmology → 8: 69 Cost-efficacy ratio → 7: 51 Crystal structure → 9: 17 Culture → 9: 101 D’Ors, Eugeni → 7: 195 Dark energy → 8: 69 DDT → 8: 23 Dendritic cells → 8: 61 Developmental biology → 9: 43, 57 Differentiation → 9: 43 Digital photography and video → 7: 117 Directly observed therapy-short course (DOTS) → 8: 181 Dispersion → 7: 109 Disruptive innovations → 8: 139

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Diversity → 9: 101 DNA methylation → 8: 145 DNA regulation → 8: 155 Drug pricing mechanisms → 8: 149 Earliest ecosystems → 9:117 Earth System Science → 7: 17 Earthquakes → 8: 41 Ebro Observatory → 7: 185, 9: 159 Ecodiversity → 7: 37 Ecological and evolutionary dynamics → 7: 11 Ecology → 8: 23; 9: 43 Economic governance → 7: 141 Economics of organizations → 7: 141 Ecosystem impact → 9: 7 Ecosystems science → 7: 11 Eemian interglacial → 8: 53 Efficiency → 7: 51 Electron diffraction → 9: 17 Electrotechnics → 7: 185 Energy → 7: 57 Enviromental ethics → 8: 11 Epigenetics → 9: 43, 145, 155 Epigenomics → 8: 145 Eradication → 9: 7 Ethnobotany → 8: 77 European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) → 8: 119, 187 Evaluation of scientific journals → 9: 151 Evolution → 9: 51 Extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) → 8: 181 Fabra Observatory→ 7: 185 Fernández, Francisco (1766–1852) → 9: 75 First International Conference of Biology of Catalonia (CIBICAT) → 9: 1, 43 Fishery → 8: 11 Flandrian transgression → 7: 9 Flow of genetic information → 8: 155 Font i Quer, Pius → 8: 107 Formalism → 7: 155 Fortepiano → 9: 75 French Mathematical Society → 7: 85 Frictions → 7: 163 Gaia → 7: 17; 8: 47 Gametes → 9: 43 Gene expression → 8: 155 Gene regulatory networks → 9: 57 Genetic code → 7: 125 Genetic counseling → 8: 171 Genetic discrimination → 8: 171 Genetic networks → 8: 155 Genetic risk factors → 8: 161 Genetic testing → 8: 171 Genomes → 9: 43

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Genomic technologies → 8: 137 Genotype and phenotype → 9: 43 Geological climate → 7: 9 Geophysics → 8: 41 German-minority in Romania → 7: 131 Glacial periods → 7: 9 Global health → 8: 175 Global sustainability → 7: 51 Global warming → 7: 17, 45; 8: 33, 53 Globalisation → 9: 101 Gore, Al → 7: 9, 65 Governance → 8: 11 G-protein-coupled receptors → 9: 25 Guastavino, Rafael (1842–1908) → 9: 109 Health equity → 8: 175 Health industry pressures → 8: 167 Health technology assessment (HTA) → 8: 167 Healthcare systems → 8: 139 History of Science of the Balearic Islands→ 7: 191 Host susceptibility → 9: 51 Human pathogens → 9: 51 Human population → 7: 9 Humanities and science → 8: 9 Humanities and social sciences evaluation → 9:141 Hurricanes → 8: 53 Hybridization → 9: 7 Hydrogen → 7: 57 Ibérica magazine → 7: 185; 9: 159 Ice cores → 7: 21 In vitro fertilization → 7: 149 Industrial buildings → 9: 109 Inflammation → 8: 61 Innate immunity → 8: 61 Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC) → 7: 97, 171 Institute of Fisheries Research, Barcelona (IIP) → 7: 175 Institutional economics → 7: 141 Insulin → 9: 1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) → 7: 17, 27, 45; 8: 33, 53 International Women’s Day (IWD) → 9: 107 International Year of Biodiversity → 7: 37 Intrinsic resistance → 9: 67 Investigación Pesquera journal → 7: 175 Ionosphere → 7: 185 Jenner, Edward → 8: 99 Journalism → 7: 155 Knowledge society → 7: 51 La Cataluña → 7: 195 Lag time → 9: 7 Lake sediments → 7: 21 Landscape of the disposed → 7: 131 Latin American dictatorships → 7: 155 Latindex system → 9:151

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Latindex criteria → 9:151 Levels of greenhouse gasses → 7: 45 Little Ice Age → 7: 9 LTA4H gene polymorphisms → 8: 181 Maintenance management → 9: 7 Management → 8: 11 Margalef, Ramon → 7: 11, 175; 8: 11 Marine regulation → 8: 47 Martorell Museum → 8: 85 Matching → 7: 163 Medicinal → 8: 77 Mescal → 8: 93 Mexican independence → 8: 93 MGMT → 8: 145 Microbial mats→ 9: 117 Microbiology → 9: 43 Microreactor → 7: 57 Migration → 9: 101 Minimal ecosystem → 9: 117 Mobility → 9: 101 Molecular biology → 9: 43 Monochord → 9: 75 Moral philosophy → 8: 9 Multiple drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) → 8: 181 Museu Blau, Barcelona → 8: 85 Musical temperament → 9: 75 Natural archives → 7: 21 Natural History Museum of Barcelona→ 8: 85 Neoplasia → 7: 101 Nervous system → 9: 43 Neurobiology → 9: 43 Noucentista generation → 7: 195 Objectivism → 7: 155 Ocean circumnavigation → 9: 89 Ocean races → 9: 89 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) → 8: 121, 131 Optical fibers → 7: 109 Optical networks → 7: 117 Oral language → 7: 155 Orphan drugs → 8: 149 Orthopedics → 7: 205 Osteoarticular tuberculosis → 7: 205 Paleoclimatology → 7: 22, 8: 53 Parliament of Catalonia → 8: 119 Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) → 8: 121 Parliamentary Technology Assessment (PTA) → 8: 131 Personalised medicine → 8: 137-187 Perspectivism → 7: 155 Pesticides → 8: 23 Pharmacogenetics → 8: 149 Phenological changes → 7: 45 Photodetection → 7: 117 Pi i Sunyer, August → 7: 195 Piedmont (Italy) → 7: 171

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Piedmontese language → 7: 171 Planet Life → 8: 85 Plankton → 8: 47 Pollution → 8: 23 Popular science → 9: 169 Popular science magazine → 9: 177 Population biology→ 7: 11 Populations diversity and dynamics → 9: 117 Poverty-related diseases → 8: 175 Power structures → 7: 155 Prat de la Riba, Enric → 7: 97 Professional identity → 9: 169 Prokaryotic diversity → 9:117 Progeria → 7: 101 Protein synthesis → 7: 125 Proteomics → 9: 43 Quantum mechanics → 9: 33 Quantum optics → 9: 33 Quasicrystals → 9: 17 Rare diseases → 8: 167 Receptor heteromers → 9: 25 Receptors and transporters → 9: 43 Reflection → 7: 109 Refracting telescope → 7: 185 Research → 9: 177 Ribosome → 7: 125 Risk factors → 8: 171 Romanticism→ 9: 75 Saccharomyces cerevisiae → 7: 101 Salmonellosis empidemics in Barcelona → 9: 1 Salvany, Josep → 8: 99 Salvia → 8: 77 Scalar levels → 7: 51 Science → 9: 177 Science and technology popularization → 9: 159 Science assessment → 9: 151 Science audiences → 9: 169 Science on the Balearic Islands → 7: 191 Science-medical-technology journalism → 9: 169 Sciences methodology → 7: 77 Sciences Section of the Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC) → 7: 97, 191, 195 Scientia Marina → 7: 175 Scientific dissemination → 9: 151 Scientific journals → 9: 141 Scientific popularization → 8: 23 Scoliosis → 7: 205 Sea surface temperature and salinity → 9: 89 Searching → 7: 163 Seismic records → 8: 41 Seismology → 8: 41 Ships of opportunity → 9: 89 Signaling in health and disease → 9: 43 Simberloff school → 9: 5 Simbyosis → 9: 51 Sismology → 7: 185 SLCO1B1 gene polymorphism → 8: 181 Smallpox → 8: 99

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Social and global perception → 8: 33 Social networks → 8: 33 Social responsability → 8: 167 Social-ecologycal systems → 8: 11 Societal effects → 7: 21 Society of Jesus → 9: 159 Sociocultural risk factors → 8: 161 Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) → 9: 89 Solid state arrays → 7: 117 Spanish Bryology Society (SEB) → 8: 107 Spanish columnists → 7: 65 Spanish media → 7: 65 Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) → 7: 175 Stalagmites → 7: 21 Stem cells → 9: 43 Stromal cells → 9: 67 Structure of the community → 9: 5 Structured biocenoses → 9:117 Supernova → 8: 69

Surrealism → 7: 155 Sustainability → 7: 11, 37; 8: 11, 149 Systems biology → 9: 43, 57 Technology assessment → 8: 119, 121 Tectonic plates → 8: 41 Telecommunications → 7: 109 Telomerase → 7: 101 Telomeres → 7: 101 Tequila production → 8: 93 Tessellations → 9: 17 Tetrahymena thermophila → 7: 101 Thomas, Lewis → 8: 187 TLR → 8: 61 Toll → 8: 61 Topological association domains → 8: 155 Transaction cost economics → 7: 141 Transcriptomics → 9: 43 Transistor→ 7: 185

Trapping and cooling of ions → 9: 33 Tree rings → 7: 21 Tumor cells → 9: 67 Tuning → 9: 75 Turin Academy of Sciences → 7: 171 Unemployment → 7: 163 Vacancies → 7: 163 Vaccination expeditions → 8: 99 Valencia region → 8: 77 Value of socio-environmental services → 7: 51 Vaults of bricks or stones → 9: 109 Virology → 9: 43 Visual language → 7: 131 Wound cleansing → 7: 205 X-ray crystallography → 7: 125

Paraules clau, volums 7, 8, 9 (2011, 2012, 2013) Acadèmia de Ciències de Torí → 7: 171

Aerosols → 8: 47 Afinació → 9: 75 Agave tequilana → 8: 93 Albedo → 8: 47 Anàlisi de cites d’articles científics → 9: 141 Anells dels arbres → 7: 21 Angiogènesi i metàstasis → 9: 43 Any Internacional de la Biodiversitat → 7: 37 Aqüicultura → 9: 43 Arxius naturals → 7: 21 Assessorament científic i tecnològic als parlamentaris (PTA) → 8: 131 Assessorament de tecnologia sanitària (HTA) → 8: 167 Assessorament genètic → 8: 171 Assessorament tecnològic → 8: 119, 121 Atenuació → 7: 109 Atur → 7: 163 Autobiografia → 7: 131 Avaluació de la ciència → 9: 151 Avaluació de revistes científiques → 9: 151 Avaluació d’humanitats i ciències socials → 9: 141 Balmis, Francesc-Xavier de → 8: 99 Biblioteca Pública de Boston → 9: 109 Biocenosis estructurades → 9: 117 Biocides → 8: 23 Biodiversitat → 7: 37 Bioètica → 7: 149 Biofísica → 9: 43 Biologia computacional → 9: 43 Biologia de la reproducció → 9: 43 Biologia de poblacions → 7: 11

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Biologia de sistemes → 9: 43, 57 Biologia del desenvolupament → 9: 43, 57 Biologia evolutiva → 9: 43 Biologia molecular → 9: 43 Biomarcadors → 8: 145, 161 Biomecànica → 9: 57 BRCA1 → 8: 145 Briòfits → 8: 107 Canals i transportadors → 9: 43 Càncer → 8: 145 Canvi climàtic →7: 17, 65; 8: 33 Canvi climàtic antropogènic → 7: 27 Canvis fenològics → 7: 45 Captura i refredament d’ions → 9: 33 Carcinogènesis → 7: 101 Cardio inCode → 8: 161 Cardús, David → 9: 183 Carhus Plus+ → 9: 141 Casanova, Ramon → 9: 195 Casas i Sicart, Creu → 8: 107 Català → 9: 177 Catalanisme → 9: 169 Catalitzador → 7: 57 Cèl·lules de l’estroma → 9: 67 Cèl·lules dendrítiques → 8: 61 Cèl·lules mare → 9: 43 Cèl·lules tumorals → 9: 67 Centres d’Innovació Terapèutica (CTI) → 8: 139 CERCA → 7: 163 Ciència → 9: 177 Ciència del sistema terrestre → 7: 17 Ciència dels ecosistemes → 7: 11 Circumnavegació oceànica → 9: 89 Codi genètic → 7: 125

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Coincidència → 7: 163 Columnistes a Espanya → 7: 65 Companyia de Jesús → 9: 159 Compartimentació → 9: 57 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) → 7: 175, 191 Consell Assesssor del Parlament sobre Ciència i Tecnologia (CAPCIT) → 8: 121, 187 Conservació → 8: 11 Constant cosmològica → 8: 69 Contaminació → 8: 23 Control biològic → 9: 7 Cosmologia → 8: 69 Cristal·lografia de raigs X → 7: 125 Criteris Latindex → 9: 151 Cultura → 9: 101, 177 D’Ors, Eugeni → 7: 195 Danys i mort cel·lular → 9: 43 DDT → 8: 23 Desfasament temporal → 9: 7 Dia Internacional de la Dona → 9: 107 Dictadures llatinoamericanes → 7: 155 Diferenciació → 9: 43 Difracció d’electrons → 9: 17 Difusió científica → 9: 151 Dimensions escalars → 7: 51 Dinàmica ecològica i evolutiva → 7: 11 Discriminació genètica → 8: 171 Dispersió → 7: 109 Diversitat → 9: 101 Diversitat i dinàmica de poblacions → 9: 117 Diversitat procariota → 9: 177 Divulgació científica → 8: 23; 9: 169 Divulgació científica i tecnològica → 9: 159

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Dominis d’associació topològica → 8: 155 Ecodiversitat → 7: 37 Ecologia → 8: 23; 9: 43 Economia de les organitzacions → 7: 141 Economia dels costos de transaccions → 7: 141 Economia institucional → 7: 141 Ecosistemes mínims → 9: 117 Ecosistemes primitius → 9: 117 Edificis industrials → 9: 109 Efectes socials → 7: 21 Eficiència → 7: 51 Electrodinàmica quàntica en cavitats → 9: 33 Electrotècnica → 7: 185 Energia → 7: 57 Energia fosca → 8: 69 Envelliment de la població → 8: 139 Epidèmia de salmonel·losis a Barcelona → 9: 1 Epigenètica → 8: 145, 155; 9: 43 Epigenòmica → 8: 145 Equitat en salut → 8: 175 Era antropocènica → 8: 11 Eradicació → 9: 7 Escalfament global → 7: 17, 45; 8: 33, 53 Escepticisme climàtic → 7: 65 Escola de Simberloff → 9: 5 Escoliosi → 7: 205 Escuela Normal → 7: 77 Estalagmites → 7: 21 Estructura cristal·lina → 9: 17 Estructura de la comunitat → 9: 5 Estructures de poder → 7: 155 Ètica ambiental → 8: 11 Etnobotànica → 8: 77 Evolució → 9: 51 Expedicions de vacunació → 8: 99 Expressió gènica → 8: 155 Factors de risc → 8: 171 Factors de risc genètics → 8: 161 Factors de risc socioculturals → 8: 161 Farmacogenètica → 8: 149 Fernández, Francisco (1766–1852) → 9: 75 Fertilització in vitro → 7: 149 Fibra òptica → 7: 109 Filosofia moral → 8: 9 Flux d’informació genètica → 8: 155 Font i Quer, Pius → 8: 107 Formació de núvols → 8: 47 Formalisme → 7: 155 Fortepiano → 9: 75 Fotodetecció → 7: 117 Fotografia i video digitals → 7: 117 Friccions → 7: 163 Fulguracions cromosfèriques → 7: 185 Gaia → 7: 17, 8: 47 Gamets → 9: 43 Genomes → 9: 43 Genotip i fenotip → 9: 43 Geofísica → 8: 41

www.cat-science.cat

Gestió → 8: 11 Gestió del manteniment → 9: 7 Glaciacions → 7: 9 Globalització → 9: 101 Gore, Al→ 7: 9, 65 Governança → 8: 11 Governança econòmica → 7: 141 Grup Intergovernemental d’Experts sobre el Canvi Climàtic (GIECC) → 7: 17, 27, 45; 8: 33, 53 Guastavino, Rafael (1842–1908) → 9: 109 Heteròmers de receptors → 9: 25 Hibridació → 9: 7 Hidrogen → 7: 57 Història de la Ciència de les Illes Balears → 7: 191 Humanitats i ciència→ 8: 9 Huracans → 8: 53 Ibérica, revista → 7: 185; 9: 159 Identificació cromatogràfica → 8: 77 Identitat professional → 9: 169 Illes Balears → 7: 191 Immunitat innata → 8: 61 Impacte a l’ecosistema → 9: 7 Independència de Mèxic → 8: 93 Indústria química → 8: 23 Inflamació → 8: 61 Innovacions disruptives → 8: 139 Institució Catalana d’Història Natural (ICHN) → 7: 175 Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) → 8: 137 Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) → 7: 97, 171, 175, 191, 195 Instituto de Investigaciones Pesqueras (IIP) → 7: 175 Insulina → 9: 1 Interglacial Riss-Würm → 8: 53 Invasió biològica → 9: 7 Investigación Pesquera, revista → 7: 175 Ionosfera → 7: 185 Jenner, Edward → 8: 99 Junta per a l’Ampliació d’Estudis (JAE) → 7: 77 La Cataluña → 7: 195 La ciència a les Illes Balears → 7: 191 Laboratoris Bell → 7: 117 Lèxic científic-mèdic-tecnològic català → 9: 169 Llengua catalana → 7: 171 Llenguatge oral → 7: 155 Llenguatge visual → 7: 131 Malaltia cardiovascular → 8: 161 Malalties complexes → 8: 161 Malalties rares → 8: 167 Malalties relacionades amb la pobresa → 8: 175 Mancomunitat de Catalunya → 7: 97 Margalef, Ramon → 7: 11, 175; 8: 11 Matrius d’estat sòlid → 7: 117

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Mecànica quàntica → 9: 33 Mecanismes de fixació dels preus dels medicaments → 8: 149 Medicaments orfes → 8: 149 Medicina personalitzada → 8: 137-187 Medicinal → 8: 77 Mescal → 8: 93 Metilació del DNA → 8: 145 Metodologia científica → 7: 77 MGMT → 8: 145 Microbiologia → 9: 43 Microreactor → 7: 57 Migració → 9: 101 Minoria alemanya a Romania → 7: 131 Mitjans de comunicació espanyols → 7: 65 Mobilitat → 9: 101 Models climàtics → 7: 27 Monocordi → 9: 75 Museu Blau, Barcelona → 8: 85 Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona→ 8: 85 Museu de la Música de Barcelona → 9: 75 Museu Martorell → 8: 85 Neoplàsia → 7: 101 Neteja de les ferides → 7: 205 Neurobiologia → 9: 43 Nivells dels gasos d’efecte hivernacle → 7: 45 Noucentisme → 7: 195 Nuclis de gel → 7: 21 Objectivisme → 7: 155 Observatori de l’Ebre → 7: 185; 9: 159 Observatori Fabra → 7: 185 Oficina d’Assessorament Tecnològic (OTA) → 8: 121, 131 Oficina Parlamentària de Ciència i Tecnologia (POST) → 8: 121 Òptica quàntica → 9: 33 Ortopèdia → 7: 205 Oscil·lació àrtica → 7: 45 País Valencià → 8: 77 Paisatge dels desposseïts → 7: 131 Paleoclimatologia → 7: 21, 8: 53 Parlament de Catalunya → 8: 119 Patògens humans → 9: 51 Percepció social i global → 8: 33 Periodisme → 7: 155 Periodisme científic-mèdic-tecnològic → 9: 169 Perspectivisme → 7: 155 Pesca → 8: 11 Petita Edat de Gel → 7: 9 Peus equinovars → 7: 205 Pi i Sunyer, August → 7: 195 Piemont (Itàlia) → 7: 171 Piemontesa, llengua → 7: 171 Plaguicides → 8: 23 Plàncton → 8: 47 Planeta Vida → 8: 85 Plaques tectòniques → 8: 41

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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Població mundial → 7: 9 Polimorfisme gen LTA4H → 8: 181 Polimorfisme gen SLCO1B1 → 8: 181 Prat de la Riba, Enric → 7: 97 Pressions de la indústria sanitària → 8: 167 Primer Congrés Internacional de Biologia de Catalunya (CIBICAT) → 9: 1, 43 Producció de tequila → 8: 93 Progèria → 7: 101 Proteòmica → 9: 43 Proves genètiques → 8: 171 Públics de la ciència → 9: 169 Quasicristalls → 9: 17 Realisme autobiogràfic → 7: 155 Receptor acoblat a proteïnes G → 9: 25 Receptors adrenèrgics → 9: 25 Receptors d’adenosina → 9: 25 Receptors i transportadors → 9: 43 Recerca → 9: 177 Recursos comuns → 7: 141 Reflexió → 7: 109 Regates oceàniques → 9: 89 Registres sísmics → 8: 41 Regulació de les funcions cromatíniques → 9: 43 Regulació del DNA → 8: 155 Regulació marina → 8: 47 Relació cost-eficàcia → 7: 51 Reptes categòrics → 7: 51 Resistència adquirida → 9: 67 Resistència intrínseca → 9: 67 Responsabilitat social → 8: 167 Restes arqueològiques → 7: 21 Revista de divulgació científica → 9: 177 Revistes científiques → 9: 141 Ribosoma → 7: 125 Romanticisme → 9: 75 Saccharomyces cerevisiae → 7: 101 Salut global → 8: 175

www.cat-science.cat

Salvany, Josep → 8: 99 Salvia → 8: 77 Scientia Marina, revista → 7: 175 Secció de Ciències de I’IEC → 7: 97, 195 Sediments lacustres →7: 21 Sensor CCD → 7: 117 Senyalització cel·lular → 9: 43 Senyalització en la malaltia i la salut → 9: 43 Simbiosi → 9: 51 Síntesi proteica → 7: 125 Sismologia → 7: 185; 8: 41 Sistema climàtic → 7: 27 Sistema Latindex → 9: 151 Sistema nerviós → 9: 43 Sistemes de salut → 8: 139 Sistemes socioecològics → 8: 11 SMOS, satèl·lit → 9: 89 Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) → 7: 191 Societat Catalana de Biologia (SCB) → 9: 1, 43 Societat de Biologia de Barcelona → 9: 1 Societat del coneixement → 7: 51 Societat Espanyola de Briologia (SEB) → 8: 107 Societat Matemàtica Francesa → 7: 85 Sostenibilitat → 7: 11, 37; 8: 11, 149 Sostenibilitat global → 7: 51 Supernova → 8: 69 Surrealisme → 7: 155 Susceptibilitat de l’hoste → 9: 51 Tapissos microbians → 9:117 Tècniques de reproducció assistida → 7: 149 Tecnologies genòmiques → 8: 137 Telecomunicació → 7: 109 Telescopi de refracció → 7: 185 Telomerasa → 7: 101 Telòmers → 7: 101 Temperament musical → 9: 75 Temperatura i salinitat de la superfície marina → 9: 89 Teràpia antiangiogènica → 9: 67

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Teràpia d’observació directa de breu duració (DOTS) → 8: 181 Terratrèmols → 8: 41 Tessel·lacions → 9: 17 Tetrahymena thermophila → 7: 101 Thomas, Lewis → 8: 187 TLR → 8: 61 Toll → 8: 61 Transcriptòmica → 9: 43 Transferència de càrrega → 7: 117 Transgressió flandriana → 7: 9 Transistor → 7: 185 Tuberculosi extremament resistent (XDR-TB) → 8: 181 Tuberculosi multiresistent (MDR-TB) → 8: 181 Tuberculosi osteoarticular → 7: 205 Una veritat incòmoda → 7: 65 Unió Matemàtica Argentina → 7: 85 Vacants → 7: 163 Vaixells d’observació d’oportunitat → 9: 89 Valor dels serveis sòcio-ambientals → 7: 51 Verola → 8: 99 Virologia → 9: 43 Voltes de maons o pedres → 9: 109 Xarxa Europea d’Assesorament Tecnològic als Parlamentaris (EPTA) → 8: 119-137, 187 Xarxes de regulació gèniques → 9: 57 Xarxes genètiques → 8: 155 Xarxes òptiques → 7: 117 Xarxes socials → 8: 33 Xile → 8: 11 Zones costaneres → 8: 53

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE 10 (2014) 111-118

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OPENAACCESS

Institute for Catalan Studies

The Institute for Catalan Studies (IEC), academy of sciences and humanities, founded in 1907, is the top academic corporation of the territories of Catalan language and culture, and has been a full member of the International Academic Union since 1922. The IEC has 186 full or emeritus members from throughout the linguistic territory, and 72 corresponding members that represent our institution’s relations with the international scientific community, and has 28 filial societies of all fields of knowledge, with a total membership of around 10,000 across the whole territory. In addition, 111 local research centres also belong to it, and this shows how well grounded the research community is, throughout our cultural territory. The IEC is the central institution in the Catalan cultural world. It was set up in 1907 at the initiative of the Diputació de Barcelona to “establish here scientific study centres specialising and working not just in education, but in producing science and aiding research.” In the following years, the Institute set up its various science departments. The Philology Department, directed by Pompeu Fabra, played a key role in establishing the rules of the Catalan language.

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