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DDespite significant advances in research and treatments – from liquid biopsy to vaccines, from precision medicine to CAR T-cell therapy – cancer remains the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming approximately 10 million lives each year.
And beyond just the devastating human toll, the economic burden of cancer on patients and their families exceeds $21 billion annually, a number estimated to reach $25 trillion between now and 2050.
Recognizing that there is still much to do if we are ever to defeat this insidious disease, the White House recently announced a $240 million investment in the revived Cancer Moonshot initiative, which aims to reduce cancer mortality in to be reduced by half over the next 25 years.
Yet funding and policies, while critical, are not enough when it comes to enabling scientific breakthroughs; unfettered access to the latest research is just as important.
With this insight, the White House provided a clear path for accelerating innovation and facilitating greater scientific collaboration: the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued rules that made all federally funded published research freely available – without delay , embargoes or paywalls on subscriptions – and not just for cancer, but for all life-threatening and life-altering diseases.
Open science pays off
This practice, called Open Science, focuses on removing barriers to creating and disseminating research and offers a promising strategy for achieving Cancer Moonshot’s goals.
We only have to look at the rapid discovery of COVID-19 vaccines to know that Open Science not only works, but also delivers enormous human benefits.
During the pandemic, all COVID-19 research and data was made available through Open Science, allowing researchers to find treatment and vaccine solutions in record time. That’s enough evidence to show that when researchers access and share scientific research widely, they can quickly mobilize, innovate and save lives.
Shouldn’t cancer research data be made widely accessible, especially as new technologies make it possible to connect the dots of massive data sets?
It seems the answer is a simple “Yes!” is. But while scientific research thrives on openly accessible information, scientific publishing, which disseminates discoveries, is largely dependent on limited access through a paywall. More than half of the world’s published research is locked behind expensive subscriptions. And it’s a lucrative business: Global scientific publishing is a $27 billion annual industry, dominated by a handful of companies and traditional practices that are slow to change.
Unless we fully embrace Open Science, historic achievements like COVID-19 vaccines may be mere anomalies, and may take years, if not decades, to cure cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Read more: How COVID-19 is revolutionizing healthcare around the world
As it stands, vital knowledge that could help save or extend millions of lives – especially as we face unprecedented shortages of cancer drugs – is not immediately shared, widely accessible, or freely readable by the individuals in charge are finding the necessary treatments and cures. .
And this is why:
When researchers do their vital work, whether at public or private universities, nonprofit or for-profit institutions, it is often made possible by grants from federal funders such as the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation.
The scientists conduct groundbreaking research and push the boundaries of knowledge. By choosing to publish the results, they then receive external validation through rigorous peer review, and see their work appear in renowned scientific journals. There is an element of prestige in that, and often their career prospects can depend on publishing research.
Forcing taxpayers to pay again
But the paywall model for subscriptions means that the knowledge in those journals is sold back to universities and institutions who in turn pay large subscriptions, giving only their affiliated scientists access to new research.
Deep-pocketed academic institutions can very well afford to climb these subscription paywalls. But that puts scientists who are not affiliated with them in a dilemma. And it forces American taxpayers, who collectively fund $5 billion in cancer research every year, to pay again if they want to read its results.
Scientific research funded by the public should still be freely and immediately available to that same taxpaying public. Prevailing publishing business models – such as magazines that offer limited open access to articles, or subscription deals where content slowly escapes the paywall year after year – don’t embrace that simple idea. They are simply perpetuating an increasingly outdated way of teaching and learning.
Given the promise that Open Science holds not only for finding a cure for cancer, but also for helping to address the world’s most pressing problems – debilitating diseases, public health crises, climate change and more – the old ways of keeping science closed no longer useful. an economic, political or ethical perspective.
At Frontiers, the most cited multidisciplinary science publisher in the world, we’ve been committed to Open Science since our founding 15 years ago, and we’re not alone. Leading research organizations like NASA are transforming the way they work to embrace Open Science practices; major Australian, European and UK funders are updating their policies to replace paywalls with broad and immediate dissemination of new research; and the United Nations are a driving force behind policy recommendations in the field of Open Science.
Fighting cancer should be no different. Science policymakers and funders must mandate Open Science, scientific publishers must quickly transition their subscriptions to Open Science models, and Congress must codify the OSTP guidelines, which are subject to change by the presidential administration, into federal law.
Achieving the goals of the Cancer Moonshot will not be easy. But with ten million lives at stake every year, Open Science can help us make those lives a reality.
Contact us at letters@time.com.