Amedeo Challenge | The Amedeo Challenge: Amedeo Textbook Awards

The Amedeo Textbook Awards are for physicians who publish free medical textbooks on the Internet and waive the copyright for all but three languages of their choice. In exchange, they can win:

Amedeo Textbook Awards of up to 25,000 Euro

and will gain worldwide attention when their textbook is announced via the following communication channels:

Homepage of Free Medical Journals (7,000 visitors/day)

Homepage of FreeBooks4Doctors (2,000 visitors/day)

Citation in Free Medical Information (> 250,000 downloads in 25 months)

Recommendation in the weekly Amedeo Newsletters (130,000 subscribers)

The winners of the first Amedeo Award were Juan Carlos Palomino, Sylvia Cardoso Leão, Viviana Ritacco, and 37 clinicians and researchers from 12 countries. Their Tuberculosis 2007 textbook was downloaded more than 31,000 times during the first month after publication in May 2007 (Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1. Tuberculosis 2007; cumulative download figures during the first 4 weeks after the launch of the 687-page textbook.

Amedeo Websites: Downloads triggered by Amedeo.com, AmedeoChallenge.org, FreeBooks4Doctors.com, FreeMedicalJournals.com.

Mailing Lists: Downloads triggered by messages sent out to the subscribers to the mailing lists of the Amedeo websites.

TB Website: Downloads from TuberculosisTextbook.com.

The Amedeo Textbook Awards is the latest in a series of initiatives by Bernd Sebastian Kamps (BSK) which aim at promoting the free availability of medical textbooks:

The first initiative goes back to 1991, when BSK published the first edition of his AIDS 1991 textbook. It was accompanied by a diskette, containing a small piece of software, which interlinked chapters of the book with hyperlinks (download of the DOS version).
Five years later, in 1996, BSK decided to provide free access to the 6^th edition of his textbook at his website www.hiv.net.
In 2002, he created the FreeBooks4Doctors website.
In 2003, BSK and Christian Hoffmann, as new Editor-in-Chief of HIV Medicine, waived the copyright on their book. As a result, numerous translations are now available.
Finally, in 2005, BSK summarized his editorial experience in Free Medical Information. It offers a detailed description of how physicians can write and publish their own textbooks.

Now, the Amedeo Textbook Awards go one step further and provide financial incentives for physicians who publish free medical textbooks. The rationale is simple: both HIV Medicine 2006 and Tuberculosis 2007 will be downloaded more than 100,000 times in a year. At a standard bookstore price of 50 Euro per copy, added value will exceed 5 million Euro for each book. Offering a 12,500 Euro prize to physicians who give free access to medical textbooks results therefore in 5,000,000 Euro of knowledge. These are the sort of returns financial investors can only dream of...

For a start, BSK and his wife Patricia (Figure 7.1) have funded, in equal parts, two awards of 12,500 Euro each for textbooks about tuberculosis and viral hepatitis. In October 2007, they will announce a third award on an as yet undisclosed topic. Pfizer has contributed 25,000 Euro for a textbook on antibiotic therapy. Other pharmaceutical companies will join in soon.

In the future, BSK needs to find people and money and bring together:

public donations and institutional sponsors, and
physicians willing to produce the textbooks.

Figure 7.1. Patricia Bourcillier, co-sponsor of three Amedeo Textbook Awards: tuberculosis, hepatitis and immunology.

He has the infrastructure to achieve that. Somewhere on this planet, there are medical teams who are willing to produce these free textbooks - and via the 170,000 email addresses of his Amedeo, FreeBooks4Doctors, and Free Medical Journals mailing lists, BSK is able to contact them. Collecting the money from institutional sponsors and private donations will be demanding but feasible. If every single Amedeo subscribers donates 10 Euro, then together - Amedeo has 130,000 subscribers - they will create 100 books, trigger 10 million downloads and generate a textbook value of more than 500,000,000 Euro.

In addition to small donations, BSK will seek exclusive sponsorship from

Pharmaceutical companies (see below) and
Individuals who donate the entire sum of an award (see below: "Big Individual Sponsors").

The money made available by the sponsors and donators will be entirely (100%) distributed among the editors and authors of the winning textbook teams. BSK and the Amedeo Team will charge no fee for the management of the Amedeo Challenge website and associated activities.

Eligibility

Application for the Amedeo Textbook awards is restricted to

Amedeo members
Physicians who have been recommended by an Amedeo member

An Amedeo member is defined as someone who subscribed to www.Amedeo.com before January 2006 (120,000 subscribers). The rules and conditions which govern the Amedeo Textbook Awards (see more details at http://AmedeoChallenge.org/ac/cr.htm) include:

The textbook must have a minimum number of pages.
The textbook must be published in English. However, teams from non-English speaking countries are expressly invited to participate.
Two thirds of the editors and two thirds of the authors must work in university or research institutions.
Two thirds of the editors and two thirds of the authors must be clinicians.
No single author may write more than 10 % of the content.
The authors must be the copyright holders of their chapters and may not sell or share this copyright.
The PDF file of the textbook needs to be published on the Internet for unrestricted and anonymous access.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical companies who wish their name to be associated with a medical textbook on a specific subject should consider participating in the creation of the corresponding Amedeo award. They will achieve excellent visibility:

A presentation page (see example at amedeochallenge.org/ac/pfizer.htm) will be displayed on the Amedeo Challenge website for at least two years.

The sponsors will be mentioned at least twice in all 130,000 weekly Amedeo newsletters, (1) to announce the award, and (2) to announce the winner of the award.

Textbooks and websites created as a result of the Amedeo Award will acknowledge the sponsor on page 2 of the textbook (see the PDF of Tuberculosis 2007) and include a link to the sponsor's website (see the BourcillierKamps.com logo at TuberculosisTextbook.com)

For more details, please check the Rules and Conditions at amedeochallenge.org/ac/cr.htm and the Presence of Sponsors at http://amedeochallenge.org/ac/sp2.htm.

Big individual sponsors

Individual persons may feel dedicated to a special medical topic because of their personal history, their family history or their professional commitment. Most people don't have 12,500 Euro left to spend on an exclusive Amedeo Textbook Award, but some people do. If you happen to know them, suggest to them that they should associate their name with the battle against a disease, for example:

"<Book Title> was made possible by an unrestricted educational grant provided by ABC and XYZ."

"The Amedeo <topic> textbook award was established in affectionate memory of <name>, the acclaimed <profession etc.>, and is sponsored by <sponsor>." (see example: the 12,500 Euro offered for a clinical textbook on viral hepatitis; http://amedeochallenge.org/ac/hep.htm)

For wealthy people, there is a lot of stupid ways to spend money. Show them that the Amedeo Challenge Awards offer an excellent opportunity to do something special. BSK will help them to be special.

Call for donation

In October 2007, BSK will make a call for donations to the more than 130,000 subscribers to his scientific literature service Amedeo. It will be the first of its kind in BSK's 12 years of internet activity. "I am confident that we will raise enough money to create several new awards within months", he says. "Amedeo subscribers are usually huge fans of the free information concept it stands for."

Time is ripe. When 12,500 Euro motivate physicians and scientists to create a book worth 50 Euro, which is downloaded 100,000 times (thus creating a virtual value of 5 million Euro), every single donated Euro translates into 400 Euro of downloaded PDF files - a formidable value creation. BSK has called this virtual value the Amedeo Knowledge Value (AKV). Table 7.1 shows the amount of AKV and the number of books your donation might create by substituting small, ridiculous or overpriced spending activities. For example, just 10 Euro create an AKV of 4,000 Euro and 80 books.

Private donations will be acknowledged on the first pages of the new free textbooks (Tables 7.2-7.4); donators of more than 100 Euro will also benefit from a variety of prizes and services (see Table 7.5). In addition, all donations ever made to Amedeo Challenge will be published and updated yearly in a PDF book made available at the Flying Publisher website.

Table 7.1. Donations, return on investment
Donation (Euro)	What you get for it in Paris	The Amedeo Knowledge Value you get for it (Euro)	No of Books
10	Two bottles of mineral water	4,000	80
20	One CD	8,000	160
50	A diner in a restaurant	20,000	400
100	A chocolate Easter egg	40,000	800
200	A gadget wristwatch	80,000	1600
500	A pair of fine shoes	200,000	4,000
1,000	An elegant winter jacket	400,000	8,000
2,000	A small diamond	800,000	16,000
5,000	A home cinema	2,000,000	40,000
12,500	1 Magnum Petrus 2000	4,000,000	80,000
25,000	10 nights at the Ritz	8,000,000	160,000
50,000	A Mercedes	20,000,000	400,000
100,000	10 m² in the Latin Quarter	40,000,000	800,000

Table 7.2. Acknowledgement of donations >50 Euro on page 1 of the textbook
Donations superior to (€)
>25,000	Marcus Crassus, Rome
>12,500	Ingvar Kamradt, Berlin
5,001-12,500	Stephan Kamps, Wuppertal
2,001-5,000	Christian Hoffmann, Hamburg
1,001-2,000	Jörg Rupp, Athens - Andreas Penk, Karlsruhe
501-1,000	Torsten Hoof, Paris - Iris Wiesel, Efringen-Kirchen - Frank Birnbaum, Karlsruhe - Jürgen Bufler, Karlsruhe - Britta Ranneberg, Hamburg - Uschi Schrenk, Tokyo - Robert Unterhuber, Berlin - Nadia elMasry, Basel - Jörg Adamczewski, Paris - Katrin Mugele, Berlin - Mechthild Vocks-Hauck, Berlin - Elise Prudhomme, Paris
201-500	Gustavo Reyes-Terán, Mexico - Wolfgang Preiser, Tygerberg - Jürgen Rockstroh, Bonn - Thomas Fischer, Ingelheim - André Gaidies, Ingelheim
101-200	Christiane Schieferstein, Frankfurt - Georg Behrens, Hanover - Helmut Schöfer, Frankfurt - Ulrich A. Walker, Freiburg - Carin Tornatzky, Berlin
51-100	P. Vaughan - Sylvia Cardoso Leão, São Paulo - Juan Carlos Palomino, Antwerp - Viviana Ritacco, Buenos Aires

Table 7.3. Acknowledgement of donations on page 3 of the textbook
Donations (€)
26-50	Didier Vincent, Paris - Souhila Hammam, London - Ouardia Hammam, Paris - Henia Hammam, Paris - Thomas Junghanss, Heidelberg

Table 7.4. Acknowledgement of donations on page 5 of the textbook
Donations (€)
10-25	Mark R. Brown - Pierre Paul, Marseille - Paul Jacques, Lyon - Jeffri Lingo, Indonesia - Sharon Campbell - Amélie Poulain, Montmartre

Table 7.5. Acknowledgement of donations: additional prizes and services

Donation

Entry page

(Euro)

Wb1

Pen

Wb2

CA1

CA3

10-25

26-50

51-100

101-200

201-500

501-1,000

1,001-2,000

2,001-5,000

5,001-12,500

12,501-25,000

>25,000

Entry page 5 or 3 or 1	Acknowledgement on page 5, 3, or 1 of the textbook (first name, last name, city)
Wb1	Acknowledgement on a permanent Amedeo Challenge donation webpage (first name, last name, city)
DC	Donation certificate (PDF, see example)
Pen	Original Amedeo Pen
Bk	A copy of the printed book (traditional printing or Lulu printing), signed by at least one of the editors (>12.500 Euro: signed by all editors)
Wb2	Your personal Amedeo Challenge page. In 400 words, you may present yourself, your life and your projects (see example http://amedeochallenge.org/ac/pfizer.htm)
CA1	One day in Cagliari, accompanied by Bernd Sebastian Kamps (BSK)*
P1	One day in Paris, accompanied by BSK*
CA3	Three days in Cagliari, accompanied by BSK*
P3	Three days in Paris, accompanied by BSK*

* Accommodation and restaurants included

Conclusion

In recent years, physicians and scientists have gained full control over the publishing process. It is time now to translate that into new ways of transmitting medical knowledge. By offering free access to their textbook, physicians and scientists operate a conceptual shift from money to visibility: Go without money and gain in visibility. The results of "magic free PDF" are overwhelming. During the first month, the free PDF of Tuberculosis 2007 was downloaded more than 31,000 times - a remarkable visibility in times where visibility is all about planetary visibility (Figure 7.1).

The story will not end here. Amedeo Challenge, and in particular the October 2007 call for donations, will prove that physicians also have the economic power to make global free medical information happen. 10 Euro is a small amount of money for most individual subscribers to Amedeo, but multiplied by the tens of thousands of subscribers, it is a huge amount with which to create dozens of Amedeo Textbook Awards. Small causes will generate huge effects.

Computer and Internet technology have enabled physicians and scientists to become the masters of their writings. Physicians and scientists will now change the world of scientific publishing.

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