Open Access Publishing: BioMed Centrals experience

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Open Access PublishingBioMed Centrals
experience Matthew CockerillPublisher, BioMed
Central EC conference on scientific publishing,
Brussels, 15-16th Feb 2007
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Open access publishing works!
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About BioMed Central

• Commercial open access publisher
• Launched first open access journals in 2000
• Now publish gt160 OA titles
• gt22,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published
• All research articles published under Creative
  Commons licence, allowing freedom to
  reuse/redistribute

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BioMed Centrals business model

• Costs covered by Article Processing Charge (APC)
• APC varies by journal - typically around 1500
• Institutions receive APC discount in return for
  bulk payment (Institutional Membership)

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Measures of success

• Quantity
• Quality
• Finance

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1. Quantity
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Quarterly article submissions to BioMed Central
OA journals
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Specific subject areas
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Malaria Journal home page
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Where are papers on malaria published ?
Am J Trop Med Hyg (112/year) Trop Med Int
Health (59) Mol Biol Parasit (57) Trans R Soc
Trop Med Hyg (54) Infect Immunity (49) Parasitol
Today/Trends (45) J Inf Dis (38) Lancet
(37) Acta Trop (30)
27 of all papers are published in a small
numbers of journals, each publishing regularly
over 30 papers per annum
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Where are papers on malaria published ?
Am J Trop Med Hyg (112/year) Trop Med Int
Health (59) Mol Biol Parasit (57) Trans R Soc
Trop Med Hyg (54) Infect Immunity (49) Parasitol
Today/Trends (45) J Inf Dis (38) Lancet
(37) Acta Trop (30)
Malaria Journal
127
63
47
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27 of all papers are published in a small
numbers of journals, each publishing regularly
over 30 papers per annum
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Open access journal growth in Bioinformatics/Geno
mics/Systems Biology
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Open access journal growth in Bioinformatics/Geno
mics/Systems Biology
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Open access journal growth in Bioinformatics/Geno
mics/Systems Biology
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2. Quality
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High impact journals

• Just some examples of BioMed Central journals
  that have already achieved excellent Impact
  Factors for their fields

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2006 BioMed Central Research Award for Medicine
A population-based study of human
immunodeficiency virus in south India reveals
major differences from sentinel
surveillance-based estimatesDandona L, Lakshmi
V, Sudha T, Kumar GA, Dandona RBMC Medicine
2006, 431 (13 December 2006)
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3. Finance
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BioMed Central Finances

• Average face-value of Article Processing Charge
  750
• Realized income per article, after discounts and
  waivers 600
• Based on current trends, we expect to be able to
  announce break-even before the end of 2007

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Finances (contd.)

• Academic community currently spends vast sums on
  subscription journals
• Funding made available for OA publication is very
  small in comparison
• This can make more difficult than it needs to be
  for authors
• Institutions and funders can speed take-up of OA
  publication by making it easier for authors to
  access funds

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Funder open access policies the role of OA
archives and OA journals
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OA archives and OA publishing - complementary
approaches
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Why are OA archives and OA publishing such a good
fit?

• The success of Open Access publishing makes the
  argument that repositories threaten subscriptions
  moot
• Open Access journals demonstrate that the
  peer-review system
• does not depend on subscription barriers
• is not threatened by open access repositories

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Why should funders and govts take active steps to
encourage OA?

• Open access will transform science
• Publications are the building blocks for future
  research
• Investment required to deliver full open access
  is just 1-2 of research spend
• Open access publication can ultimately deliver
  savings, via increased market efficiency

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What can funders and govts do to facilitate move
to Open Access?

• Wellcome Trust and CERN open access policies
  offers good model
• Mandatory deposit in an open access archive
• Clear preference for open access publication
• Funds made available to ensure that open access
  publication choice is available to authors