Latest Developments in Open Access

Matthew CockerillManaging Director, BioMed Central

What’s new in Open Access

Peter Suber’s SPARC Open Access newsletter includes a roundup of the 137 most important OA developments - in November…

I will focus just on OA publishing

More, more, more…

More open access mandates More open access publishers More central open access funds More impact factors for OA journals More evidence that open access is a

viable business model

Traditional research publishing

The research community transfers rights to the publisher

The publisher covers costs by selling access to the content

Open Access research publishing

No barriers to access The publisher does not

acquire exclusive rights Typically the publisher is

paid for the service of publication

A quick refresher on the open access publishing model

About BioMed Central

Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals

Launched first open access journal in 2000 Now publishes >190 OA titles >44,000 peer reviewed OA articles published All research articles published under Creative

Commons licence Costs covered by 'article processing charge'

(APC)

Revenue streams for OA publishers like BioMed Central

Publication fees Subscriptions to non-research

content (e.g. reviews) Advertising/sponsorship Services

Revenue streams for OA publishers like BioMed Central

Publication fees Subscriptions to non-research

content (e.g. reviews) Advertising/sponsorship Services

OA publication fees

BioMed Central $780-$2100 Public Library of Science $1300-

$2850 Hindawi $300-$1250 Company of Biologists $3100 Oxford University Press $3000 Royal Society ~$3000 Springer $3000 Taylor & Francis $3250 Wiley $3000

How do OA publication fees get paid?

Many authors pay out of grant funds Some funders provide dedicated funds Some institutions cover costs for their

researchers centrally Some OA journals are centrally supported

and have no author-facing fees

BioMed Central journals which do not charge author fees

Chinese Medicine Chiropractic & Osteopathy Italian Journal of Pediatrics Journal of Biomedical Science Journal of Brachial Plexus and Peripheral Nerve Injury Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research Journal of the International AIDS Society Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and

Emergency Medicine Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy &

Technology

BioMed Central’s institutional payment options

Prepay membership– Institution pays funds into a deposit account– Article Processing Charge is covered by funds from

account– Discount depending on deposit amount– Author does not have to pay– Simplified administration/reporting

Supporter membership– Institution pays a flat fee– Author pays a discounted Article Processing Charge

Membership at other OA publishers

Membership at other OA publishers

How are BioMed Central OA fees being paid?

30% Prepay members

15% Individual APCs (Supporter members)

50% Individual APCs (Non-members)

5% Waivers

Funders and OA

NIH policy became mandatory in January 2008

Compliance has increased from 4% to more than 60%

About 28,000 author manuscripts have already been made available under the policy

UK PubMed Central funders

Predates NIH policy by a year, but author compliance lower (<50%)

Covers about 80% of biomedical funding in UK

Europe

European Research Council FP7 Open Access Pilot SOAP – a research project

on OA business models funded as part of FP7

High Energy Physics - SCOAP3

Institutions and OA

Harvard: Office of Scholarly Communications

Examples of central institutional funds for Open Access publication fees

Aarhus Berkeley Calgary Harvard

(part of plan for Office of Scholarly Communication)

Max Planck Nottingham

Impact Factors

Which have been Biomed Central’s most rapidly growing journals

BMC Genomics

0100200300400500600700800900

1000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

BMC Developmental Biology

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50

100

150

200

250

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Genome Biology

0

200

400

600

800

1000

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

BMC Evolutionary Biology

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Malaria Journal

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

What do these journals have in common?

Official Impact Factors

Impact Factors increasingly help Open Access journals

Impact Factors initially made things tough for new OA journals

But 45 BioMed Central journals now have official Impact Factors

A major driver of growth

Manuscript submissions continue to grow rapidly

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

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28

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Breakdown of submission growth by journal type

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1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Sub

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Other journals

Independent journals

BMC series

Established journals are switching to open access

Open Access publishing,then and now…

20082000

And more…

OASPA - a new industry association

Goals of OASPA

Represent interests of Open Access publishers as a group

Agree common definition of Open Access Enforce high standards of editorial and

business practice amongst members Establish guidelines for how publishers

and institutions can best manage Open Access publication fees

Springer’s acquisition of BioMed Central

+

Springer acquisition FAQs Will BioMed Central’s policy of open access to all

research continue?Yes – this was an obligatory condition for the deal to gain approval by BioMed Central’s Board of Trustees

Is BioMed Central profitable?Springer bought BioMed Central because it is a healthy publishing business, in a growing sector of the market

Will BioMed Central APCs be increased to Springer Open Choice levels?There are no plans to change BioMed Central’s APC pricing policy as a result of the deal

Springer’s experimental institutional Open Access deals

Several institutions now have licensing deals with Springer allow their authors to select the Open Choice option without additional payment

– Max Planck– UKB (Dutch consortium)– Georg-August University of Goettingen

The University of California says it is negotiating a similar deal with Springer

Conclusions

OA publishing has gone from being an experiment to a proven alternative model

Institutions, funders and existing journals are responding

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out!