BioMed Central and OA Publishing

Matthew CockerillManaging Director, BioMed Central

OASPA Webinar, 20th October 2009

About BioMed Central

Largest publisher of peer-reviewed OA journals Launched first open access journal in 2000 Now publishes 202 OA titles >60,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published All research articles published under Creative

Commons license Costs covered by 'article processing charge'

(APC) Part of Springer Science+Business Media since

October 2008

BioMed Central revenue streams

Publication fees– From authors– From meeting organizers– From sponsoring institutions/organizations

Subscription content (e.g. reviews) Services (e.g. Open Repository) Advertising / sponsorship

BioMed Central revenue streams

Publication fees– From authors– From meeting organizers– From sponsoring institutions/organizations

Subscription content (e.g. reviews) Services (e.g. Open Repository) Advertising / sponsorship

BioMed Central membership

Prepay membership– Institution pays APCs centrally at a

discounted rate– Authors do not have to pay

Supporter membership– Institutions pay a flat fee– Authors pay a discounted Article Processing

Charge

How do publication fees get paid? (last 12 months)

Individual payment

(Standard)54%

Discretionary waivers

3%

Low income country waivers

2%

Promotional waivers

7%

Individual payment

(Supporter member)

16%

Prepay membership

18%

Rejection rates and the open access model

High prestige journals often have a high rejection rate

Lots of submissions, few publications How to make economically viable under

Open Access?– Higher APC?– Submission fee?– Cascade model?

Journal peer review cascade

Highrejection rate

Moderaterejection rate

Lowrejection rate

Advantages of peer review cascade

Avoids delays for authors Avoids saddling academics with

repeated peer review of less interesting papers

Separates question of soundness of research from level of interest– Soundness determines whether to publish– Interest determines where to publish

Is OA publishing still growing?

Growth in quarterly manuscipt submissions

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

apr.0

0

okt.0

0

apr.0

1

okt.0

1

apr.0

2

okt.0

2

apr.0

3

okt.0

3

apr.0

4

okt.0

4

apr.0

5

okt.0

5

apr.0

6

okt.0

6

apr.0

7

okt.0

7

apr.0

8

okt.0

8

apr.0

9

18%

41%

19%

28%

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

2006 2007 2008 20090%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Submissions(Jan-Aug)

%ge growth onprevious year

Growth rate is increasing

What factors are helping BioMed Central to grow?

Google pagerank

Similarly:

Cell Biology

Molecular Biology

Systems Biology

Bioinformatics

Developmental Biology

All on first page of Google results

BioMed Central journals with official Thomson Reuters/ISI impact factors

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

No. of journals with

Impact Factor

Journal transfers

Established titles are moving to OA with BioMed Central

Increasing visibility and increasing impact for a society journal

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica

0.3180.408 0.375

0.717

0.899

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Impa

ct F

acto

r

Moved to BioMed Central and became Open Access

Helping authors to comply with institutional Open Access policies

Institutional Repository

(DSpace/Eprints etc.)

Publisher

Manual deposit to IR

Manuscript

Author final

version

1

2

Institutional Repository

(DSpace/Eprints etc.)

Automated deposit to IR via SWORD

Manuscript

SWORD Import

SWORD Export

Published articles from

institution’s authors

Published article