Open access publishing – the current landscape

Carrie Calder Head of Marketing,

BioMed Central

Scope• Open access 101

• Open access and impact

• Benefits of publishing in an OA journal

• The cost of OA publishing

• Open access – the future…

About BioMed Central

• Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals

• Launched first open access journal in 2000

• Now publishes 206 OA titles

• >50,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published

• All research articles published under Creative Commons

licence

• Costs covered by 'article processing charge' (APC)

Open access 101

What is open access publishing?

• Gold route to publishing

• Reverse of traditional publishing business model

What does open access to scientific research mean?

• Universally available via the Internet, without any barriers to access

• Licensed so as to allow redistribution and reuse as long as attribution is given

• Permanently archived in an internationally recognized repository (e.g. PubMed Central)

Technology leads to changes

What’s the problem with the current system?

• Subscription-based access to research is a legacy of print-based economics – it makes no sense in an online environment

• The intellectual effort that goes into a research article comes from the research community (authors, peer reviewers, academic editors) but they lose control of it

• Double pay - cost of doing research, and the cost of subscribing to that research

Benefits of open access

• Transparency of costs

• Lack of subscription barriers ensures all researchers have access to your work

• Articles are available to all aggregators, indexing services, search engines etc.

• Breaks down barriers between fields

• Public access to research promotes engagement with, and understanding of, science and medicine

Open access and impact

Open access and impact

• Myths of OA

• Challenges to prove quality

• Impact Factors hard for new journals

BioMed Central journals with Impact Factors

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Journals with IFs 0 1 3 6 10 15 25 27 42 57 77

5

15

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

Num

ber

of

journ

als

Official Impact Factors

Open access having impact

• Swan, A. (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date.- 27 of 31 show open access having a positive citation advantage

- Where positive advantage - increase in citations varying from -5 to 600%

http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/

Increasing impact for a society journal

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Impact Factor 0.318000000000001

0.408 0.375000000000001

0.717000000000001

0.899

0.05

0.15

0.25

0.35

0.45

0.55

0.65

0.75

0.85

0.95

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica

Impact

Facto

r

Article visibility Question & Answer    Q&A: Antibiotic resistance: where does it come from and what can we do about it?Gerard D WrightBMC Biology 2010, 8:123 (20 September 2010)[Abstract] [Full text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles] [1 comment]

2. Accesses

8868 Review    Childhood obesity, prevalence and preventionMahshid Dehghan, Noori Akhtar-Danesh, Anwar T MerchantNutrition Journal 2005, 4:24 (2 September 2005)[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles] [Cited on BioMed Central] [2 comments]3. Accesses

7614 Opinion    A cautionary tale of virus and diseaseRobin A WeissBMC Biology 2010, 8:124 (27 September 2010)[Abstract] [Full text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles]4. Accesses

5748 Review    Food Advertising and Marketing Directed at Children and Adolescents in the USMary Story, Simone FrenchInternational Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2004, 1:3 (10 February 2004)[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles] [Cited on BioMed Central]

Article metrics

Benefits for authors publishing in BioMed Central

journals

Benefits for authors publishing in BioMed Central

journals• Open Access (High visibility, High impact)• Rapid publication

– View manuscript status via My BioMed Central– Immediate publication on acceptance– Final version available within 2 weeks of acceptance

• No color figure charges• No space constraints• Full use of web technology

– Easy-to-use manuscript submission process– YouTube-style movie display, in context of article– Intelligent handling of equations (MathML)

Top three reasons authors first consider BioMed Central • Read a paper published by BioMed

Central

• Recommended by a friend/ colleague

• Previously published with BioMed Central

The importance of happy authors

“I thought that the submission process was so smooothhh.....so much better than other journals!”

BMC Genomics author

“I was VERY PLEASED by the manuscript prep directions and the template. This is how manuscript prep should be. Really good job on that.”

BMC Biotechnology author

“Several of my colleagues have also published in BMC journals and everyone has been very happy with the

process. Thanks!”BMC Urology author

The cost of open access publishing

How do the finances work?• Article-processing charge (APC)

Covers– Editorial: handling of manuscripts– Technical: development, maintenance and operation of

online journal system– Production: Formatting and markup of articles, inclusion in

indexing services– Marketing: Making sure readers and authors know about

the journal– Customer service: Responding to authors/readers

• Web technology is used to keep costs low

Open access publication charges

• BioMed Central APC comparison page lists publishers’ open access charges

• BioMed Central’s charges (~£995 / $1620) are at the lower end

• For comparison, traditional publishers often charge $3000 or more for open access option, in addition to subscription charges

http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors /apccomparison

Article-processing charges - who pays?

• Authors may pay out of grant funds• Some funders provide a central fund for

open access publishing costs• Institutions may cover costs centrally,

on behalf of their authors, via BioMed Central Institutional Membership

• Some titles cover costs themselves

Institutional Membership

• Supporter MembershipInstitution pays a flat fee, authors pay a discounted Article Processing Charge

• Prepay MembershipInstitution covers cost of publication centrally, at a discounted rate

• Shared Support MembershipInstitution and author share the cost the APC equally

Future of open access…

Open access policies

30/06/2008 31/03/2009 03/31/2010

Departmental 4 6 21

Funder 23 35 44

Institutional 20 31 87

10

30

50

70

90

110

130

150

Growth in mandatesN

um

ber

of

mandate

s

Data courtesy of www.openscholarship.org

Policy highlights• 44 funder policies including RCUK,

Wellcome Trust, NIH Public Access Policy

• Institutional policies - 3 times as many policies than a year ago - Compact for open-access publishing equity (COPE) “supports equity of the business models by committing each university to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds”

Information on all policies available at www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Open access journals

3/31/2006 3/31/2007 3/31/2008 31/03/2009 03/31/2010

No. of journals 2158 2618 3302 3999 4863

500

1,500

2,500

3,500

4,500

5,500

Growth of journals in the DOAJ

Num

ber

of

journ

als

Increase in journals

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Total journals 129 143 169 178 195 205

110

130

150

170

190

210

129

143

169

178

195

205

Growth in BioMed Central journal portfo-lio

Num

ber

of

journ

als

BioMed Central submissions

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Submissions 6909 10806 15118 17206 21062 27128

2500

7500

12500

17500

22500

27500

6909

10806

15118

17206

21062

27128

BioMed Central growth in submissions

Num

ber

of

subm

issio

ns

Open access article share

Open access publishing,then and now…

2000 2010

And more…

Conclusions

• Open access movement going from strength to

strength

• Open access journals are proving to offer impact

• Open access journals proving to have benefits to

authors

• Challenges still exist but the future looks good for open

access...

Thank you

carrie.calder@biomedcentral.com