BioMed Central and OA Publishing
Matthew Cockerill
Managing 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)
Prepay
membership
18%
Individual
payment
(Standard)
Individual
54%
payment
(Supporter
member)
16%
Promotional
waivers
7%
Low income
country
waivers Discretionary
2% waivers
3%

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
High
rejection rate
Moderate
rejection rate
Low
rejection 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?

1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
0
apr.00
okt.00
apr.01
okt.01
apr.02
okt.02
apr.03
okt.03
apr.04
okt.04
apr.05
okt.05
apr.06
okt.06
submissions
apr.07
okt.07
apr.08
okt.08
apr.09
Growth in quarterly manuscipt

Growth rate is increasing
20000 50%
41%
40%
15000
30% Submissions
28%
10000
(Jan-Aug)
19%
20%
18% %ge growth on
5000 previous year
10%
0 0%
2006 2007 2008 2009

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
No. of journals
with
Impact Factor
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Journal transfers

Established titles are moving to OA
with BioMed Central

Increasing visibility and increasing
impact for a society journal
Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica
Moved to
1 BioMed Central
and became
0.899
Open Access
Impact Factor
0.8 0.717
0.6
0.408 0.375
0.4 0.318
0.2
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Helping authors to comply with
institutional Open Access policies

Manual deposit to IR
1
Publisher
Manuscript
2
Institutional
Repository
Author
(DSpace/Eprints etc.)
final
version

Automated deposit to IR via SWORD
SWORD
Export
Manuscript
Published
articles
from
SWORD institution’s
Import authors
Institutional
Repository
Published
(DSpace/Eprints etc.)
article