Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Interview with Chemistry Central's Bryan Vickery

David Bradley has interviewed Bryan Vickery for Reactive Reports, July-August 2007.

Bryan Vickery did his BSc in chemistry at Liverpool University, and then studied electrochemistry there for his PhD....He is currently Publisher at BioMed Central with special interest in Chemistry Central....

How is the chemistry wing of BioMedCentral fulfilling the promise of a chemical web?

...Our job is to make the literature and data available freely, for datamining, etc., in a useful and meaningful way, and to employ linking technologies to make finding your way seamless. One of the main benefits of open access is that anyone can download the article, figures, schemes and data for reuse....

Why is it taking so long for researchers to fully engage with open journals?

Researchers have, for too long, been kept in the dark when it comes to the cost of publishing their research. It's strange to think that "publications" are a "library thing", especially as research output is increasing and library budgets are static. Researchers also put up with terrible customer service and delays in publication....Authors generally think "but why should I pay?" but never consider that the librarian is being held to ransom, and paying huge sums on their behalf. In fact, library budgets are, in part, funded through the indirect costs from research grants so researchers are paying without knowing it.

We strongly believe that publication is part of the research process, and should be funded as such. By making our costs visible and transparent we want authors to know how much it costs. As more and more publishers move to open access, we can fix this dysfunctional market and authors and their institutions can choose where to publish based on quality, service, prestige and price....

In the wake of Nature Precedings, which in turn simply reinvented the ChemWeb Preprints wheel, might we see Chemistry Central papers "published" as preprints to be reviewed live?

We'll be doing just that with PhysMath Central in fact. Our new launch into physics, mathematics and computer science allows authors to upload their files directly from arXiv, and upon acceptance PhysMath Central will deposit, immediately, the final version back into arXiv. What is more, any article submitted directly to us will also be deposited in arXiv....