On this episode of Open Views I'm joined by Dr. Matthew Cockerill from BioMedCentral, a commercial Open Access publisher. BioMedCentral has a portfolio of 182 journals, a combination of both general titles such as the Journal of Biology, and much more specialized such as Malaria Journal and Biomedcentral Bioinformatics. All the research published by BioMed Central's journals is open access, but BioMed Central also provides access to various additional products and services that require a subscription. BioMed Central also operates Open Repository, a hosted digital repository solution for institutions.
In many ways Biomedcentral is experimenting with the different business models necessary for the new world of Open Access to work in a commercial setting. But having been in operation since 1999, it has definitely proven that the model of Open Access has commercial viability.
Matthew Cockerill started off as Biomedcentral's first employee, back in 1999, and has since served in several roles: technical director, operations director, and now Publisher, which is essentially like the managing director. He agreed to a conversation to talk about his work at BiomedCentral, and also the relevance of the Open Access model in an interconnected world.
PS: The interview was an hour, but for now the official podcast only covers the first 20 minutes. KRUU hopes to fix this problem soon. Meantime, here's an unofficial podcast of the whole interview.
Update. The official podcast has been fixed and now covers the whole interview.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/09/2007 02:13:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
