[Q:] BMC has been a pioneer in road-testing models for making OA publishing sustainable, including introducing an institutional membership program. Can you tell us about some of the milestones you’ve reached? What’s driving your growth?
We’re super happy with how things are going right now — both submissions and access rates are on the rise. We’re now seeing 4 million article downloads per month, and it will be more than 50 million for the year. That’s a lot of access to research. Submissions are currently at about 1,800 per month, up from 1,500 at the same time last year. And it’s worth noting that in terms of submission rates, we expect the next year to be an even bigger growth period. ...
We now have a sustainable business model. Revenue has roughly doubled in the last 12 months — in part because we’re publishing more articles, and in part because we’ve structured our institutional membership fees so they’re proportionate to the value of the articles published, as well as realistic for covering the costs of publishing on a large scale. ...
Another important trend that’s going to drive submissions growth over the next year is existing journals switching across to open access with BioMed Central. Quite a few have done so already, coming from Taylor & Francis and other traditional publishers. And the pipeline for such transfers is growing rapidly, now that OA has proven itself as a viable model with many benefits for society publishers. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/18/2008 05:15:00 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.
