...The [Springer purchase] pertains to 190 journals published by BioMed Central (BMC), including PhysMath Central and Chemistry Central titles. The only exceptions are Journal of Medical Case Reports and Cases, which remain with Science Navigation Group....
Launched in 1999 as part of Science Navigation Group (then called Current Science Group), BioMed Central has been a pioneer in OA publishing....The company reportedly achieved profitability in 2007....Science Navigation Group has a history of supporting early stage companies and then selling them off when they become established and successful....
[T]he move was immediately and widely heralded by OA advocates as a victory. "Proponents of open access should see this as an unambiguously good thing —it puts to rest once and for all the canard that open access is a nice idea but not a viable business model," said Michael Eisen, assistant professor of genetics at University of California–Berkeley and co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PloS)....
Writing in The Guardian, Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group, called it "a great day for science" and possibly more important than the current worldwide banking catastrophe. Smith stated that now "fewer than 10% of scientific articles are published open access, but Springer’s acquisition may bring us to the tipping point where open access publishing will be the norm." ...
Rick Johnson, founding executive director and senior advisor to SPARC, expressed mixed feelings about the sale, wondering whether Springer will "put the same energy into the enterprise as the founders, who recognized the need to be advocates for openness as well as business people. I wish them well," he wrote....
The most-voiced fear postacquisition is that BMC’s article publishing charge (APC) will go up....
BMC’s fees have doubled since it began, but the average is still below most competitors....Both Springer and BMC offered assurances that the acquisition would not trigger increases in BMC’s charges but that BMC would continue to adjust its charges over time in relation to various economic factors. Currently, the number of articles paid for by BMC member institutions is roughly the same as the number paid for by authors themselves. Full waivers of the fee account for less than 10% of the total publication....
Springer will keep BMC as "a separate, autonomous unit" and "intends to invest and grow the business," BMC CEO Matthew Cockerill told me. Springer "has committed to an open access future for BMC to the satisfaction of the Central Board of Trustees, and indeed, this was a condition of the sale," Cockerill wrote in an email. In a FAQ for librarians that answers subscription and membership concerns, Springer states unequivocally that BioMed Central’s research content will remain 100% OA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/16/2008 12:43:00 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.
