Bryan Vickery BioMed Central Ltd SPARC-ACRL Forum: June 23, 2007 Progress of Open access business models. Washington, DC
Let s start at the end: takehomes Open access is not small-scale anymore BioMed Central is approaching profitability and is proving that open access works There will be increasing demands for funding, we must be ready Universities, libraries and librarians have an important role to play in the creation of Central Funds and a level playing field to allow and encourage open access publishing A strategy for migration from subscriptions is needed Institutional repositories can aid push to full open access
Odd one out? WANTED! Shelley Batts Neuroscience PhD Student WANTING! Derek Lowe Drug Discovery Researcher WANTING! Terence Dolak SDR Pharmaceuticals
About BioMed Central Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals Launched first open access journal in 2000 Now publishes >170 OA titles >25,000 peer reviewed OA articles published ~10,000 will be published in 2007 alone All research articles published under Creative Commons licence Costs covered by 'article processing charge' (APC)
Journals published by BioMed Central 60 BMC-series journals run by an in-house editorial team cover all areas of Biology and Medicine e.g. BMC Cell Biology, BMC Genomics, BMC Cancer Flagship titles: BMC Biology and BMC Medicine 100 independent journals run by external groups of scientists often fill interdisciplinary niches e.g. Malaria Journal Hybrid journals (OA research + subscription content) e.g. Arthritis Research & Therapy, Genome Biology
New horizons for BioMed Central Chemistry Central PhysMath Central
Evidence that Open Access is hitting the mainstream
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Indexing/tracking services PubMed PubMed Central Scopus CAS Google Google Scholar OAIster Thomson Scientific BIOSIS MEDLINE EMBASE CABI Medscape
High impact journals Some BioMed Central journals that have already achieved excellent Impact Factors are in the top 10 in their fields http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/faq?name=impactfactor
X 2.74! Malaria Journal home page
Where are papers on malaria published? Am J Trop Med Hyg (112/year) Trop Med Int Health (59) Mol Biol Parasit (57) Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg (54) Infect Immunity (49) Parasitol Today/Trends (45) J Inf Dis (38) Lancet (37) Acta Trop (30) 27% of all papers are published in a small numbers of journals, each publishing regularly over 30 papers per annum
Where are papers on malaria published? Am J Trop Med Hyg (112/year) Malaria Journal 127 47 50 63 Trop Med Int Health (59) Mol Biol Parasit (57) Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg (54) Infect Immunity (49) Parasitol Today/Trends (45) J Inf Dis (38) Lancet (37) Acta Trop (30) 27% of all papers are published in a small numbers of journals, each publishing regularly over 30 papers per annum
Quarterly article submissions to BioMed Central OA journals 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Jan-00 Jan-01 Jan-02 Jan-03 Jan-04 Jan-05 Jan-06 Jan-07
Use of technology
Streaming video
Streaming video
Live equations in articles
Live equations in articles
Live equations in articles
Comparing the costs of the traditional model vs open access
BioMed Central s business model Costs covered by Article Processing Charge (APC) APC varies by journal - typically around $1500 Institutions receive APC discount in return for bulk payment (Institutional (Prepay) Membership)
How do the finances work? Article-processing charge (APC) Covers Editorial: handling of manuscripts Technical: development, maintenance and operation of online journal system Production: Formatting and markup of articles, inclusion in indexing services Marketing: Making sure readers and authors know about the journal Customer service: Responding to authors/readers Web technology is used to keep costs low
I. Cost per article published Last year, Oxford University Press shared the results of its experiments with Open Access http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.html Under the subscription model, OUP s Nucleic Acids Research was taking $3000-$4000 of subscription revenue per article published For comparison, BioMed Central APC charges are mostly in range $1500-$2000 The research community is paying over the odds because subscription journals do not function as an effective market
II. Cost per article download Elsevier makes much of the fact that the cost to the research community per article access has decreased to 2.00 The analagous figure for BioMed Central s journals is less than 0.25 per article access 8-fold more cost-effective!
BioMed Central Finances Average face-value of Article Processing Charge: ~ 750 Realized income per article, after discounts and waivers: ~ 600 We expect to be able to announce break-even this year
Article-processing charges - who pays? Authors may pay out of grant funds Some funders provide a central fund for open access publishing costs Institutions may cover costs centrally, on behalf of their authors, via BioMed Central Institutional Membership Some titles cover costs themselves
Institutional membership Supporter membership Institution pays a flat fee, authors pay a discounted Article Processing Charge Prepay membership Institution covers cost of publication centrally, at a discounted rate
Challenges on the Road to Open Access for All
Routes towards Open Access Gold OA Publishing in an open access journal Fully OA journals e.g. BioMed Central, Public Library of Science etc Optional OA in traditional journals (now offered by most major publishers) Green OA Depositing articles in an OA repository Subject repositories PubMed Central UK PubMed Central ArXiV Institutional repositories DSpace Eprints Fedora Open Repository
OA journals and OA repositories are complementary Repositories are vital but are not a complete solution Dependence on subscription journals means Embargo period (to preserve subscriptions) Version in repository is not the official one Extra work for authors to deposit OA journals allow full and immediate access to official version, and deposit on behalf of author
Role of funders in Open Access More and more funders have policies requiring funding recipients to deposit articles in a open access archive Wellcome Trust s lead has been followed by the majority of biomedical UK funders as part of UK PubMed Central European funders and research organizations have similar policies NIH policy (deposit requested, not required) is under review
Role of funders in open access (contd ) One obstacle to publishing in new OA journals is concern re: the next grant application Funder policies in support of OA can help reassure Wellcome estimates the cost of publication is only around 1% of the cost of doing the research It is entirely feasible for funders to break the stalemate caused by overstretched library budgets
The Changing Role of Libraries and librarians
Towards Dissemination A move away from the traditional filtration based on finances A move towards management and dissemination of an Institution s research output
Institutional Repositories - policies and incentives Institution creates repository of all research output good for birdseye view of research, marketing, visibility, funding and student inflow Requires its researchers, or the publishers they use, to deposit articles into it INCENTIVE: IR is used to automatically update publication records of researchers on their webpages Out of date histories are bad for researchers and bad for the institution
Institutional Repositories - aid to subscription migration Increased content in repositories, mandated by Institutions, lowers the reliance on subscriptions 3 rd parties can recreate, by indexing IRs, the volumes and issues of journals Cancel subscriptions and use PPV or ILL for remaining articles Publishers forced to move their cost recovery from the end to the start of the publishing process, creating a true market
Level Playing Field - central OA funds for authors OA is reaching the mainstream Funding agencies can support OA through additional grant funds Libraries can work with Research Managers/VPs of Research Publishing/Indirect costs from grants can be used to create a Central Fund for OA All authors can use this fund (whether directly funded themselves or not)
Level Playing Field - benefits Libraries and Institutions can better monitor the costs of OA All authors can use the funds available Authors don t want to manage these costs Some areas have little direct funding Drives OA forwards Publishers will need to know these funds exist, to alert authors
Nottingham University, UK a Central Fund for Open Access
Nottingham Central Funds Part of paper calling for an IR for Nottingham University Provision of 20,000 to a central fund for OA charges Created using FEC (indirect costs) from grants Open to all potential authors, funded or not
Nottingham Central Funds Allows better management of OA costs by the Institution Difficult to estimate uptake Will be topped up if needed Subscriptions may be cancelled to fund this pot Awareness raising needs to take place around the University Publishers need to be able to promote this resources to Nottingham s authors
Let s end at the start: takehomes Open access is not small-scale anymore BioMed Central is approaching profitability and is proving that open access works There will be increasing demands for funding, we must be ready Universities, libraries and librarians have an important role to play in the creation of Central Funds and a level playing field to allow and encourage open access publishing A strategy for migration from subscriptions is needed Institutional repositories can aid push to full open access
Thank you for your time! Bryan Vickery bryan.vickery@biomedcentral.com