Presentation by panelist Matthew Cockerill, BioMed Central, for OASPA hosted webinar: A Q &A with five publishers working with Open Access on 20 October 2009. www.oaspa

1. BioMed Central and OA Publishing
Matthew Cockerill
Managing Director, BioMed Central
OASPA Webinar, 20th October 2009

2. About BioMed Central
 Largest publisher of peer-reviewed OA journals
 Launched first open access journal in 2000
 Now publishes 202 OA titles
 >60,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published
 All research articles published under Creative
Commons license
 Costs covered by 'article processing charge'
(APC)
 Part of Springer Science+Business Media since
October 2008

3. BioMed Central revenue streams
 Publication fees
– From authors
– From meeting organizers
– From sponsoring institutions/organizations
 Subscription content (e.g. reviews)
 Services (e.g. Open Repository)
 Advertising / sponsorship

4. BioMed Central revenue streams
 Publication fees
– From authors
– From meeting organizers
– From sponsoring institutions/organizations
 Subscription content (e.g. reviews)
 Services (e.g. Open Repository)
 Advertising / sponsorship

5. BioMed Central membership
 Prepay membership
– Institution pays APCs centrally at a
discounted rate
– Authors do not have to pay
 Supporter membership
– Institutions pay a flat fee
– Authors pay a discounted Article Processing
Charge

6. How do publication fees get paid?
(last 12 months)
Prepay
membership
18%
Individual
payment
(Standard)
Individual
54%
payment
(Supporter
member)
16%
Promotional
waivers
7%
Low income
country
waivers Discretionary
2% waivers
3%

7. Rejection rates and the open access
model
 High prestige journals often have a high
rejection rate
 Lots of submissions, few publications
 How to make economically viable under
Open Access?
– Higher APC?
– Submission fee?
– Cascade model?

8. Journal peer review cascade
High
rejection rate
Moderate
rejection rate
Low
rejection rate

9. Advantages of peer review cascade
 Avoids delays for authors
 Avoids saddling academics with
repeated peer review of less interesting
papers
 Separates question of soundness of
research from level of interest
– Soundness determines whether to publish
– Interest determines where to publish

10. Is OA publishing still growing?

11. 1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
0
apr.00
okt.00
apr.01
okt.01
apr.02
okt.02
apr.03
okt.03
apr.04
okt.04
apr.05
okt.05
apr.06
okt.06
submissions
apr.07
okt.07
apr.08
okt.08
apr.09
Growth in quarterly manuscipt

12. Growth rate is increasing
20000 50%
41%
40%
15000
30% Submissions
28%
10000
(Jan-Aug)
19%
20%
18% %ge growth on
5000 previous year
10%
0 0%
2006 2007 2008 2009

13. What factors are helping BioMed
Central to grow?

14. Google pagerank
Similarly:
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology
Systems Biology
Bioinformatics
Developmental Biology
All on first page of Google
results

15. BioMed Central journals with official
Thomson Reuters/ISI impact factors
No. of journals
with
Impact Factor
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

16. Journal transfers

17. Established titles are moving to OA
with BioMed Central

18. Increasing visibility and increasing
impact for a society journal
Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica
Moved to
1 BioMed Central
and became
0.899
Open Access
Impact Factor
0.8 0.717
0.6
0.408 0.375
0.4 0.318
0.2
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

19. Helping authors to comply with
institutional Open Access policies

20. Manual deposit to IR
1
Publisher
Manuscript
2
Institutional
Repository
Author
(DSpace/Eprints etc.)
final
version

21. Automated deposit to IR via SWORD
SWORD
Export
Manuscript
Published
articles
from
SWORD institution’s
Import authors
Institutional
Repository
Published
(DSpace/Eprints etc.)
article