Open Access for scholarly communication a perspective from

Open Access for scholarly communication, a perspective from Bio. Med Central 14 th of January 2010 Toruń, Poland Maria Romano, Bio. Med Central

Agenda • Open Access – the basics • Two routes to Open Access • Funders’ and Institutions’ actions to support Open Access • Bio. Med Central – who we are, what we do • Benefit for Authors – visibility, citations, IF; a case study • Helping achieve Open Access at institutions – Membership – Open Repository

Open Access, the basics

Traditional research publishing How does this work? • The research community transfers the rights to its research to the publisher • The publisher sells access to the content (typically via subscription fees)

What does Open Access mean to scientific research? • Publisher is paid for the service of publication • Scientists/clinicians carry out research, they write up results and submit to a journal for review • Research articles are universally available via the Internet • Licensed so as to allow redistribution and reuse • Permanently archived in an internationally recognized repositories (e. g. Pub. Med Central)

What are the problems with the traditional model? • Research results are behind a barrier • Taxpayers are denied access to the research they funded • Increasing cost of subscriptions for libraries • Transfer of copyright

How can we move towards Open Access?

Routes towards Open Access Gold Route Publishing in an Open Access journal – Fully OA journals e. g. Bio. Med Central, Public Library of Science etc – Optional OA in traditional journals (now offered by most of the major publishers) Green Route Depositing articles in an OA repository – Subject or Institutional repositories (Pub. Med Central, UK Pub. Med Central, Ar. Xi. V)

Funders’ and institutions’ actions to support Open Access

Institutional and funder OA policies The gold route – OA Publishing • Institutional Central funds for OA fees E. g. Nottingham, Newcastle, Calgary, Berkeley, Harvard • Institutional commitment for OA Equity E. g. Compact for OA Publishing Equity (COPE) signed by Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Berkeley and Dartmouth • Funders that explicitly fund for OA fees E. g. UK Wellcome Trust, DFG German Research Foundation

Funders that Explicitly Allow APCs to be Paid from Grants Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Canada) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain) Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy) Danmarks Grundforskningsfond (Denmark) Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany) Fondazione Telethon (Italy) Fonds zur Forderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Austria) Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Belgium) Health Research Board (Ireland) Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US) International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (International) Israel Science Foundation (Israel) National Health Service (UK) National Institutes of Health (US) National Science Foundation (US) Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands) Rockefeller Foundation (US) South African Medical Research Council (South Africa) Suomen Akatemia (Finland) Swiss National Science Foundation (Switzerland) Vetenskapsrådet (Sweden) Wellcome Trust (UK)

Institutional and funder OA policies The green route – Archiving • Mandatory OA-deposit policies from research funders E. g. NIH, HHMI, UK PMC funder group, OTKA- Scientific Res Fund Hungary • Mandatory OA-deposit policies at institutions E. g. Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, UCL • Mandatory OA-deposit policies from governments E. g. US Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009

Bio. Med Central

About Bio. Med Central • Largest publisher of peer-reviewed Open Access research journals • Launched first OA journal in 2000 • Acquired by Springer in October 2008 • Now publishes 205 OA journals • >57, 000 peer-reviewed OA articles published • All research articles published under Creative Commons license

Annual manuscript submissions

Full Open Access Submission growth Approximate no. submissions received 2003 -2009 Source: Claire Bird, Oxford Press

Bio. Med Central: quality journals

Journals with Impact Factors

Journals awaiting new Impact Factors 35 in total

Indexing/tracking services – – – – Pub. Med Central Scopus CAS Google Scholar OAIster – – – Thomson Scientific BIOSIS MEDLINE EMBASE CABI Medscape

Benefits for authors Open Access = maximum visibility = higher chances to be cited Demonstrated by article download statistics Confirmed by several studies showing that OA articles tend to be cited more Rapid publication View manuscript status via My Bio. Med Central Immediate publication on acceptance Final version available within 2 weeks of acceptance Full use of web technology Easy-to-use manuscript submission process You. Tube-style movie display, in context of article Intelligent handling of equations (Math. ML) Authors retain copyright BMC promotes selected articles

Citation and Downloads • “Open Access articles receive 50% more full-text accesses and PDF downloads than subscription-access articles. ” Kenneth R. Fulton, PNAS Publisher • Independent study by CIBER (UCL) found “Senior authors believe downloads to be more credible measure of the usefulness of research then traditional citations. ” http: //www. ucl. ac. uk/ciber_2005_survey_final. pdf

Case study Transferred in 2006

Case study Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica

Impact factor trend (5 years) … and the trend looks likely to continue: as of November 09, the citation count stands at 80 citations to 86 “citeable” articles

How does BMC model work? To maintain our Open Access policy we use a different business model:

How does BMC model work? • Article-processing charge (APC) covers – Editorial: handling of manuscripts – Technical: development, maintenance and operation of on-line journal system – Production: Formatting and mark up 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

How do OA publication fees get paid? • Authors may pay out of grant funds • Some funders provide dedicated funds for Open Access publishing costs • Institutions may cover costs centrally (via Open Access funds and/or membership arrangements with OA publishers) • Some journals are run by organizations which cover costs themselves

Bio. Med Central Helping achieve Open Access at institutions

Helping achieve Open Access at institutions 1. Membership Program – the Gold route – – Reduces barriers for authors to publish in OA journals Increases visibility and distribution of research 2. Open Repository – the Green route – – – Reduces barriers for authors to deposit their research in OA Adds visibility to the institution’s intellectual output Increases visibility and distribution of research

Helping achieve Open Access at institutions 1. Membership Bio. Med Central has over 280 Members around the world Prepay Membership – – Institution pays funds into a deposit account Article Processing Charge is covered by funds from account Discount depending on deposit amount Simplified administration/reporting Supporter Membership – Institutions pay a flat fee – Authors pay a discounted article-processing charge

Membership account reporting

Helping achieve Open Access at institutions 2. Open Repository A hosted solution for building and maintaining a customized DSpace repository ● ● Simplest & quickest way for institutes to develop a repository ● OR offers transparent pricing ● Enables organisations to collect, showcase and preserve their intellectual output ● Store a variety of document types from internal material to publicly available documents

Helping achieve Open Access at institutions Open Repository offers • Setup, maintenance & ongoing support • Sophisticated search functionalities • Customisation & branding • Statistics • Personal workspaces • External article linking • Import historical data with batch uploads • Training for users & administrators • Populating the repository • Try before you buy – free pilot

Helping achieve Open Access at institutions Open Repository offers • Advanced document upload functionality • Conversion to PDF and Open Office formats • Data feeds from Pub. Med Central and other OA archives • Social bookmarking tags • Export to Endnote, Ref. Man & Ref. Work • Embargo tool • E-Theses submission form • Toggle between multiple languages

Open Access dilemma: Archiving or Publishing in OA journals? Why Green goes well with Gold

Why Green goes well with Gold • Many institutions now have OA repositories in place • Populating the repositories is often proving a challenge • Open Access journals provide immediately available OA content • Bio. Med Central is automating feeds to repositories using the SWORD protocol

Why Green goes well with Gold • Dependence on subscription journals means – Embargo period (to preserve subscriptions) – Version in repository is not the ‘official’ one – Extra work for authors/administrators to deposit • OA journals allow full and immediate access to official version, and deposit on behalf of author • Repositories are vital, however not exhaustive

Membership + Open Repository = Full Open Access

Thanks for your attention! Any questions? Maria Romano, Sales Manager T: +44 (0)20 3192 2207 maria@biomedcentral. com