Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director, BioMed Central

1. Open access:
current status and future plans
Deborah Kahn
Publishing Director, BioMed Central

2. Open access publishing
Same quality and
Different business model….. standards
• no subscription • Editors in chief
barriers
• Editorial boards
• universal access
• Peer review
• research is openly
licensed to allow reuse • Indexing

3. Strong growth since 2000
25000
20000
Number of papers
15000
Oxford Open
BMC
PLoS
10000 Hindawi
Copernicus
Springer Open Choice
5000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Year

4. Across all subject areas
Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and
internal structure, Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk ,
BMC Medicine, 2012, 10: 124

5. And across the world

6. Some advantages of open access
• Unlimited access to all who need it
• Continuous publication
– not limited by page budgets
– Space allows inclusive policies
• Focus on increasing visibility of articles through
blogs, blurbs, tweets
• Articles are openly licensed so can be reused
• Allows text mining of data and literature
• No limits on size, number of colour
figures, videos, additional files…..

9. Enables new collaborations
“ I received comments through my blog, Twitter
network where I have over 6000 followers, Facebook
which I use for professional reasons, and
Friendfeed, where there is a scientific community...”
“getting feedback online and being able to ask scientific
questions (through crowdsourcing) were not surprising.
What was surprising though is that scientists who work
in the same field as us found us now easily and we
managed to launch new collaborations based on this
(we plan to share the data with a group in the US and
combine our efforts for a new study). From this
perspective, publishing in an open access journal can
provide enormous opportunities if the communication
methods of social media are also used by the authors
properly and with strategy.”
http://www.oastories.org/2011/09/hungary-researcher-dr-bertalan-
mesko-open-access-and-social-media/

10. Open access journals need to
cover their costs
• Managing peer review
• Online journal systems
• Formatting and mark up of articles
• Inclusion in indexing services
• Making sure readers and authors know about
the journal

11. How do costs get covered
Journals with that income source
Page charges
Re-prints
Conference fee
Services
Data from the SOAP
Large publishers Other publishers study, http://project-
soap.eu/

12. Waiver fund for authors in low-
income countries
Applies to all low and low-middle
income countries that have
GDP<$200bn
>5% of total articles are being
published under scheme

13. BioMed Central
• Launched first open access journal in 2000
• Currently publishes over 240 Open Access journals
• Over 130,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published
• More than 10 million article downloads per month
• All research articles published under Creative
Commons license so can be re-used
• Costs covered by 'article processing charge' (APC)
• BioMed Central also hosts and supports SpringerOpen
portfolio

14. Recent developments

15. Coming soon

16. BioMed Central and Africa
• Waiver fund
• Foundation membership
• Open access in the developing world
• Open Access Africa
• Summit on the sustainability of open access
in Africa

17. Submissions and publications from
African authors are increasing
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000 Submissions
Publications
1500
1000
500
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Projected

18. Foundation Membership
• Institutions can show support for open access
– No cost
• Criteria for qualifying institutions:
– Institution has an Open Access policy in place
– Researchers have published at least 5 articles in BioMed Central
journals in the last year
– Institution based in waiver fund country
• Benefits
– A BioMed Central Webpage
– OA promotional material
– Membership usage reports
– Member logo/badge for use on institution website
– Promotion of Membership

21. Open Access Africa
• 2010: Kenya; 2011: Ghana; 2012: South Africa
• Outcomes so far
– Sudan’s first Institutional Repository, created by the University of
Khartoum, was a direct result of Open Access Africa 2010
– New open access groups formed in Nigeria and Ghana
– Greater awareness of challenges faced by open access journals
based in Africa
– Summit on sustainability of open access publishing in Africa

22. Summit on sustainability of
open access publishing in
Africa
AJOL, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bioline
International, BioMed Central, Carnegie
Corporation, DFID, INASP/ Publishers for
Development, KNUST, Medicins Sans Frontiers, Pan African
Medical Journal, Public Library of Science, Shuttleworth
Foundation, Stellenbosch University, The Association of
Commonwealth Universities, UNECA , Wellcome
Trust, WHO, World Bank

23. Summit outcomes
• Commitment to OA from funders and institutions
– Funders want their funds to be used to make research OA
• Improving the reputation of open access
– Showing that prestigious research is published OA
– Effective OA communication/advocacy
– Showing the value proposition
– Getting buy-in from the African influencers
• Capacity building
– Research and publishing expertise
• Follow up meeting to be held in Capetown this week

24. OAA 2012 Program
• Based on the three main outcomes of the
summit
– Open access overview
– Capacity building Twitter hashtag
– Advocacy #OAAfrica2012
– Sustainability

25. Thank you
deborah.kahn@biomedcentral.com