Open Access Publishing: the publishers’
perspective
Alex Christoforou
Head of Customer Services and Membership
The Open University, 1st November 2013
The many facets of Open Access Publishing
‘Gold’ Open Access
• Article freely
available from
publisher website
‘Full’ Open Access
• Whole journal is
published Open Access
‘Hybrid’ Open Access
• Article level Open
Access option in
subscription journals
Author Payment
• Author/funder/institution
pays for publishing
Sponsored
• Journal sponsored by a
non-profit institution or
organization
‘Green’ Open Access
• Self-archiving of
author manuscript on
author website,
institutional or
subject-based
repositories
‘Delayed’ Open Access
• Articles made freely
available to nonsubscribers after a
certain period, usually
12 or 24 months
Publisher is paid for the service of publication instead of selling access to content
BioMed Central - The Open Access Publisher
Launched 1999
Publisher of over 250 open access journals
All journals are fully peer-reviewed with international Editorial Boards
Journals in all areas of life sciences, medicine and chemistry
Over 51,000 manuscripts submitted to BioMed Central journals in 2012
Overview of open access
Changing landscape of open access publishing
2000
2013
And many more…
Impact Factor journals: Open Access market share
Number of Articles in Journal Citation Reports 2012
‘Full’ OA
Journals:
Author Pays
7%
Subscription journals
include:
• ‘Hybrid’ Journals
(OA articles: 1% of
all articles)
• ‘Delayed’ OA
Journals (6% of all
articles)
Subscription
Journals
90%
‘Full’ OA
Journals:
Sponsored
3%
Sources: Journal Citation Reports 2012;DOAJ; Laakso and Björk: Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of
longitudinal development and internal structure, BMC Medicine 2012
Interesting New Journals (all OA)
eLife
- Highly selective journal backed by HHMI, Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust
- Reviewing editors lead online discussions resulting in a single concise set of
instructions for revisions
F1000 Research
- All articles are published within days following an in-house check for obvious
inappropriateness
- Peer review takes place immediately after publication; reviews and reviewers’
identities are published alongside articles
PeerJ
- Authors pay to become members (starting at $99) instead of paying APCs
- Must commit to providing at least 1 review each year
A busy year for open access
Open access policies around the world
302 mandates
• 81 Funder Mandates
• 177 Institutional
• 29 Sub-institutional
• 5 Multi-institutional
2,841 repositories worldwide
containing 26,498,237 items
How are BioMed Central and Springer keeping up?
BioMed Central: The Journals
148 of 257
journals
now
have Impact
Factors
Springer‘s portfolio of peer-reviewed, fully open access journals
and books across all areas of science, technology, medicine,
the humanities and social sciences!
Launched in June 2010
Over 150 open access journals
Ranging from specialized titles to SpringerPlus
17 journals with a 2012 Impact Factor
More than 20 open access books
Visit springeropen.com or
follow @SpringerOpen on
SpringerOpen journals in subject fields (Sept 2013)
SpringerOpen – Now including Books!
All SpringerOpen book chapters are fully open access
(copyright remains with the authors/editors; Creative
Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license)
OA charge is calculated individually, based on the
numbers of pages per book
SpringerOpen books authors/editors affiliated to a
Member Institute are entitled to a 15% loyalty
discount
Springer Open Choice
New mobile formats
Mobile friendly design of journals and articles
• Device-specific formatting for smart
phone or tablet users
• Mobile-optimised figure presentation,
content navigation and search
• Articles can be saved to read offline
and used by apps such as iBooks,
Dropbox and Papers
Mobile formats
Platform independent
technology:
Articles published in BioMed
Central and SpringerOpen
journals are available in the
ePUB format which is
compatible with all e-readers
(Kindle, iPAD, Nook etc)
Visibility
Visibility
Visibility for our authors
BioMed Central & SpringerOpen website statistics
•Over 25 million page views a month
•More than 7 million user sessions per month
•Over 1.5 million registered users
•Over 420,000 recipients to BioMed Central and SpringerOpen newsletters
SpringerLink - the world’s most complete online collection of STM content
•Over 20 million page views a month
•More than 12 million user sessions per month
Altmetrics
Researchers find articles … somehow
save them … somewhere
annotate them … in some way
share them … sometimes
get back to them … if they can find again
eventually cite them … and then often reformat the
citation
Membership Program
• Prepay Members – 162
• Shared Support Members – 26
• Supporter Members – 257
• Foundation Membership – 22
Administrations tools
• Tracking
• Accountability
• Easy management
• Flexibility
Automated Article Feeds
SWORD
Export
Manuscript
SWORD
Import
Published
article
Institutional
Repository
(DSpace/Eprints etc.)
Published
articles
from
institution’s
authors
• Books (SpringerOpen)
• Wellcome policy
Summary
• Open access publishing is growing globally
• Funding for Open Access is being put in place all over the world
• Open access publishers provide an improved service
─Visibility and impact
─Distribution
─Accessibility
• Future: to support science as it develops
─Data sharing
─Reproducibility
Thank You
Alex Christoforou
Head of Customer Service and Membership
+44 (0) 203 192 2106
alex.christoforou@biomedcentral.com
Q&A