DEFF Online 2012 An Institutional Response to Open

Access

Simon Neilson

Biomed Central

What does “Open Access” to scientific research mean?

• Universally available online without any barriers to access

• Creative Commons– Licensed to allow redistribution and reuse (as long as

attribution is given)

• Permanently archived in multiple locations to ensure long term access – PubMed Central

Why Open Access?

• Enhances scholarly communication

• Research has more impact

• Increases the institutes and authors profile

• Readers get better access to funded research

• Improves visibility and impact of an institutions research

• No subscription barriers

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

Open Access in 2012

• There are over 7800 open access journals in the DOAJ

• Over 1000 open access journals are indexed by ISI

• Open access to research is now mandatory in nearly 150 institutions and by over 52 funders

• A recent study found that 8.5% of peer reviewed articles are now published in a fully open access form*

*Study of open access – Bo Christer Bjork, PLOS One

A busy Spring for Open Access• “Academic Spring” has kept Open Access in the

news• David Willetts (UK Science Minister), voiced

strong support for OA, and announced involvement of Jimmy Wales in policy development

• The Finch report found open access would lead to efficiency benefits for researchers and produce economic growth

• Wellcome Trust is planning to introduce sanctions to increase compliance with its OA policy

• Horizon 2020 - €80bn EU research funding program to extend pilot OA program from FP7 to cover all projects

• World Bank announced strategic program to deliver open access to all its published output, other NGOs expected to follow 

Papers published by major OA publishers 2000-2011

BioMed Central• Pioneered open access publishing model• Launched first open access journal in 2000• Now publishes >240 OA titles• Over 125,000 peer-reviewed OA articles

published • More than 10 million article downloads per month• Became part of Springer in 2008• Springer Open >95 titles• Costs covered by 'article processing charge' (APC)

BioMed Central submissions

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 (proj)

Benefits of OA Publishing to Authors

• Very high visibility• Indexed widely• Excellent peer review• No barriers to dissemination• Higher citations

Visibility for BioMed Central authors

• 20 million page views a month• 4 million user sessions per month• Over 1 million registered users• Over 400,000 recipients to fortnightly BioMed

Central newsletter• 13,000 new registrants a month• Springer platform (16,000 customers, 13 million

users)

Visibility

Impact factors for some BioMed Central journals

BMC Medicine 6.04

BMC Public Health 2.00

Breast Cancer Research 5.25

Critical Care 4.61

Environmental Health 2.65

Genome Biology 9.04

Human Resources for Health 1.83

Implementation Science 2.51

International Journal for Equity in Health 3.10

Journal of Translational Medicine 3.51

Malaria Journal 3.47

Parasites & Vectors 2.94

Respiratory Research 3.36

Retrovirology 6.47

BMC Open Access Publishing Program

• To support authors publishing the open access route

• Helps ensure the most widespread dissemination of the research

• Covers full APCs for all investigators or provides them with a reduced fee

• Reduce institutional expenditure• Over 400 Members across 47 countries

Institutional Membership

– Supporter MembershipInstitution pays a flat rate, and in return, authors get a 15% discount on their article-processing charge

– Prepay MembershipInstitution pays in advance for each article published by one of their authors, at a discounted rate

Our Members

Nordic Members

• Norway– Norwegian Institute of Public Health– University of Bergen– Norwegian Air Ambulance

Foundation– University Library of Tromso

• Finland– University of Helsinki– Kuopio University and Kuopio

University Hospital– National Public Health Institute KTL– University of Oulu– Tampere University and University

Hospital– University of Eastern Finland

• Finland– Lund University– Karolinska University– Stockholm University– Chalmers University of Technology– University of Gothenburg– Uppsala University– Royal Institute of Technology– Nordic School of Public Health– SLU, Swedish University of

Agricultural Sciences

Libraries Authors

Funders Publishers

We work in partnership.....

• Many institutions now have OA repositories in place

• Populating the repositories is often proving a challenge

• BioMed Central is delivering data to repositories using automated-article feeds

Populating Institutional repositories

Institutional Institutional RepositoryRepository(DSpace/Eprints (DSpace/Eprints

etc.etc.))

Automated Deposit to IR via SWORD

Manuscript

SWORD Import

SWORD Export

Published articles

from institution’s

authors

Published article

Accepted and

Published article

•Open access journals covering all disciplines

•Creative Commons

•53 journals already, 11 already have impact

factors

•Planned addition of 400-500 journals in next

few years

•Administered by BioMed Central

?

Key facts:• Open Access• Inclusive Scope• Easy Submission• Rigorous Peer Review• Clear and fast editorial process• APC: £690

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica

Economics of paying for open access publishing

• The macro-economics are simple• The micro-economics are more

challenging

Macro-economics

• Open access publishing involves no new costs• From the perspective of the research

community as a whole, switching to an Open Access publishing model is affordable and desirable, as it – costs no more than the current model– delivers more (universal access and reuse)

Micro-economics

• Library budgets already stretched, paying the costs of the current publishing model through subscriptions

• Costs of traditional system are mostly invisible to authors, whereas article-processing charges are an obstacle for authors

• During a transitional period, moves towards open access may involve additional costs

• The common question...”who is paying for this”?

Summary

• Open Access publishing is here to stay and it is growing fast

• Many journals are moving to OA to take advantage of the benefits in terms of submissions, visibility and citation advantage

• Many authors are publishing in OA journals for similar reasons

• OA journals are becoming leaders in their field

Many thanks...