BioMed Central Blog
BioMed Central acquired by Springer Science+Business Media
Earlier this month, BioMed Central was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media, the world's second largest publisher of Scientific, Technical and Medical journals. Springer is absolutely committed to maintaining BioMed Central's policy of full open access to all research, and this acquisition is great news for open access, demonstrating that it is both a financially viable publishing model and an increasingly important part of mainstream scholarly publishing.
Springer is a natural home for BioMed Central, having long been among the most forward-looking of the 'traditional' publishers. Springer launched its Open Choice open access option back in 2004 and has continued to innovate in this area.
The acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer was approved by BioMed Central's Board of Trustees, who are charged with ensuring that any new owner of BioMed Central commits to permanently retain BioMed Central’s policy of unconditional open access to published research articles.
BioMed Central Limited will remain an autonomous operating unit within Springer Science+Business Media and it is 'business as usual' for BioMed Central staff and journals. All BioMed Central's titles are included in the acquisition, with the exception of Cases and Journal of Medical Case Reports which remain with Science Navigation Group. BioMed Central will continue to set its own article processing charges and there are no plans to increase charges as a result of the acquisition.
At BioMed Central, we are thrilled to have reached this important
milestone in the development of open access publishing, and others in the open
access movement have expressed
similar enthusiasm.
With the near simultaneous launch of the new Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association (of which BioMed Central is a
founder member) on the first annual Open
Access Day, this has truly been a momentous month for open access.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the authors, editors,
peer-reviewers, librarians who have made BioMed Central’s success possible. We
look forward to making the most of Springer's global reach and resources to
improve our service and to help bring the benefits of open access publishing to
an ever wider community.
Matt
Cockerill
Publisher,
BioMed Central
Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 15:08 Comments (0)
