BioMed Central Blog

Yale and open access publishing - a response from BioMed Central

The scientific and medical library at Yale University recently announced that it would cease its BioMed Central membership. Whilst we are disappointed that the library has taken this decision, we welcome the opportunity to clarify BioMed Central's approach to sustainable funding for open access publishing.

The main concern expressed in the library's announcement is that the amount payable to cover the cost of publications by Yale researchers in BioMed Central's journals has increased significantly, year on year. Looking at the rapid growth of BioMed Central's journals, it is not difficult to see why that is the case. BioMed Central's success means that more and more researchers (from Yale and elsewhere) are submitting to our journals each year.

An increase in the number of open access articles being submitted and going on to be published does lead to an increase in the total cost of the open access publishing service provided by BioMed Central, but the cost per article published in BioMed Central's journals represents excellent value compared to other publishers.

The Yale library announcement notes that it paid $31,625 to cover the cost of publication in BioMed Central's journals by their authors in 2006, and that the anticipated cost in 2007 will be higher. But to put this into context, according to the Association of Research Library statistics, Yale spent more than $7m on serial subscriptions. Nonetheless, we do recognize that library budgets are very tight and that supporting the rapid growth of open access publishing out of library budgets alone may not be possible.

The Wellcome Trust report, 'Costs and business models in scientific research publishing', published in 2004, notes that the costs of open access publishing need not be any higher than the costs of traditional subscription-based publishing. In principle, therefore, the total amount currently spent by libraries on subscriptions would be sufficient to cover the cost of peer-reviewed open access publication for all research articles. Clearly, though, libraries cannot simply transfer their acquisitions budget from subscriptions to open access overnight, since access to the subscription-only archival content currently controlled by publishers is vital for their researchers.

If library budgets were the only source of funding to cover the cost of open access publication, this would be a significant obstacle. Fortunately, however, there are other sources of funding that are helping to accelerate the transition to open access.

Biomedical research funders around the world already spend billions of dollars to support research activity. These funders are understandably concerned to ensure that the results of that research are as widely disseminated as possible so that they obtain the good value from their research expenditure. For research to be worth doing, it must be read, used and built on — open access maximizes the opportunity for such use.

The Wellcome Trust report estimated that on average the cost associated with publishing a peer-reviewed research article is less than $3000, and further estimated that this represented only 1-2% of the typical investment by a funder in carrying out the research that led to the article. It is not surprising therefore, that major biomedical research funders such as NIH and HHMI now encourage open access publication, and are willing to provide financial support for it. BioMed Central's list of biomedical funder open access policies provides further information.

Authors may, of course, pay articles from their own grant funds, and around half of articles published in BioMed Central journals are indeed paid for in this way. However, relying on authors to pay for the cost of open access publication themselves puts open access journals at a significant disadvantage compared to traditional journals, which are supported centrally through library budgets, and so are often perceived to be 'free' by authors.

That is why BioMed Central introduced its institutional membership scheme, which allows institutions to centrally support the dissemination of open access research in the same way that they centrally support subscription journals, thereby creating a 'level playing field'.

In order to ensure that funding of open access publication is sustainable, we have encouraged institutions to set aside a small fraction of the indirect funding contribution that they receive from funders to create a central open access fund.

Over the last several months, BioMed Central has hosted workshops on the issue of sustainable funding for open access at the UK's Association of Research Manager's and Administrators annual conference and at the Medical Library Association's meeting in Philadelphia [see report]. Further such workshops are planned.

In this way, by helping research funders, administrators, VPs of research and librarians to work together to provide sustainable funding channels for open access, we aim to "provide a viable long-term revenue base built upon logical and scalable options", as called for in statement fromYale's library.

We are heartened by the library's strong support for BioMed Central's underlying goals as open access publisher:

"We believe in the widest possible access to scholarly research supported by workable business models and should BioMed Central develop a viable economic model which allows them to more equitably share costs across all interested stakeholders, we would consider renewing our financial support. "

We look forward to working with librarians and research administrators at Yale to develop a solution that will make it as easy as possible for Yale's researchers to continue publish their open access research articles in BioMed Central's journals.

Matthew Cockerill
Publisher, BioMed Central

Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 16:59    Comments (3)

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