Library funding exhausted for BMC journal article publication fees
February 20, 2008
Effective today, the University Libraries funds covering costs associated with publication in BioMed Central (BMC) journals have been exhausted and these costs can no longer be supported by us. As of today, any costs of new submissions that are eventually published in BMC Journals will be the responsibility of the authors.On March 31, 2007, there was a significant change in BMC membership options, SUNY funding sources, and increased fees. At that time, the UB Libraries committed $18,000 to provide about an additional year’s worth of publication fees in hopes that other funding sources might become available. No other funding has developed since last year.
More details about this matter appear below. Please contact Austin Booth habooth@buffalo.edu if you have any questions or comments.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Up until March 31, 2007, a SUNY-wide membership to BioMed Central (BMC), a thriving, open-access publisher, was provided via a UUP grant and a SUNY University & Health Sciences Center Libraries subsidy. This membership waived publication charges for all articles submitted to BMC journals by SUNY faculty and staff. At least 45 articles were published under this original membership, which expired on March 31, 2007. All articles that were submitted by that date and eventually accepted for publication were covered by this expired membership. (The additional $18,000 UB library funding has been sufficient to cover all articles submitted by UB authors from March 31, 2007 to the present.)
Unfortunately, due to the significant growth of their journals, in 2007 BMC decided they could no longer cover their costs with flat-rate memberships that provided unlimited publication rights. BMC also significantly increased their publication charges, though they are still reasonable compared to some other publishers. SUNY-wide funding is not available to pay for the new membership levels.
Last year when we notified you of the additional interim funding from the University Libraries for 2007-08, we stated, “The UB Libraries currently have no funding to extend this membership to cover additional articles this year, or perhaps even to renew the membership in future years.”
The University Libraries remains very supportive of new, more affordable models of scholarly publishing such as represented by BioMed Central, provided appropriate funding sources can be developed. However, until these new models make deeper inroads in the marketplace, the Libraries must continue to maintain essentially all of our subscriptions to the traditional, and often expensive, journals. This currently makes it difficult for the library to be the sole funding source for open-access publication fees. Note that open access journals fees vary widely. Many charge no author-side fees at all or will readily waive fees for authors whose economic or institutional situation are such that they can not afford publication fees.
Linda - default - No comments - § ¶
Home
