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BioMed Central: question from a reader

QUESTION:  Can anyone tell me who owns BioMed Central? I understand it is
a subsidiary of Current Science Group, but who owns this company? I know
it is commercial but don't know if it is a subsidiary of another company,
is listed on the stock exchange or is privately owned. When I asked BioMed
Central they referred me to a page with no details of ownership and then
didn't reply to further questions. One of the contributing factors in the
journal crisis is that scientists don't realise who they are giving a
manuscript to, and often its not easy finding out. Are they obliged to
make this information public? Thank you.  Diane Lester
                                                                                            
***

ANSWER:  First of all, one of the ways BioMed Central differs from other,
conventional, publishers, is that authors are not 'giving' their article
to us. They keep all the rights to their article, are not asked to
transfer copyright, and are totally free to distribute their article in
any way they like. What we provide, and what authors' institutions are
paying for (a fraction, by the way, of what they collectively pay for
articles published conventionally), is the service of organising and
handling the process of having the article peer-reviewed, and, if
accepted, published (given a unique bibliographic journal citation, DOI
and URL) in open access, presented in various standardised formats (PDF
and XML-generated HTML) and hotlinked (via CrossRef and others) and
indexed (PubMed, Biosis and others) to enable optimum findability,
citeability, dissemination, and 'embedding' in the network that science
literature is.

BioMed Central is part of the Current Science Group and wholly privately
owned by the chairman Vitek Tracz (see
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/whoweare.asp). We are a commercial
company, fully committed to open access (see our open access charter:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/charter.asp) and protected from takeover
by entities hostile to open access by a Board of Trustees consisting of
eminent scientists also committed to open access (see
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/trustees.asp)

With best regards,

Jan Velterop, Publisher
Tel +44 (0)20 7323 0323
www.biomedcentral.com