What if open access publishers close down

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

In response to Jim Robinson's question about what would happen were BioMed
Central or similar Open Access publishers to close down, I hope to
reassure him and all other readers of this list that one of the key
elements in the BioMed Central definition of Open Access is the guarantee
of future free availability of the material published (see definition
here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/charter).

The future free availability of research articles is an intrinsic part of
Open Access. The articles are not just freely available, but can also be
downloaded, stored, archived, distributed further, even sold (should
anybody be interested in paying for what's already freely available),
without prior permission and on the basic conditions only that the
author(s) is/are acknowledged and properly cited/referenced, and that no
substantive changes are made without declaring what they are.

BioMed Central is an avid supporter of LOCKSS (http://www.lockss.org/),
which aims to find safety in redundancy, and we currently deposit all our
published articles in full in PubMedCentral in the US and INIST in France.
Many university libraries also download and archive portions of BMC
material. All BMC articles, including those published by BioMed Central
for independent journals such as the Malaria Journal
(http://www.malariajournal.com), are OAI-compliant and the full-text can
be 'harvested' by any OAI-harvester. We are also in advanced talks with
other organisations in other countries to have more permanent and freely
accessible archives, in order to cover any conceivable risk in that regard
and we hope to be able to make further announcements in the near future.
Talking about future, the material BioMed Central publishes is deposited
in these archives in a variety of electronic formats, including the most
'future-proof' currently available, XML.

Jan Velterop
BioMed Central

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James A. Robinson [mailto:jim.robinson@stanford.edu]
> Sent: 15 January 2003 01:52
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Chronicle article: Subscription Service's Difficulties
> Could Be Costly for Libraries and Publishers 
> 
> 
<snip>
> 
> The comment about Open Access being a guarantee interested me as well.
> What occurs in a scenerio where BioMed Centeral or similar Open Access
> groups close down?  Do all articles get moved to another 
> online source, en masse?  Is PubMed Central the one and only such 
> backup?  Are there other sources of online support standing ready to 
> handle an influx of material?
> 
> Jim