RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

Ann,

Membership rates are set on the basis of an estimate of the number of
published articles likely to come out of a given institution. Initially,
that estimate can only be roughly based on the size of the researcher
'population' working in the biomedical research disciplines at that
institution. With each year, though, a more accurate picture emerges,
although that picture will obviously always lag behind the reality of the
current year in a situation of growing awareness and acceptance of Open
Access. Our thinking is that we correct the membership fee for each
individual institution after we have more accurate estimates of the number
of articles that can realistically be expected, using the number of
published articles from that institution over the last full year as a
benchmark. Our thinking is also that we will count every published article
as one, irrespective in which journal it is published, and do not
introduce a weighting according to the higher Article Processing Charges
for the few very selective journals. See that as a benefit of membership.
It is also an administrative simplification that allows us to keep
overheads as low as possible and as a consequence, the APCs as well. In
spite of ill-informed criticisms that what we charge must be too little to
make the operation sustainable, we know that we can do it if we reach a
certain scale. We are firmly on track to reach that requisite scale. We
even hope to be able to make the average charges lower, with time, if
economies of scale allow.

Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ann Okerson [mailto:ann.okerson@yale.edu]
> Sent: 03 February 2004 03:52
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth
> 
> 
> Jan:  Let me be a little clearer:  can you tell at this time whether 
> the higher costs of publishing such in BMC'smost selective journals -- 
> for example the Journal of Biology whose per-accepted article 
> fees will rise to $1500 per article -- will have the effect of raising 
> the institutional membership fees?
> 
> Thank you, Ann Okerson