RE: BMC model changes

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Paradoxically, this is the result of the great success of BMC. At the
beginning, when very few papers a year were published from the major
universities, they could support themselves with a combination of
pseudo-subscriptions and page charges.

But as more and more good papers from good places were published in BMC
journals, the arithmetic obviously no longer worked. I cannot imagine that
Jan and the others did not see this from the beginning.  Perhaps it would
have have been better if BMC had announced from the first that their
pricing was a temporary measure to attract papers, and that the relative
amounts would have to change when the journals became nearer to
equilibrium.

Personally, I have from the first disliked all hybrid models, whether they
are like BMC or PLoS, or OA by the article like Springer or PNAS.  Every
aspect of the existing journal system is already overcomplicated, Perhaps
we should be trying to make it simpler.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of ALBERT@hslc.org
Sent: Fri 10/7/2005 6:37 PM
To: LIBLICENSE-L@lists.yale.edu
Subject: BMC model changes
 
Has anyone noticed that BMC no longer offers an institutional membership
that picks up the article processing fees for authors from that
institution? They are mimicking more of a PLoS model, by offering
supporting memberships that provide a 15% discount on author fees or a
pre-paid membership that includes processing fees paid up front (which
slightly higher discounts, I think) and deducted as they are assessed
throughout the year. I believe this speaks volumes about the question of
the original model's economic sustainability.  In other words, BMC's
original fee plan did not provide sufficient funds for handling the
necessary peer review and publication costs. What do others think? The new
membership plans are described here:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/membership

(I did just notice that new members can join through the end of the year,
using the old institutional membership model- but existing members must
renew using one of the new plans).

Karen Albert, MLS, AHIP
Director of Library Services
Fox Chase Cancer Center
Phila., PA 19111
albert@hslc.org