RE: BioMed Central/SPARC Press release

[Rick Johnson <rick@arl.org>]

It may be helpful to mention that SPARC's written understanding with
independently owned BioMed Central contains a promise by BMC to "ensure
that its commitment to open access remains in effect in perpetuity,
irrespective of the BMC's status as a corporate entity.  BMC's commitment
to open access precludes it from selling its assets to any publisher that
does not share its commitment to keeping all the BMC open access journals
available both retrospectively and prospectively."

Additionally, as part of our announcement, Vitek Tracz stated, "SPARC
members and affiliates can remain confident that BioMed Central's
permanent commitment to open access will ensure that all BMC journals will
remain available both retrospectively and prospectively in all
eventualities, including any future changes in ownership."

Because BMC is a large-scale, visible, and innovative experiment in open
access, SPARC concluded it should do its part to give BMC a shot at
succeeding. I think BMC is a useful vehicle for exploring whether/how
private investment, if directed at business models with the potential to
lower systemic costs, can play a role in finding scholarly communication
solutions. Of course, no one can yet guarantee initiatives such as BMC
will indeed lower costs, or even that they can obtain broad support. But
unless we deploy experiments such as BMC we'll never know. If BMC and
other open access experiments demonstrate successful models, then perhaps
societies will adopt these in order to enhance their own role in the
marketplace.

Rick Johnson
SPARC


>BioMedNet is owned by Elsevier. It was started by Vitek Tracz. Mr. Tracz
>is the same individual that started BioMed Central, which I do not believe
>is owned by Elsevier.
>
>Cara S. Kaufman
>Partner, Kaufman-Wills Group, LLC
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