RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

Ann,

Three titles out of the 107 are charging $1000 per accepted article now.
They are BMC Medicine; BMC Biology; and GenomeBiology. The reason is that
they are more selective and thus more costly on a per-accepted-paper
basis. Apart from solid and credible science, the peer-reviewers must come
to the conclusion that articles for these journals are also significant
and of interest to a wider audience beyond that of a single subdiscipline
or specialism to be acceptable. In July we will start charging $1500 per
accepted article for Journal of Biology, our flagship journal, which is
selective to the degree that journals like Nature and Science are.

None of the research articles submitted to these, or any other, titles are
exempt from the memberships.

Best,

Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ann Okerson [mailto:aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu]
> Sent: 01 February 2004 15:55
> To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
> Subject: RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth
> 
> Jan:  excerpted below is an older message of yours from 1/19. It 
> suggests that among the 100 or so BMC open access titles there will soon 
> be at least some variation in submission fees from authors.  Do you 
> know enough yet to comment on how much variation there might be and 
> whether the higher-cost titles, which require more selection, will then 
> be exempt from the institutional membership or will there be additional 
> tiered institutional membership based on which journals (as well as 
> institutional characteristics) are involved or how might this work?  
> Thank you, Ann Okerson
> 
> On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Jan Velterop wrote:
> 
>>The difference here is not the "stringency" of peer review, but rather 
>>the level of selection. There is a clear and sensible argument 
>>that journals setting themselves a very high level of selectivity may 
>>have to charge more, as there is clearly a cost involved in refereeing a 
>>large number of papers that will not be published. However, there is 
>>also a need to have Open Access journals available for all 
>>scientifically sound papers irrespective of "impact", "prestige", or 
>>"importance".
>> 
>>As BioMed Central publishes many journals with different selection
>>criteria, we have to charge more for publishing papers in some journals
>>and less in others. The article processing charges for our Journals of
>>Biology (when they come into effect this summer) will in fact be at the
>>same level as those for PLoS Biology now. This, however, does not 
>>suggest that the refereeing in some of our other journals is less 
>>"stringent", but rather reflects the fact that some journals, such as 
>>the Journal of Biology, have to referee many more articles for each one 
>>they publish, and some need to referee proportionally fewer articles.