Press release: Dramatic rise in number of authors publishing in open access journals

["Grace Baynes" <Grace@biomedcentral.com>]

**Apologies for cross-posting**

PRESS RELEASE 1 November 2005

DRAMATIC RISE IN NUMBER OF AUTHORS PUBLISHING IN OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS,
INDEPENDENT STUDY FINDS

Twenty-nine percent of senior authors questioned say that they have
published in an open access journal, according to a new independent
survey. This is up eighteen percentage points compared to a similar
question asked in a study carried out in 2004 by the same researchers, a
two-and-a-half-fold increase in just twelve months. BioMed Central is
delighted that independent research is now available that confirms its own
experience of the continuing growth of open access publishing.

"New Journal Publishing Models: An International Survey of Senior
Researchers," was produced by CIBER, an independent publishing think tank
based at City University in London. The study, published in September
2005, is based on a survey of 5513 authors -- typically principal
investigators or research group leaders - who had published in an
ISI-indexed journal during 2004. It is the follow up to a previous CIBER
study conducted in 2004.

Ian Rowlands and Dave Nicholas, the authors of the report, found that "the
research community is now much more aware of the open access issue."  The
report authors write, "There has been a large rise in authors knowing
quite a lot about open access (up 10 percentage points from the 2004
figure) and a big fall in authors knowing nothing at all about open access
(down 25 points)."

Thirty percent of authors surveyed claimed to know a lot or quite a lot
about open access journals. This is up from 18% in the 2004 survey.
Altogether 81% of authors claim to have some awareness of open access, up
from 66% in 2004.

Rowlands and Nicholas found that, "Authors strongly believe that, as a
result of open access, articles will become more accessible." 75% of
authors surveyed agreed with the statement "High prices make it difficult
to access the journals literature."

The researchers also found that "senior authors and researchers believe
downloads to be a more credible measure of the usefulness of research than
traditional citations." Open access has been shown elsewhere to lead
higher downloads of articles. According to PNAS publisher Ken Fulton,
"PNAS Open Access articles receive 50% more full-text accesses and PDF
downloads than subscription-access articles in the first month after
publication and maintain higher usage in subsequent months." The average
research article published in BioMed Central's journals in the last year
has received more than 1100 accesses in the first 3 months following
publication, and BioMed Central recently introduced a "Highly accessed"
logo to identify those articles which have received a large number of
accesses for their age.

The CIBER report was commissioned by the Publishers Association and the
International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.
The full report is available from CIBER’s website at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ciber/ciber_2005_survey_final.pdf

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact:

Grace Baynes, BioMed Central
Tel: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
E-mail: press@biomedcentral.com

About BioMed Central

BioMed Central, part of Current Science Group, is an independent online
publishing house committed to providing open access to peer-reviewed
research. This commitment is based on the view that immediate free access
to research and the ability to freely archive and reuse published
information is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of
science.

####