Re: Does BMC's business model conflict with Editorial Independence?

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <sally.morris@alpsp.org>]

The fact that the editors' original complaint seemed to be that 
they were not able to waive publication fees as often as they 
would like would seem to bear out Matt's view of their editorial 
integrity

Sally

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Email:  sally.morris@alpsp.org

----- Original Message -----
From: <matt@biomedcentral.com>
To: <pmd8@cornell.edu>; <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 1:16 AM
Subject: RE: Does BMC's business model conflict with Editorial Independence?

> Phil,
>
> The concerns that you express ignore the core function of
> journals, which is to convey an authoritative stamp of editorial
> approval on research.
>
> Neither BioMed Central's editors, nor BioMed Central, nor Public
> Library of Science, nor any other open access journal publisher,
> would advance their own interests by accepting articles
> regardless of quality, since journals which cannot convey a
> meaningful stamp of editorial approval will not attract
> submissions.
>
> To take just one example, the BioMed Central journal which
> publishes the *most* articles, 'BMC Bioinformatics', also has the
> highest impact factor of any BioMed Central journal. More
> generally, the number of publications in each of our journals is
> strongly positively correlated with impact factor.  So the idea
> that somehow quality and quantity tug in opposite directions is
> misguided. Having a reputation for quality attracts more papers.
>
> Matt
>
> > The editorial remuneration practices of BMC do not give me
> > assurances that BMC editors are fair and honest arbitrators of their
> > editorial responsibilities.
> >
> > --Phil Davis