Springer Publishing to acquire BioMedCentral

October 9, 2008 | 6:04 am

“Springer to acquire BioMedCentral.” Those of us in physics may well wonder what this headline has to do with us. “BioMed” is not usually associated with high-energy physics (HEP), and Springer is, to most physicists, a big publisher that we occasionally deal with when submitting to Eur.Phys.J. or similar journals.

However, it is worth remembering that BioMedCentral (BMC) has a physics journal as well. The recently launched PhysMathCentral (an arm of BMC) journal PMC Physics A is an exciting new Open Access journal in HEP, so the sale does affect physics literature. I certainly hope that PhysMathCentral will continue to be a leading Open Access journal in the field, paving the way for broader Open Access in the future of HEP publishing. BMC has, since its founding in 2000, been a leader in Open Access, becoming the world’s first for-profit Open Access publisher and the world’s largest Open Access publisher of any kind. In light of this, Springer’s acquisition carries with it some interesting questions.

Will Springer begin to adopt BMC’s commitment to Open Access?

Will BMC’s fees and policies begin to line up with Springer’s (and will this be good or bad for access)?

Is it a sign that Open Access is truly a mainstream business model for the publishing world?

We can glean a little bit of insight from the press release from Springer:

Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media said: “This acquisition reinforces the fact that we see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade.”

While we’ll probably have to wait and see for the answers to the questions above, this statement goes some ways towards answering the last of them, at least from Springer’s point of view.

Travis Brooks
Posted in SPIRES |

One Response to “Springer Publishing to acquire BioMedCentral”

  1. Chris Leonard Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    Hi Travis,

    Thanks for flagging this up for the HEP community. I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can - but these are personal opinions at the moment.

    >>Will Springer begin to adopt BMC’s commitment to Open Access?

    I don’t know about rolling out the BMC/PhysMath Central business model to their existing journals, but it’s worth bearing in mind that Springer have been one of the more adventurous of the bigger publishers when it comes to open access. Their Open Choice model was quickly adapted and adopted by others and they had - until recently - a director of open access in Jan Velterop. So I imagine they will be looking closely at the feasibility of switching OA, but I suspect it won’t happen in the immediate future.

    >>Will BMC’s fees and policies begin to line up with Springer’s (and will this be good or bad for access)?

    Can’t say yet, but we would like to remain at the levels we are at the levels we are (or thereabouts) for our article procesing charges.

    >>Is it a sign that Open Access is truly a mainstream business model for the publishing world?

    Yes: the fact that this has happened primarily for commercial reasons answers that!

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