"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.
