19 December 2001
Biomed Central adopts processing charge for articles
BioMed Central will introduce a processing charge for articles published in its online journals beginning on January 1 2002.
The decision to introduce processing charges is apparently the result of a consultation process across the scientific community and with representatives of key funding bodies.
Within the scientific community, there was widespread (although not universal) agreement with the premise that processing charges are the best way to help pay for the cost of maintaining free access to scientific papers.
BioMed Central's business model attempts to address the concern within the scientific community that subscription charges are strangling
the communication of scientific research. This concern is clearly demonstrated by the more than 28,000 signatories to the Public Library of
Science open letter ( http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org ),
the establishment of the PubMed Central archive of freely accessible research ( http://www.pubmedcentral.gov ),
and the more than 1000 submissions to BioMed Central's open access journals over the past year.
BioMed Central believes that the payment of a small processing charge in return for immediate and permanent free access to published research
will become a widely accepted and standard part of science funding policy. Preliminary discussions
with funding bodies and research institutions suggest that payment of processing charges from research grants and infrastructure funding will be
allowed. With this in mind, it has been decided that from January 1 2002 there will be a US$500 processing charge for any article accepted for publication in BMC journals.
Not all authors will be required to pay for the processing of their research articles; BioMed Central will waive the article processing charges for authors in developing countries and in cases
of genuine hardship.
www.biomedcentral.com/info/newjournals.asp
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