I’m currently at the  EC conference Access, Dissemination and Preservation in the Digital Age, which is quite an event, with more than 500 delegates. On day one, Robert Aymar from CERN, and Robert Kiley from the Wellcome Trust both talked about how their  organizations are working to ensure full open access to the results published by their researchers, through a combination of requiring deposit of research in an open access repository, alongside providing financial support for a transition by publishers from a subscription-based model to a fully open access model.

My own talk, on the theme ‘Open Access publishing works’ (download 3.4 MB PPT), presented data based on BioMed Central’s experience, demonstrating the viability of the open access model, in terms of quality, quantity and financial sustainability.