Earlier this month, BioMed Central was acquired
by Springer Science+Business Media, the world’s second largest publisher of
Scientific, Technical and Medical journals. Springer is absolutely committed to
maintaining BioMed Central’s policy of full open access to all research, and
this acquisition is great news for open access, demonstrating that it is both a
financially viable publishing model and an increasingly important part of
mainstream scholarly publishing.

Springer is a natural home for BioMed Central, having long been among
the most forward-looking of the ‘traditional’ publishers. Springer launched its
Open Choice open access option back in 2004 and has continued to innovate in
this area.

The acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer was approved by BioMed
Central’s Board of
Trustees, who are charged with ensuring that any new owner of BioMed
Central commits to permanently retain BioMed Central’s policy of unconditional
open access to published research articles.

BioMed Central Limited will remain an autonomous operating unit within
Springer Science+Business Media and it is ‘business as usual’ for BioMed
Central staff and journals. All BioMed Central’s titles are included in
the acquisition, with the exception of Cases
and Journal of Medical Case Reports
which remain with Science Navigation Group. BioMed Central will continue to set
its own article processing charges and there are no plans to increase charges
as a result of the acquisition.

At BioMed Central, we are thrilled to have reached this important
milestone in the development of open access publishing, and others in the open
access movement have expressed
similar enthusiasm.
With the near simultaneous launch of the new Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association (of which BioMed Central is a
founder member) on the first annual Open
Access Day, this has truly been a momentous month for open access.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the authors, editors,
peer-reviewers, librarians who have made BioMed Central’s success possible. We
look forward to making the most of Springer’s global reach and resources to
improve our service and to help bring the benefits of open access publishing to
an ever wider community.

Matt
Cockerill
Publisher,
BioMed Central