The 6th annual open access week is upon us, and one of the topics of particular interest to BMC Medicine is how open access (OA) publishing has been developing over the last decade.

The growth of OA journals is apparent to anyone following scholarly publishing, and much speculation has focused around the citation rates and overall quality of articles published in OA journals. In July, research published in BMC Medicine by Bo-Christer Björk and David Solomon showed that the scientific impact of articles published in OA and subscription journals are similar when journal discipline, location of publisher and age of publication are compared, which is particularly true in medicine and health, where OA journals founded in the last 10 years receive on average as many citations as subscription journals launched during the same time.

Further research by Bo-Christer Björk and Mikael Laakso from HANKEN School of Economics, published today in BMC Medicine measured the volume of scientific articles published in full immediate OA journals during 2000-2011. The authors found that OA journal publishing has rapidly grown in relative annual share of published journal articles during the last decade. During 2011 a total of 340,000 articles were published by 6713 full immediate OA journals, compared to 20,700 articles published in 744 full immediate OA journals in the year 2000. In addition, the market share of OA journals is now 12% (or 17% if journals making their articles open within a year are included).

So what are your views on open access publishing? For a chance to have your say, join BMC Medicine (@BMCMedicine), Mikael Laakso (@mikaellaakso) and Bo-Christer Björk (@bjorkbobi) for a one hour twitter chat on 26th October at 12pm UK time. The twitter chat will use the hashtag #BMCMed, and be moderated from the @BMCMedicine account.

The questions we’ll be asking during the chat are:

Q1 – What are the main factors that have led to the steady growth of OA publishing?
Q2 – How do you think this trend will develop over the next decade, and explain why?
Q3 – What challenges does the growth of OA publishing face in ensuring that it reaches its full potential?
Q4 – Where will the funding for OA publishing come from?
Q5 – Do subscription journals offer benefits that OA journals do not?

Please join us to share your views on these topics, and use the hashtag #BMCMed
in all tweets. If your question or comment is directed at a specific individual, include their @name at the start of your tweet.

We look forward to your participation! If you’re unable to join us for the chat, please feel free to tweet your comments to @BMCMedicine with the #BMCMed hashtag beforehand. An edited summary of the twitter chat will be published at Storify soon after the session.