[ Reply to Albert Henderson on thread:
"Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2633.html ]
The nice thing about input-paid open access as practised by BioMed Central
is that the juxtaposition of universities (the bureaucracy, in Henderson's
terms) and sponsors of research (the faculty acc. to H.) disappears. This
open access publishing model is beneficial for universities looking for cost
reductions as well as for sponsors of research looking for better
dissemination of the research results. In fact, for both it offers dramatic
improvements. According to preliminary figures from David Goodman for
Stanford alone, the savings, if all articles were published in the kind of
open access publishing model BMC uses, would amount to more than 7 million
dollars every year. And for the researchers publishing in our open access
journals it means download figures of hundreds, sometimes thousands per
month, and rising; figures that leave traditional journals far behind.
Jan Velterop
