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Improving our support for Editors-in-Chief:

What we have done, what we are doing, and what we are planning

Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director, BioMed Central

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What I will cover• A brief history• The growth of open access: opportunities

and challenges• How BioMed Central is responding to the

challenges• Support for Editors-in-Chief:

– progress so far– current activities– plans for the future

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A brief history of BioMed Central

• Launched first open access journal in 2000

• Now publishes 215 OA titles• >90,000 peer-reviewed OA articles

published • All research articles published under

Creative Commons licence• Costs covered by 'article processing

charge' (APC)

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Open Access publishing is growing fast

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Open access in 2011

• Nearly 6500 open access journals in the DOAJ

• Submissions to open access journals grew by

over 44% between 2008 and 2009

• Over 1000 open access journals are indexed

by Thomson Reuters

• Open access to research is now mandated in

over 110 institutions and by nearly 50 funders

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BMC

Copernicus

PLoS

HindawiSpringerOpen Choice

Growth in OA 2000 - 2010

Presented by Mark Patterson, PLoS, at the SOAP Symposium, Berlin, January 2011

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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BioMed Central submissions

2411589 1683

3349

6894

10793

15145

17950

22957

29465

35602

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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The challenges and opportunities of the growth of OA

• Increasing numbers of– authors are choosing to publish their articles in open access

journals– journal editors are choosing to start journals in or move their

existing journals to an open access model– publishers and societies are launching OA journals– funders are requiring the results of the research they fund to

be published open access

• In order to remain the leading open access publisher, BioMed Central needs to continue to deliver excellent service to authors, reviewers and editors and we need to remain competitive with respect to all the other Open Access players

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Organising for growth

Matt CockerillManaging Director

Bev AcremanCommercial Director

Customer Services, Marketing, PR,

Sales

Deborah KahnPublishing DirectorEditorial, Journal

Development, Journal

Acquisitions, Data and Database

Publishing

Bryan VickeryChief Operating

OfficerJEO, Editorial Production, Production,

Supplements, Web Management, OR

Mike Nuttall,Chief Technical Officer

IT Operations, IT Development

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Organising for growth

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 20110

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

number of BMC staff

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Organising for growth• Creation of the Journal Development Editor

roleTo provide a single regular internal contact to support

Editors-in-Chief with journal development and general issues with their journals

• Outsourcing of the Journal Editorial OfficeTo support the growing need for editorial administration

support• Reorganisation of Editorial Production and

Production processesTo reduce the number of stages in the post acceptance

process, and to reduce time to publication

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Investing in the journal platform and editorial

tools• The new journals platform provides us with an

updated design and a much more flexible infrastructure– paving the way for journal-specific requirements,

such as customisable Instructions for Authors• Once this is complete we will be updating our

editorial tools – to allow for many features which were previously not

possible• Reviewer database

– Currently being tested before rollout

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Improving communications with

Editors-in-Chief• In addition to the establishment of

the Journal Development Group, we have– Instituted the Annual Editors

Conference– Implemented a LinkedIn group for

Editors-in-Chief– Continued to improve our quarterly

Editors newsletter

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Monitoring author satisfaction

• Authors are surveyed twice– after submission and after publication

• They are asked their opinions on – Speed of peer review, post acceptance and overall

speed of publication– Responsiveness and helpfulness of staff– Whether they would recommend the journal to a

colleague, or publish again• We closely monitor their responses, and act on

their suggestions on how we can improve.

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Author Satisfaction – Independent journals

Q1-09 Q2-09 Q3-09 Q4-09 Q1-10 Q2-10 Q3-10 Q4-10 Q1-112

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Speed of Peer ReviewResponsiveness

1 = very poor, 2 = poor, 3 = neutral, 4 = good, 5 = very good

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Keeping our APCs competitive

Publisher APC ($ USD)

BioMed Central 960-2545

Public Library of Science 1350-2900

Springer Open 1065-1730

Wiley Open 1850 - 2500

BMJ Open 1900

Oxford Open 3000

Elsevier 3000-5000

Nature Communications 5000

http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apccomparison/

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Editors’ feedback• Further improvements to communication • Editorial tools/reviewer database• Customisable Instructions for Authors• New features/processes• Faster turnaround times• Acceptance dates• Impact factors• Plagiarism checking• Google Adverts

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Plans: Further improvements to communication

• Establish an Editors Advisory Board• Implement a Senior Contact

Network• Enhance the usefulness of the

Editors newsletter• Undertake an annual editor

satisfaction survey

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Plans: System and process improvements

• Complete the rollout to the new journals platform

• Implement reviewer database• Start work on new editorial tools• Complete production process

improvements• Implement customisable I4A

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Plans: other

• Implement acceptance and publication dates

• Plagiarism checking• Google ads

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In summary• Open access is growing rapidly and at BioMed

Central we have been working hard to ensure that we have the people, technology and processes in place to ensure that we remain the leading open access publisher.

• Over the past year, we have been able to provide more support to Editors-in-Chief than in the past.

• We now have the building blocks in place to significantly enhance this support, so that we can work together with you to ensure that the journals meet their potential.