Springer Science+Business Media has reached an agreement to acquire BioMed Central Group, the leading global open access publisher.
BioMed Central was launched in May 2000 as an independent publishing house committed to providing free access to peer-reviewed research in the biological and medical sciences. BMC is the largest open access provider in the world with over 180 peer-reviewed journals.
BioMed Central’s flagship journals include Journal of Biology, BMC Biology, BMC Medicine, Malaria Journal, BMC Bioinformatics and Genome Biology. BioMed Central has revenues of approximately EUR 15 million per year. The company is based in London, with a second office in Liverpool, and has approximately 150 employees.
Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media said: “This acquisition reinforces the fact that we see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade. We have gained considerable positive experience since starting Springer Open Choice in 2004, and BioMed Central’s activities are complementary to what we are doing. Additionally, this acquisition strengthens Springer’s position in the life sciences and biomedicine, and will allow us to offer societies a greater range of publishing options.”
Matthew Cockerill, Publisher of BioMed Central said: “We are very excited about this new phase of BioMed Central's growth and development. Springer has been notable among the major STM publishers for its willingness to experiment with open access publishing. BioMed Central has demonstrated that the open access business model can work, and we look forward to continued rapid growth as part of Springer. The support of our authors, journal editors and institutional customers has been vital to BioMed Central's success and we will continue to focus on offering the best possible service to these groups."
Peter Suber of Open Access News as more thoughts: Link
1 comment:
Glad that you picked up on Peter Suber's comments. Perhaps you should fire Vitek Trackz one of your 5 questions barrages. He is a very interesting publishing entrepreneur (is this his 5th or 6th sale of a grown business?) and he is also committed to the ideal of OA publishing. Very unusual for a publisher with his background close to the mainstream of STM. He may not be able to answer specific questions about the transaction but he would be able to tell you where he thinks OA publishing is now, and where it is going.
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