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BioMed Central: The future
Matthew CockerillBioMed Central Editors’ Day
30th May 2012
Georgetown University, Washington DC
• “Academic Spring” has kept open access in the news
• David Willetts (UK Science Minister), voiced strong support for OA , and announced involvement of Jimmy Wales in policy development
• UK’s Finch working group into scholarly communication due to deliver report imminently
• Whitehouse.gov petition opened last week seeking 25,000 signatories (now at 19,000)
• Horizon 2020 - €80bn EU research funding program to extend pilot OA program from FP7 to cover all projects
• World Bank announced strategic program to deliver open access to all its published output
• Wellcome Trust is planning to introduce sanctions to increase 55% compliance rate with its OA policy
• RCUK and Wellcome plan to require grantees to make deposited research openly licensed (Creative Commons)
A busy Spring for Open Access
2008 2009 2010 2011 20120
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
Comparison of YTD manuscript submissions to BioMed Central journals (Jan 1-May 17)
22.5%
19.9%
• Two high profile departures from PLoS (Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing and Pete Binfield, Publisher, PLoS One)
eLife – high-end OA journal backed by Wellcome, Max Planck and HHMI, to launch later this year. Has hired Mark Patterson from PLoS as Managing Executive Editor, and more recently Ian Mulvany from Mendeley as Head of Technology
PeerJ – mysterious new OA startup involving Peter Binfield
News from the OA competition
A sign of changing times
Question to Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature, at a recent panel session:
“Do you expect Open Access to dominate biomedical publishing in the future?”Answer:
“In a word, yes”
Editor’s Day 2011
More than 90,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published to date
215 open access journals Existing titles are growing ~20%/year Growth via new launches and acquisition
of existing titles is also accelerating 11 titles added in 2010 >20 journals will launch during 2011 Publishing team responsible for journal
development has been hugely expanded
Editor’s Day 2012 More than 90,000 125,000 peer-reviewed
OA articles published to date 215 236 open access journals Existing titles are growing ~20%/year Growth via new launches and acquisition
of existing titles is also accelerating 11 titles added in 2010 >20 30 journals will launch during 2011
2012 Publishing team responsible for journal
development has been hugely expanded
Staying ahead with technology
Increased development resources
Additional development team at Springer’s location in Pune, India
Approximately doubles total size of development team
Close collaboration with London team on both projects and fixes
What could we do better?
Performance of editor tools
Has not been what is should be - a particular problem for some journals
Need to prevent inefficient code slipping through
What are we doing about it? Fixing existing performance problems Improved monitoring of performance of tools, as
seen by editors Trend monitoring of test servers so degradation of
performance is fixed before it goes live
Production process Moving to a Springer’s main supplier (SPi) for
production services ongoing since March Transition has not been as smooth as we would
have liked: capacity-planning issues with supplier, and some technical delays
This has led to buildup of articles awaiting publication and/or final version
What are we doing about it? Accelerated delivery of new production tools
which improve efficiency Additional staffing at SPi and BioMed Central
Long term benefits of new production process
Greater scalability as we grow Quicker initial publication of author version Support for “final form first” where needed Fewer rounds of corrections for authors,
most fixes done by vendor Support for embargoed publication Multiple vendors (including specialists
focused on Math/TeX)
Some technical improvements which rolled out since last
Editor’s Day
New platform – Dec 2011
Contact management
Improved tools for Section Editors and other editorial roles
Editorial role improvements
Assign more than one editor to a single manuscript within specified roles e.g. Lead Guest Editor and Guest Editor, Managing Editor and Associate Editor
Additional information regarding available editors when assigning MS– Affiliation– Journal specific keywords– Editor’s current manuscript load
Increased flexibility in signatures, multiple variables can be used in each template, rather than just ‘Journal signature’ or ‘Editor signature’
Increased flexibility with which roles receive copies of which email notifications
Additional flexibility for ‘editorial models’
Customization of how peer review status is displayed to authors, in “My Manuscripts”
Custom email templates for each type of manuscripts reassignment
e.g. a custom template for when a Section Editor assigns an Associate Editor
A different template for when an EiC assigns a Guest Editor
Reviewers can submit reports without login!
DOCX/PPTX support
Tables
We now have full support for complex table formatting (CALS)
No more authors complaining that they can’t have vertical lines or colored cells
MathJaX – high quality equations
What’s round the corner?
Transition to Linux
Open source More robust, secure and reliable Better performance and scalability Easier to roll out to ‘The Cloud’ Now in final testing Rollout in later June/ early July Should be invisible to users
Optimizing article display on mobile/touch devices
Optimized display on mobile
Pinch and zoom
Cases Database
About Cases Database Good example of reuse enabled by open access Aggregating large numbers of case reports adds
value Test case for TEMIS semantic-tagging
technologies (which have potential wider use) Encourages further case report submissions If you receive a case report outside your journal’s
scope, offer authors transfer to Journal of Medical Case Reports or BMC Research Notes!
Public launch in September Link to demo
Video
Better integration of video
We already generate thumbnails and embed videos natively via Quicktime
New surgical video case report project will have benefits for all journals
We will convert all videos into standard YouTube/iPhone compatible form, so will work on all platforms with no plug-ins
Manuscript transfer tools
Manuscript transfer tools
Avoiding wasting reviewers’ and authors’ time
Solves dilemma for Editors seeking to improve Impact Factor of journal
Allows publishable research to be redirected to a more suitable outlet
Transfer possible pre- or post- review It went live yesterday, and is about to be
piloted by a few “guinea pig” journals
Workflow 2.0
Major improvements to the back end tools used by BioMed Central and its editors to manage peer review
Production phase now in active real-world use
Editorial tools are next!
Open Data
Open Data
Sponsored by
Article metrics
Further metrics on the way
Full graphing of access stats, including PubMed Central
Comprehensive harvesting of blogs, tweets and media mentions
Article level citation counts from WoS, Scopus, Google Scholar, Crossref, PubMed Central
Sign up for alerts when cited
Article impact award
Use article metrics to highlight the research with greatest ‘real world impact’ as part of next year’s research awards
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