Abstract

The last fifteen years have seen huge changes in scientific publishing. The traditional method of selling subscriptions to print journals is slowly being replaced by online open access publishing, whereby research articles can be read and downloaded for free.

Open access provides maximum visibility for authors, allows taxpayers to read the research that they pay for and encourages research in emerging economies. The switch to open access is not without controversy, with opposition from some scientific publishers, some learned societies and in some subject areas, where there may be insufficient funds for the Article Processing Charges levied on authors at open access journals.

This talk will cover the history of open access publishing, its strengths and weaknesses and some recent developments in online publishing and open data, from the perspective of BioMed Central, the world’s first open access publisher.