<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252">
<style type="text/css" style="display:none;"> P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;} </style>
</head>
<body dir="ltr">
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</div>
<h2 style="margin: 13pt 0cm; line-height: 173%; break-after: avoid; font-size: 16pt; font-family: "Calibri Light", sans-serif;margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<a><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BioMedCentral (BMC) 2019 – 2020</span></a></h2>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal;"><i style="line-height: normal;">by Anqi Shi & Heather Morrison</i></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal;"><b style="line-height: normal;">Key points</b></span></p>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0cm">
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Open access commercial publishing pioneer BMC is now wholly owned by a private company with a portfolio including lines of business that derive revenue from journal subscriptions,
book sales, and textbook sales and rentals</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Two former BMC fully OA journals, listed in DOAJ from 2014 – 2018 as having CC-BY licenses, are now hybrid and listed on the Springer website and have disappeared from the BMC website</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">67% of BMC journals with APCs in 2019 and 2020 increased in price and 11% decreased in price.
</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Journals with price increases had a higher average APC in 2019, i.e. more expensive journals appear to be more likely to increase in price</span></li></ul>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;margin-top:0cm;margin-right:3.0pt;margin-bottom:0cm;
margin-left:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">
<b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:
Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;margin-top:0cm;margin-right:3.0pt;margin-bottom:0cm;
margin-left:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Abstract</span></b></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;margin-top:0cm;margin-right:3.1pt;margin-bottom:0cm;
margin-left:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination:none;
mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family:
Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal;">Founded in 2000, BioMedCentral (BMC) was one of the first commercial (OA) publishers and a pioneer of the article processing charges (APC) business model. BMC was
acquired by Springer in 2008. In 2015, Springer was acquired by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group in 2015 and became part of SpringerNature. In other words, BMC began as an OA publisher and is now one of the imprints or business lines of a company whose other
lines of business include sales of journal subscriptions and scholarly books and textbook sales and rentals. Of the 328 journals actively published by BMC in 2020, 91% charge APCs. The average APC was 2,271 USD, an increase of 3% over 2019. An overall small
increase in average APC masks substantial changes at the individual journal level. As first noted by Wheatley (2016), BMC price changes from one year to the next are a mix of increases, decreases, and retention of the same price. In 2020, 67% of the 287 journals
for which we have pricing in USD for both 2019 and 2020 increased in price; 11% decreased in price, and 22% did not change price. It appears that it is the more expensive journals that are more likely to increase in price. The average 2019 price of the journals
that increased in 2020 was 2,307 USD, 18% higher than the 2019 average of 1,948 USD for journals that decreased in price. 173 journals increased in price by 4% or more, well above the inflation rate. 39 journals increased in price by 10% or more; 13 journals
increased in price by 20% or more. Also in 2020, there are 11 new journals, 11 journals ceased publication, 5 titles were transferred to other publishers, 2 journals changed from no publication fee to having an APC, and 3 journals dropped their APCs. Two journals
formerly published fully OA by BMC are no longer listed on the BMC website, but are now listed as hybrid on the Springer website. This is a small portion of the total but is worth noting as the opposite direction of the transformative (from subscriptions to
OA) officially embraced by SpringerNature. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal;">For links to the full PDF and data:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">
</p>
<a href="https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/06/08/biomedcentral-2020/" id="LPNoLP920839"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/06/08/biomedcentral-2020/</span></a>
<div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 107%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cite as: Shi, A. & Morrison, H. (2020). BioMedCentral 2020.
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Sustaining the Knowledge Commons</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17); background: white; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin;color:#111111;background:white"><a href="https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/06/08/biomedcentral-2020/"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/06/08/biomedcentral-2020/</span></a></span></p>
<br>
</div>
<div id="Signature">
<div>
<div></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<div></div>
<div id="divtagdefaultwrapper" dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt; color:#000000; font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dr. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Heather Morrison</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cross-appointed, Department of Communication</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa</span><br>
</p>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"></p>
<span id="ms-rterangepaste-start"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:16px">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:16px">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">sustainingknowledgecommons.org</span></p>
<span id="ms-rterangepaste-end"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Heather.Morrison@uottawa.ca</span><br>
</p>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><a href="https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706" class="OWAAutoLink"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706</span></a></p>
<p style="margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>