Part of my own internal confusion was equating open access with not-for-profit publishing ventures. I’ve expanded on these thoughts in a posting on DLTJ this morning called “What Is BioMed Central?“.

Thank you for prompting this conversation.

If BMC’s model were to truly scale effectively and represent real costs, the more manuscripts would represent a lower cost per article

Ah, I see your point (though I think that more ms submissions means higher costs to the publisher, too, so cost/article would only drop as economies of scale came into play and could be passed on to consumers).

I have never objected to for-profit publishing per se, but average profit margins of 25% and a rate of serials price increase around three times the CPI increase start to make me suspect I’m being ripped off.

So you’re right, it’s worth remembering that BMC is a business, and I’d be curious to know what their profit margin is.

On the other hand, what numbers I can find indicate that the academic community could support commercial OA publishers at no greater expense than the traditional model, and perhaps significant savings, while gaining the considerable benefits of OA. Hence my defense of BMC.

I linked to your post because I believe it shows how BMC is exhibiting values more characteristic of a business and less like an academic institution. In particular, I would point to this paragraph:

The increased cost arises because Yale researchers are submitting more and more work to BMC journals. More manuscripts = higher costs, but if the cost per article has not gone up, then BMC’s model scales effectively.

If BMC’s model were to truly scale effectively and represent real costs, the more manuscripts would represent a lower cost per article as the fixed costs of the publishing activity are spread out over more articles. That they do not (and in their blog posting suggest other ways of covering the costs) would seem to hint at some other variable hidden from public view. In the business arena, that might be called a “profit margin” — in this case, I don’t know what to call it, but it does seem to exist.

It is not my intention to suggest that open access models are wrong — quite to the contrary, I’m an open access proponent. I do suggest, however, that BMC’s model may be more in line with traditional business values than traditional academic values, and that is something to be aware of as a academic community so we are not surprised by it later down the line. (Or that we work collectively to change the underlying values.)