BioMed Central: The future Matthew Cockerill BioMed Central Editors’ Day 30 th May 2012

1. BioMed Central: The future Matthew Cockerill BioMed Central Editors’ Day 30th May 2012 Georgetown University, Washington DC

2. A busy Spring for Open Access • “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)

3. 22.5% 19.9%

4. News from the OA competition • 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

5. 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”

6. 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

7. Editor’s Day 2012 • More than 90,000125,000peer-reviewed OA articles published to date • 215236open 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 • >2030 journals will launch during 20112012 • Publishing team responsible for journal development has been hugely expanded

8. Staying ahead with technology

9. 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

10. What could we do better?

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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)

14. Some technical improvements which rolled out since last Editor’s Day

15. New platform – Dec 2011

16. Contact management

17. Improved tools for Section Editors and other editorial roles

18. 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

19. 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

20. Reviewers can submit reports without login!

21. DOCX/PPTX support

22. 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

23. MathJaX – high quality equations

26. What’s round the corner?

27. 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

28. Optimizing article display on mobile/touch devices

29. Optimized display on mobile

30. Pinch and zoom

31. Cases Database

32. 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

33. Video

34. 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

35. Manuscript transfer tools

36. 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

37. 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!

38. Open Data

39. Open Data Sponsored by

41. Article metrics

45. 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

46. Article impact award • Use article metrics to highlight the research with greatest ‘real world impact’ as part of next year’s research awards