OPEN ACCESS

We are very pleased that this paper has received the citations it has, in part because in a small way it validates the open access publishing model." — James C. Carrington and Zhixin Xie, whose paper in PLoS Biology was picked as a Thompson-ISI "Fast Breaking Paper" (December 2005)

A Conversation with Three Open Access Publishers About the Challenges of Sustainability - SPARC/ALA 2007 Forum

Speakers included Mark Patterson, director of publishing for the Public Library of Science; Bryan Vickery, deputy publisher for BioMed Central and Editorial Director for Chemistry Central; and Paul Peters, director of business development for Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd., moderated the session. Podcasts and slides from the event are now available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07.

The new materials offer a deeper level of insight into the three publishers' business models and include:

  • Interviews (in podcast and written formats) with each executive exploring each organization's approach in detail.
  • A matrix comparison of the publishers' views on 11 aspects of maintaining their operations, including: the financial viability of the company; the basis for charging publication fees; new and traditional impact factors; and the role of institutional memberships in the business model.

These tools for campus outreach were produced for SPARC and ACRL by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd. and may be downloaded through http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07.