Molecular Biosciences Virtual Library

Why We Don't Have Access to (Part of) Genome Biology

BioMedCentral ("The Open Access Publisher") is probably familiar to most of you, as they have established several promising "open access" journals in the biosciences over the last couple years. Genome Biology is emerging as one of BMC's more prominent open access titles.

Except that this journal isn't open access. At least, not all of it.

While marketing itself as an open access publisher, BMC chose to considerably muddy the publishing-model waters in its creation of several titles like Genome Biology, publishing these partly under an "author pays, open access" model, and partly under a subscription-based model. In particular, review articles are only available by subscription to the journal.

In past years, this was not a completely unworkable issue, because the print version of the journal was available by subscription for a few hundred dollars. We could readily justify paying a few hundred dollars to get this access to the review articles. Unfortunately, as of 2006, Genome Biology is no longer being published in print, and an online subscription for an institution our size is approximately $2800.

Genome Biology published 6 review articles and 28 minireviews in 2005. At $2800, a subscription would cost us $82 per article. (There is other "subscription-only" material in Genome Biology -- meeting reports and the like -- but it is not the kind of literature that many researchers are primarily interested in, or that we would pay a premium for.)

Compare $82/article to four top (by impact factor) genetics review journals: Nature Reviews Genetics is listed at approximately $40/article, Trends in Genetics at $14/article, Current Opinion in Genetics and Development at $13/article, and Annual Review of Genetics $8, for an average of $19/article.

The pricing of Genome Biology is clearly out of step. Frankly, $2800 wouldn't be so out of line, if we were purchasing the whole journal (primary research as well as review articles) by subscription. But the primary research articles in Genome Biology are published in the open access model, and the U of M Libraries already support BioMedCentral's open access publishing to the tune of $10,000. Beyond the financial consideration though, there just seems something disingenuous about a heavily marketing a journal under the idealized "open access" model, when the journal is only partly open. It seems that Genome Biology is trying to have its cake and eat it too.

We will certainly keep looking at the status and track record of this journal. If Genome Biology decreases its price, or markedly increases the amount of review content for the current price, such that it is in line with other review journals, we'll certainly look at subscribing again. Otherwise, unless it becomes apparent that Genome Biology is an indispensible research tool even at its hyperinflated price point, we will unfortunately be unable to deliver this title.

1. Cost/article figures taken from the Journal Cost-Effectiveness Search website: