BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is now receiving submissions from some of the 28,000 scientists who signed the Public Library of Science (PloS) advocacy group's open letter, in which they agreed to boycott all journals which do not grant free access to their research content within six months of publication.
The Public Library of Science (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org) is a non-profit organization of scientists committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to both scientists and to the public.
These goals are also embraced by BioMed Central, which publishes over 60 online journals covering all areas of biology and medicine. Many scientists who signed the PloS open letter are now actively supporting open-access publishers like BioMed Central; Uta Franke from Stanford University, one of the hundreds of authors who submit their research to BioMed Central each month, comments:
"This is my first submission to BioMed Central and I am quite excited about it. As a signer of the PLoS open letter, I am taking seriously the commitment I made to support the goals of the PLoS movement"
There has been little in the way of response from the big scientific and medical publishers since the boycott was imposed on September 1st. One of the few publishers to comment is the CEO of Elsevier Science, Derk Haank, who believes there is no evidence of a boycott. However, this comment was made barely a week after the boycott began.
We welcome the actions of scientists like Uta Franke who vote with their submissions and eagerly await the real effect of the growing support for "open access" which is being demonstrated by the increasing number of scientists signing the PloS open letter.