BioMedCentral Membership Expires on April 1st
Effective April 1, 2007, the contract between SUNY and BioMedCentral (BMC) will expire. The contract was negotiated by the SUNY Council on Access and Collections (SCAC), and supported by a two-year grant from the Joint Labor/Management Committee of United University Professions, the Governor's Office of Employee Relations, and a subsidy from the SUNY University and Health Science Center Libraries. The contract enrolled all SUNY four-year colleges, and university and health science centers as BMC members. During the membership period which ran from April 2005 to March 2007, SUNY faculty and researchers were entitled to submit an unlimited number of research papers to BMC open access journals without incurring article processing fees. Instead, the cost was covered by a $12,500 per year membership fee.
Forty-five articles were published under these terms yielding a cost per article of approximately $555.00.
The contract was not renewed because a change in the pricing model used by BMC would lead to significantly higher costs (over $1200 per article) without any benefits for a consortial arrangement. Individual institutions that wish to renew their memberships should contact BMC directly.
For information about the BMC's new pricing model, see: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/libraries/membership.