Editor—The move to charge for access to bmj.com is sad.1 While I was not naive enough to believe that the BMJ would stay free forever, I had hoped that it would at least set a trend by keeping its open access policy and adopting an author pays model.
As a researcher I would be more than happy to spend money from my research grants to pay a fee for having an article processed by the BMJ. In closing the door and making the BMJ once again a subscription journal, the BMJ loses much of its appeal as the place for researchers to submit their high quality papers. At least for non-Britons, the high (international) visibility of articles published in the BMJ may have been the main motivation for submitting something there.
Researchers are interested in global impact, not in impact on BMA members alone. The BMJ—dubbed the “Better Medical Journal” by Richard Smith—becomes the “British Medical Journal” once more.
Competing interests: GE is editor and publisher of an open access journal (J Med Internet Res, www.jmir.org)
References
- 1.Delamothe T, Smith R. Paying for bmj.com BMJ 2003;327:241-2. (2 August.)