BIROpen: open access meets flexibility

INTRODUCTION BY THE HONORARY EDITORS

In recent years, there has been a number of significant developments in the publishing world. Our publishing team has been working hard to ensure that the British Journal of Radiology (BJR) remains up to date and is able to offer our readers and authors all of the advantages that these changes bring.

The publication of the report by Dame Janet Finch in July 2012 heralded a change in the policy direction in the UK, supporting gold open access publishing.

In this guest editorial, our new Publisher Sophia Anderton and Publishing Editor Laura Harvey explain BIROpen, the BIR’s open access option, and how this will impact on the readers and authors of BJR.

BIROPEN: OPEN ACCESS MEETS FLEXIBILITY

During Open Access Week in October 2012, the British Institute of Radiology launched BIROpen (Figure 1), an open access option for authors of accepted articles in BJR and all other BIR published journals. BJR’s first open access article, “A survey of the practice and management of radiotherapy linear accelerator quality control in the UK” [1], was published in the November 2012 issue and was shortly followed by the BIR’s first open access book, “The safe use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis” [2] (Figure 2), which is freely available to download in e-book format (http://www.birjournals.org/site/books/ultrasound.xhtml). Since its launch, the e-book has been downloaded more than 1000 times, representing a huge success for the book and our open access initiative.

Figure 1.

BIROpen logo. BIROpen was launched during Open Access Week in October 2012.

Figure 2.

“The safe use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis” [2].

The BIR’s open access policy means that readers have freely available, easy access to research published under this model. It opens up research to readers, permitting them to read, download, copy, distribute, search or link to the work with unrestricted access.

BIROpen was launched because of the BIR’s commitment to the dissemination and reuse of research outputs; moreover, the design of BIROpen had our authors and their increasing need for flexibility in mind.

BIROpen is a gold open access model, meaning that once their papers are accepted, authors can choose to pay to publish their article on an open access basis. Alternatively, the traditional subscription model is still available, and authors can have their papers published free of charge behind the subscription pay wall.

More and more funding bodies are mandating that research published as a result of their support is made available to all via open access. From 1 April 2013, all research funded by Research Councils UK (RCUK, the body representing the UK’s seven research councils) must be published in journals that are compliant with the research councils’ open access policy [3].

BIROpen is fully compliant with these requirements as well as those of a wide range of international funders, including the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the European Commission.

To make it as easy as possible for our authors to comply with their funders’ mandates, BIROpen has two open access options that differ in their terms of reuse of the work:

• Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0) licence

• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 (CC BY-NC 3.0) licence.

Both options allow unrestricted access and non-commercial reuse of content, including modifications and allowing the work to be built upon with proper attribution. However, the first, CC BY 3.0, also allows for commercial reuse of content, with proper attribution.

BIROpen reflects BJR’s support of the open access movement as well as our authors’ and readers’ individual requirements. For more information on BIROpen and the process involved to have your paper published in this way, please see our website [4].