Velterop in surprise move to Springer

Jan Velterop leaves his independence behind to join Springer as OA advocate

Open access champion Jan Velterop is joining scientific, technical and medical publisher Springer, despite announcing in May that he was leaving BioMed Central to become an "independent" advocate of open access publishing. Springer has created a new position Director of Open Access for Velterop.

"The appointment of Jan Velterop creates an internal champion for this second component of our publishing policy, making sure Open Access gets the required attention both internally and externally," said Derk Haank, Springer CEO.

Velterop left open access (OA) publisher BioMed Central in May 2005 after four years as a publisher, he told IWR that he wanted greater independence because he was frustrated with the slow pace of OA adoption.

As an independent consultant Velterop said he was planning on targeting funding bodies as well as commercial and society publishers as potential adopters of OA. He told IWR that the Open Choice OA scheme launched by Springer in July 2004 was a good model, but criticised the low awareness of the scheme.

Although Velterop's role will be to champion open access within Springer and to Springer authors, the German publisher is adamant that the traditional reader pays model is still a stalwart of its business. "Open Choice is an additional publishing model," a spokesperson said. Authors can pay Springer $3,000 to make their research articles freely available on the internet.