Velterop departs BMC to promote OA

Open Access champion Jan Velterop is leaving his role as a director and publisher at BioMed Central (BMC) to return to his roots as an independent consultant and advocate for open access publishing.

Velterop, who spent four years with BMC, told IWR that he wants greater independence because he was frustrated by the slow pace of open access (OA) adoption.

"The whole issue of open access is going too slowly, there are really only two publishers [BMC and PLoS] involved," he said. Velterop plans to target commercial and society publishers as well as funding bodies. "I think I have some good arguments for adopting OA."

Velterop said OA needs renewed energy and a new focus to speed up its adoption. "Originally, OA was confused by librarians as being about the drive for lower prices. I think the two have very little to do with each other, and the attention on prices has been to the detriment of OA adoption by society publishers."

Previous OA advocacy campaigns have targeted authors and librarians, but Velterop believes this was mistaken. "In their work as scientists the authors push the boundaries of knowledge, but when it comes to publishing they are conservative."

He believes research funding bodies are happy to pay a "reasonable price" for open access publication. Velterop cites Springer Open Choice as the best OA model, "but they don't really present the model to authors so they don't know about it."

BioMed Central, meanwhile, maintained that Velterop's departure was a purely personal decision. Technical director Matthew Cockerill has been promoted to director of operations, and he will run the business alongside Anne Greenwood, MD of parent company the Current Science Group.

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