Biology

In this section we have compiled information on Open Access (OA) in the biological sciences. If you have any comments or suggestions on this topic, please do not hesitate to send us an E-mail.

 

General information on Open Access in the biological sciences

Thanks to the activities of publishers of OA biological sciences journals and to several fact databases in the field of molecular biology and bioinformatics which are indispensable to research, OA is now firmly established in the biological sciences.

 

Promotion of Open Access by organisations and scientific societies

Because the biological sciences encompass diverse disciplines, there are many individual scientific societies. As a result of this fragmentation, these societies have not played a leading role in the debate on OA up to now. However, via its E-mailing list, the German Zoological Society called on its members to sign the Petition to the European Commission to support OA. And in a statement issued in July 2005 the German Federal Conference of Biology Faculties (Bundesfachschaftentagung Biologie) emphatically endorsed the OA principle.

Open Access publishers in the biological sciences

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit OA publisher which was co-founded in 2001 by the medicine Nobel Laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Harold Varmus with the aim of producing high-quality OA journals comparable with Science and Nature. The first journal, PLoS Biology, was launched in October 2003; PLoS Medicine followed in 2004. The impressive Impact Factors of these journals (for 2007, 13.5 and 12.6 respectively) are an indication of their high scientific quality. PLoS currently has a portfolio of seven journals, five of which are already covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI). While the two most recently launched journals are not yet indexed by SCI, they are, however, tracked by other indexing databases.

PLoS journals are financed in part by publication fees which range from $1,300 to $2,850 per article. Authors who are affiliated to one of PLoS' institutional members are eligible for a discount on this fee. In December 2002, PLoS received a grant of $9m in seed capital from the Moore Foundation to finance the launch of OA publishing operations.

BioMed Central, an independent British OA publisher established in 1998, has a portfolio of 189 OA journals (as of September 2008). Already 41 BioMed Central journals have an official Impact Factor, and, for 2007, unofficial Impact Factors have been calculated for 85 others. Like PLoS, BioMed Central's business model is based on article-processing charges (APCs). These range from $180 to $2,445 per article. If the submitting author's organisation is a full member of BioMed Central, the APC is generally covered by membership. In the case of supporter members, a discounted APC is payable. As of June 2008, the membership list featured some 319 institutions – mostly universities.

The Virtual Library of Biology vifabio, a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), went online at the end of March 2007. Like other virtual academic libraries, vifabio offers bundled access to both licensed and free resources which include library catalogues, selected Internet sources, electronic journals, databases and full-text documents. Vifabio's Internet Guide is a database which records and describes some 1,000 quality-controlled Internet sources from all fields of biology. These sources include over 400 online biological sciences databases. They can also be accessed directly – in many cases free of charge – via the menu item Databases. The vifabio website also provides detailed information on DFG-funded national licences, explaining how institutions and private individuals can access nationally-licensed resources such as biological sciences publications and databases.

Back to top

Open Access journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals features between 550 and 620 OA journals in the categories Biology and Life Sciences and Sciences. This figure far exceeds that for the STM subjects informatics or physics.

While in other fields OA journals with high Journal Impact Factors are quite rare, there is an impressive number of biological sciences journals with high and sometimes outstanding ratings.

Selection

The following journals are ranked by Journal Impact Factor compiled from the online edition of the Journal Citation Reports (Copyright 2008):

Further Open Access journals

Back to top

Subject-based repositories and databases

Repositories

To date, there are not many repositories for preprints and postprints in the biological sciences. The quantitative-biology section in the well-known preprint repository arXiv.org deserves special mention. It is divided into ten categories.

Databases

See also Open Access to data

Back to top

Member of the open-access.net Scientific Advisory Board from the biological sciences

 

Prof. Dr. Diethard Tautz - President of the German Zoological Society (DZG), Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Zoology

 

Other board members

Back to top