British Medical Journal (BMJ), published by medical publisher BMJ Group, UK, has announced that after 10 years of providing free access to its peer reviewed research online, it is now officially an open access (OA) journal. The announcement was made on the first international Open Access Day on October 14.
In 1998, the BMJ became the first major general medical journal to provide free full text online access to its research articles; to deposit the full text in PubMed Central; and to allow authors to retain the copyright of their articles. Since then, the BMJ Group has introduced BMJ Unlocked (http://adc.bmj.com/info/unlocked.dtl), which allows authors who submit research to 19 BMJ specialist journals to pay an author fee and make their work OA.
Changes to the BMJ's processes this year are seen to have brought it into full compliance with international OA policies but with a mixed revenue model. Currently, under this model, access to research articles is funded through income from subscriptions and advertising rather than from author charges.
