Table 1

Comparisons between the publishing models


Conventional Publishing
Open Access Publishing

History of basic principles
First printing press made by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. Many printing companies worldwide. Significant recent consolidation.
Internet first working in 1969. PDF files mimic printed page, and prevent alteration of content. BioMed Central publishes open access articles from 2000.
Copyright ownership
Publisher
Author
Payment for publishing articles
Usually none, but some journals have a "per page" charge
The institution, research funder, or author submitting the article
Payment for reading articles
The readers through payment or subscriptions
None
Submission
Usually internet
Internet
Publication
Usually paper and internet
Internet
Peer review
Yes
Yes
Time to publication after acceptance
Highly variable, from same day posting of manuscript, to many months later in print
Same day posting of manuscript with replacement by typeset final version some weeks later
Visibility
Variable, other than for the abstract, and depends on cost of access
High, with free full article access
Number of articles
Limited by issue/volume pages
Unlimited
Typical proponents
Publishers
Public and charitable funders: eg National Institutes of Health (USA), Wellcome Trust (UK), Medical Research Council (UK), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA)
Cost of use of colour
$500–1000 per printed page
None
Paper copy in hand
Yes
Only by printing the article
Embedding of cines
Not on paper
Yes, in the primary article
Citation index
Yes
Yes
Cited by PubMed and other scholarly search sites
Yes
Yes
Trend in citation index
Neutral
Increase through visibility
Long term archiving
Yes
Yes
Back archive
Yes
Yes

Pennell Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2008 10:1   doi:10.1186/1532-429X-10-1