OA Emphasis on Biomedical Research

I could not help but notice, in my perusal of the internet wealth of OA, that the majority of OA publishers emphasize either biological or medical sciences. The evidence abounds. BioMed Central, an OA publisher, makes no attempt to obfuscate this focus — its very name demonstrates its approach. Of course, while BioMed Central also has PhysMath Central and Chemistry Central, these two wings constitute a total of four journals. Compare this to 194 under the BioMed name. The emphasis is clear.

However, BMC is by no means the only OA publisher with such an approach. The Public Library of Science clearly leans toward the biomedical sciences as well. PLoS currently publishes seven journals, six of which are biomedical and one is general. However, while on its face it may be general, PLoS ONE in fact publishes the great majority of its papers in the biomedical fields. In fact, only 184 papers have been published under the categories of Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics combined. To put this in perspective, PLoS ONE has published around three times that many in Neuroscience (551 papers) alone.

Regardless of the specific reason, it is clear that OA has in general focused heavily upon publishing biomedical scientific research. Perhaps in order for OA as a movement in general to succeed, we must expand its base of support to include more completely the entire spectrum of scientific inquiry.

Nathan