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Open Access at BMJ
Sharing knowledge and expertise to create a healthier world
BMJ is a champion of open access as a way to promote knowledge and accelerate discoveries. We place great importance on increasing the reach and use of what we publish, and we are actively reshaping the way medical research is conducted and disseminated.
The research in our flagship journal, The BMJ, has always been free to read, and in 2011 we launched our first and largest open access medical journal, BMJ Open.
Today, a third of our journals are fully open access, and we also make academic research freely accessible and discoverable with hybrid publication models. We continue to support the transition of publicly-funded research to open access and the majority of our hybrid journals have been given Transformative Journal status by cOAlition S.
Advancing scientific discovery
Our new transitional arrangements show our commitment to advancing open access, while offering our authors multiple options for publication, regardless of their funding situation. These include fully open access journals and Plan S compliant transformative arrangements.
We continue to innovate and advance health research. In 2019, BMJ co-launched medRxiv with Yale University and Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory. It is the first health sciences preprint server and it allows fast sharing of preliminary research findings to the widest possible audience. medRxiv now highlights when preprints have been accepted or published across BMJ’s journal portfolio, further contributing to the reliability and value of preprints as part of the scientific record.
In our portfolio, journals like BMJ Open Science, improve the validity and quality of pre-clinical research through open practices. BMJ is also part of initiatives like Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) and Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA), making it easier for articles to be found, read and cited.
Advancing global equity in an open-access world
Learn the benefits of publishing open access
At BMJ, we appreciate that authors from low-income countries may not have access to funds to cover their Article Processing Charge (APC) and we don’t want this to deter them from publishing open access in their journal of choice. This is why all BMJ journals offer waivers for the full Article Processing Charge (100% discount of the APC) for authors based in low-income countries.
Visit our author hub to learn about our waivers policy and how to request one.
Contact ussales@bmj.com to find out more
