The transition to open access
After a fruitful 4-year collaboration between Andrologie and Springer, the next logical step was to choose BioMed Central, which offers an open access publishing model on an online platform. Since January 2013, Basic and Clinical Andrology has received a growing number of manuscripts. The first three accepted articles are published today to mark the launch of the journal. However, we urge you to keep an eye on BaCA as there is more to come. In addition, you have the possibility to sign up for article alerts to be notified of the latest content.
The open access publishing model [4, 5] makes an article freely and universally accessible online, so an author’s work is available to readers at no cost and not limited by their library’s budget. Accessibility to knowledge in andrology is not only required by those who work in scientific and medical research but also to clinicians and biologists working with patients who may not necessarily be based in large institutions. In the open access publishing model authors retain the full copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and disseminate the article, provided that it is correctly cited and no errors are introduced. The journal’s articles will be archived in PubMed Central [6], and other freely accessible full-text repositories.