Abstract
This talk will initially give a brief overview of the motivations behind open access publishing and explain the practicalities of the different business models from an author's point of view. The talk will then discuss open access policy, particularly in Europe, and how the publishing landscape is constantly changing, with new initiatives and mandates being introduced all the time. Innovation in peer review such as transparent peer review and registered reports will be outlined and evaluated with examples from the BMC journals portfolio. The talk will then explain some of the funding options available to authors for open access publishing, and introduce the Springer Nature funding support service, which is available to anyone wishing to find out their options. Finally, the importance of data sharing will be discussed, as will the relatively new area of open access books.
