According to "Biomedical Digital Libraries Moves to Open Journal Systems," Biomedical Digital Libraries will no longer be published by BioMed Central because "BMC's author payment model had become untenable for most of the authors wishing to publish in the journal." In the future, the journal will be published using Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems without author fees.
BioMed Central has an article-processing charges waiver policy with case-by-case basis review, and it also offers a variety of article-processing charges discounts. It is not clear why these cost-reduction mechanisms did not meet author needs.
Thanks for your post Charles. I’ve responded to it on my blog, and hope I’ve answered your question about why the cost reduction mechanisms were not sufficient for us at BMC: http://mbanks.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/12/changes-at-biom.html
Marcus Banks
Editor, Biomedical Digital Libraries