BioMed Central

Last updated
BioMed Central
BioMed Central 2018.svg
Parent company Springer Nature
StatusActive
Founded2000 (2000)
FounderCurrent Science Group
Headquarters location London, WC1
United Kingdom
Distribution Open access
Publication types Scientific journals
Nonfiction topicsScience
Official website www.biomedcentral.com
Logo of BioMed Central until 2018 BioMed Central.svg
Logo of BioMed Central until 2018

BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher. It was founded in 2000 and has been owned by Springer, now Springer Nature, since 2008.

Contents

History

BioMed Central was founded in 2000 as part of the Current Science Group (now Science Navigation Group, SNG), a nursery of scientific publishing companies. SNG chairman Vitek Tracz developed the concept for the company after NIH director Harold Varmus's PubMed Central concept for open-access publishing was scaled back. [1] The first director of the company was Jan Velterop. Chemistry Central was established in 2006 and the PhysMath Central journal imprint in 2007.

In 2002, the company introduced article processing charges, [2] and these have since been the primary source of revenue. In 2007, Yale University Libraries stopped subsidizing BioMed Central article processing charges for Yale researchers. [3]

In October 2008, it was announced that BioMed Central (along with Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central) had been acquired by Springer Science+Business Media, the second largest STM publisher. [4] The Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central brands have since been retired.

In November 2008, BioMed Central became an official supporting organisation of Healthcare Information For All. [5]

Following the merger of BMC into Springer Nature, BMC journals were gradually converted to the general Springer Nature software. The software migration meant the loss of several features, often related to open science requirements, like the ability to download a machine-readable version of the paper (in XML format), direct download of PDF files and the ability to read articles without cookies. [6]

Journals

BioMed Central's flagship journals include BMC Bioinformatics , BMC Biology , BMC Medicine , Genome Biology and Genome Medicine . It also produces the BMC Series of journals covering the fields of biology and medicine. Most of the other journals published by BioMed Central are owned and produced independently by societies and academic editorial boards, with BioMed Central providing the hosting, publishing platform and marketing.

All journals are published online; some of the flagship journals have in the past also been available as print subscriptions, such as Arthritis Research & Therapy . Publications in BioMed Central journals are, immediately upon publication, released under the Creative Commons "Attribution" license which grants permission to reuse publications and produce derivative work. The only exceptions to this (as of 2010) were the flagship journals, which reserved rights on review and commentary content; those articles were available to purchase on a subscription or on a pay-per-view basis, becoming freely available (but not fully open access) to all after six months; however, as of January 2015, "no subscription fees apply to these journals or to any articles published in them." [7]

Open peer review

In 2001, BioMed Central was the first publisher to carry out open peer review as default, by openly posting named peer reviewer reports alongside published articles as part of a 'pre-publication history' for all medical journals in the BMC series. With currently 70 BMC journals operating fully open peer review. [8]

BMC Series

The BMC Series is a collection of several dozen online research journals published by BioMed Central. [9] Like all other BioMed Central journals, they have a policy of open access to the research articles they publish. Between them, they cover all major subject areas within biology and medicine. Two of the journals, BMC Biology and BMC Medicine , have a broad scope, and aim to publish particularly significant research. A third journal, BMC Research Notes, publishes scientifically valid research outputs that cannot be considered as full research or methodology articles across all scientific and clinical disciplines, [10] while BMC Proceedings publishes conference proceedings. The other journals specialise on a particular subject area. Due to their free licensing, images from BMC journals can be reused in other places.

  • BMC Anesthesiology
  • BMC Biochemistry
  • BMC Bioinformatics
  • BMC Biology
  • BMC Biomedical Engineering
  • BMC Biophysics
  • BMC Biotechnology
  • BMC Cancer
  • BMC Cardiovascular Disorders
  • BMC Chemistry
  • BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
  • BMC Developmental Biology
  • BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders
  • BMC Ecology
  • BMC Emergency Medicine
  • BMC Endocrine Disorders
  • BMC Evolutionary Biology
  • BMC Family Practice
  • BMC Gastroenterology
  • BMC Genetics
  • BMC Genomics
  • BMC Geriatrics
  • BMC Health Services Research
  • BMC Hematology
  • BMC Immunology
  • BMC Infectious Diseases
  • BMC Medical Education
  • BMC Medical Ethics
  • BMC Medical Genetics
  • BMC Medical Genomics
  • BMC Medical Imaging
  • BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
  • BMC Medical Research Methodology
  • BMC Medicine
  • BMC Microbiology
  • BMC Molecular Biology
  • BMC Molecular and Cell Biology
  • BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders
  • BMC Nephrology
  • BMC Neurology
  • BMC Neuroscience
  • BMC Nursing
  • BMC Nutrition
  • BMC Ophthalmology
  • BMC Oral Health
  • BMC Palliative Care
  • BMC Pediatrics
  • BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology
  • BMC Physiology
  • BMC Plant Biology
  • BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
  • BMC Proceedings
  • BMC Psychiatry
  • BMC Psychology
  • BMC Public Health
  • BMC Pulmonary Medicine
  • BMC Research Notes
  • BMC Rheumatology
  • BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation
  • BMC Structural Biology
  • BMC Surgery
  • BMC Systems Biology
  • BMC Urology
  • BMC Veterinary Research
  • BMC Women's Health
  • BMC Zoology

Most BMC Series journals have an impact factor. As of 2016, for the 53 journals with impact factors, BMC Biology had the highest at 7.98. [11]

Databases

The company also has hosted biomedical databases, including the ISRCTN registry (previously Current Controlled Trials), a Primary Registry of clinical trials in the WHO Registry Network. [12] The Biology Image Library and the Cases Database, a database of medical case reports, [13] were closed in 2014. [14] The company also provided hosting for institutional repositories of publications based on the DSpace platform under the brand Open Repository. [15] The Open Repository activity was sold to Atmire in 2016. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Preprint</span> Academic paper prior to journal publication

In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version available free, before or after a paper is published in a journal.

A public health journal is a scientific journal devoted to the field of public health, including epidemiology, biostatistics, and health care. Public health journals, like most scientific journals, are peer-reviewed. Public health journals are commonly published by health organizations and societies, such as the Bulletin of the World Health Organization or the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Many others are published by a handful of large publishing corporations that includes Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer Science+Business Media, and Informa, each of which has many imprints. Many societies partner with such corporations to handle the work of producing their journals.

F1000 is an open research publisher for scientists, scholars, and clinical researchers. F1000 offers a different research evaluation service from standard academic journals by offering peer-review after, rather than before, publishing a research article. Initially, F1000 was named after the 1,000 faculty members that performed peer-reviews, but over time F1000 expanded to more than 8,000 members. When F1000 was acquired by Taylor & Francis Group in January 2020, it kept the publishing services. F1000Prime and F1000 Workspace were acquired by different brands.

PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), PubMed Central is more than a document repository. Submissions to PMC are indexed and formatted for enhanced metadata, medical ontology, and unique identifiers which enrich the XML structured data for each article. Content within PMC can be linked to other NCBI databases and accessed via Entrez search and retrieval systems, further enhancing the public's ability to discover, read and build upon its biomedical knowledge.

Libertas Academica (LA) is an open access academic journal publisher specializing in the biological sciences and clinical medicine. It was acquired by SAGE Publications in September 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BioModels</span> Database of biological reactions

BioModels is a free and open-source repository for storing, exchanging and retrieving quantitative models of biological interest created in 2006. All the models in the curated section of BioModels Database have been described in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

BMC Structural Biology was an open access peer-reviewed scientific journal that covered research in structural biology. The journal was established in 2001 and was published by BioMed Central. The editor-in-chief was Simon Harold. The journal ceased publication and was integrated into BMC Molecular and Cell Biology in 2019.

<i>BMC Biology</i> Academic journal

BMC Biology is an online open access scientific journal that publishes original, peer-reviewed research in all fields of biology, together with opinion and comment articles. The publication was established in 2003. The journal is part of a series of BMC journals published by the UK-based publisher BioMed Central, owned by Springer Nature. The journal has an international editorial board of researchers and editorial offices in London and New York.

Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are:

  1. Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's identity.
  2. Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article.
  3. Open participation: The wider community are able to contribute to the review process.
<i>Clinical Proteomics</i> Academic journal

Clinical Proteomics is a peer-reviewed open access medical journal published by BioMed Central. Covers scientific research in the field of translational proteomics with an emphasis on the application of proteomic technology to all aspects of clinical research. It was established in March 2004 and the editor in chief is Daniel W. Chan.

<i>Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine</i> Academic journal

The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine is a quarterly peer-reviewed open-access medical journal. It was established in October, 1928 and is the oldest medical student publication still being published. Since 2015, each issue covers a particular topic in biology, medicine, or public health, including experimental and clinical research. The journal's editorial board is composed of Yale University graduate, medical, and professional students. It is published on PubMed Central and is financially supported by the Yale Office of Medical Education.

Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram. Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in the United Kingdom, Spain, and China. In 2022, Frontiers employed more than 1,400 people, across 14 countries. All Frontiers journals are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Molecular Autism is a peer-reviewed open-access medical journal covering research on the cause, biology, and treatment of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vitek Tracz</span>

Vitek Tracz is a London-based entrepreneur who has been involved in science publishing, pharmaceutical information and mobile phone-based navigation.

bioRxiv Preprint service

bioRxiv is an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences co-founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013. It is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of open access</span>

The idea and practise of providing free online access to journal articles began at least a decade before the term "open access" was formally coined. Computer scientists had been self-archiving in anonymous ftp archives since the 1970s and physicists had been self-archiving in arXiv since the 1990s. The Subversive Proposal to generalize the practice was posted in 1994.

Juniper Publishers is a publisher of various academic journals. It has a postal address in Irvine, California, USA, located in a residential neighborhood but has employees in Hyderabad, India. Juniper Publishers has been included on Beall's List of potential predatory open-access publishers, and has faced other criticisms of its publishing practices.

JSci Med Central is a publisher of various academic journals from Hyderabad, India. JSciMed Central has been included on Beall's List of potential predatory open-access publishers, and has faced other criticisms of its publishing practices.

References

  1. "Interview with Vitek Tracz: Essential for Science". Infotoday.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  2. Quint, Barbara (7 January 2002). "BioMed Central Begins Charging Authors and Their Institutions for Article Publishing". Information Today. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
  3. "Yale Libraries Pull Out of BioMed Central Over Cost of Publication". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2007-08-09. ISSN   0009-5982 . Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  4. Suber, Peter (2008-10-07). "Peter Suber, Open Access News". Earlham.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-01-13. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  5. "HIFA Supporting Organisations". HIFA2015. Archived from the original on 2014-12-08.
  6. Willighagen, Egon (2021-06-11). "Conflict of Interest. Or why I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cheminformatics". doi:10.5281/ZENODO.4926031.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. "Access to articles". BioMed Central. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  8. "Open Peer Review, BMC Group". ReimagineReview. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  9. "The BMC-series journals". BioMed Central. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
  10. Krüger, Dirk; Marshall, Diana M (14 February 2017). "Bite-size research: BMC Research Notes goes back to its roots". BMC Research Notes. 10 (1): 95. doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-2418-y . PMC   5307640 . PMID   28193243.
  11. "8. Do BioMed Central journals have Impact Factors and are they citation tracked?". BioMed Central. Archived from the original on 2016-10-30. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
  12. "Current Controlled Trials - Clinical Trial Search. ISRCTN numbering scheme. Database of Clinical Trials". Controlled-trials.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  13. "Home Page". Cases Database. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  14. http://casesdatabase.com/, Notice of Closure, July, 2014, accessed 2015-04-06
  15. "Home". Open Repository. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  16. "Atmire acquires Open Repository". Library Technology Guides. 2016-08-01. Archived from the original on 2016-10-22. Retrieved 2016-10-22.

Further reading